Which 6850?

[konrad7]

Hey guys,

So I'm considering buying a graphics card, cheaply, as I am currently running on the HD4000 graphics of my 3750k...

So there are 2 6850s on overclockers right now:

An OC version, which I presume means already overclocked so you can't overclock it any more. This is the one everyone seems to be recommending.

Or the dual fan version. Surely this one would be better as the two fans means you can overclock it more?

Both are exactly the same price, £90, so I was wondering why you are recommending the one you are.

Thanks!

 

[honosuseri]

MSI (single fan) GPU review

You can see they got the overclock upto 973mhz much higher than the stock overclock. The dual fan may well be quieter, to be honest there isnt much to choose from them

 

[Bacon?]

Ive heard reviews that the dual fan's fans are quite loud but they may just be faulty cards?

 

[JonSmith]

In a previous thread someone commented that the dual fan edition being sold was loud and upon investigation he saw that a PWM wire was not present on the fans, and the speed could not be altered in software. I would opt for single fan one personally, it should be quite quiet and the cooling isn't really the limiting factor on these cards, I have mine at 915Mhz (albeit with the oc power edition cooler) with a tiny increase in voltage. Higher clocks require large bumps in vcore which is the issue. Ideally the holy grail is around 990mhz because it becomes as fast as a 6870, but that needs nearly 1.3V and isn't really worth it on account of the fan speed required for the ~ 5% performance increase compared to the gains <1.2V.

 

[Orcvader]

Go for the single fan option, the dual fan seems to be stuck on 100% which really isn't what you want. You can overclock it further past the factory OC so no worries about that.