We would like to thank the following companies for supplying and supporting us with our test system hardware and equipment: Intel, ASRock, Kingston, Mittoni, Noctua and Corsair.

We'll be checking out the HIS HD 6850 1GB CF setup against a number of cards including a couple that didn't have results on our new testbed previously.

For starters, we'll be comparing the setup against the single Sapphire HD 6850 1GB to see how scaling is. We'll also see how it goes against other single GPU setups like the HD 6870, HD 5870 and GTX 460 OC. The performance against these cards won't be so important as the price difference between the setups is quite large.

Comparing to dual GPU setups is what really matters, though, and we'll be comparing the setup against the GTX 460 OC SLI setup which is going to be the main competitor while also looking at how the setup goes against what is still the fastest single video card on the market, the dual GPU HD 5970.

Let's get started!

3DMark Vantage

Version and / or Patch Used: 1.0.1
Developer Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com
Product Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com/products/3dmarkvantage/
Buy It Here

3DMark Vantage is the new industry standard PC gaming performance benchmark from Futuremark, newly designed for Windows Vista and DirectX10. It includes two new graphics tests, two new CPU tests, several new feature tests, and support for the latest hardware.

3DMark Vantage is based on a completely new rendering engine, developed specifically to take full advantage of DirectX10, the new graphics API from Microsoft.

Checking out Vantage performance and we can see scaling is strong in the Extreme preset. Compared to the HD 5970 the HD 6850 CF setup lags behind a little bit, more so at the higher preset. Compared to the GTX 460 SLI setup which is taking advantage of PhysX support we see again the setup lags a bit behind.

What's interesting is that AMDs HD 6800 series hasn't been performing stellar under 3DMark Vantage. It seems that AMD has taken the approach to concentrate on gaming performance more than 3DMark Vantage with the HD 6800 series. It'll be interesting to see how the HD 6900 series goes under it and how it goes in the next generation of 3DMark due later this year.