The Card

Looking at the actual card, you're again going to find yourself in familiar territory with it not looking too different to a lot of previous Cyclone offerings from MSI. As for the rest of the card, there's also no other real surprises with a single 6-Pin PCI-E power connector at the top and a single Crossfire connector closer to the front.

Connectivity comes in the form of two DVI connectors. Both in this case are dual-link offerings along with a DisplayPort and HDMI connector.

Specifications

MSI haven't just slapped an upgraded cooler on the HD 6850 and sent us on our way; instead they've chosen to increase the clock speeds of the card at the same time. Out of the box a standard HD 6850 will carry a core clock of 775MHz while the 1GB of GDDR5 comes in at 4000MHz QDR.

Like the Sapphire TOXIC we looked at, MSI has chosen to bump the memory clock up to 4400MHz QDR. They've chosen to go a good chunk higher on the core, though, with that coming in at 860MHz; almost 100MHz over the reference card.

Being the "Power Edition" means that we've got Triple Over Voltage. While most HD 6800s will let you increase the core voltage, using MSI Afterburner and this card you'll also be able to bump up the Memory and AUX voltage. What this ultimately means is you should achieve a higher overclock. This is something we tend to only see on the HAWK edition cards. Fingers crossed we'll start to see these "Power Edition" cards make a larger appearance, though.