Sapphire HD6850 1GB

 I love it every time a new product is released.  Today is one of those days.  AMD is releasing the 6800 series video cards, the HD6850 and HD6870.  These cards have been talked about for quite a while and the anticipation has been quite high.  Today, we finally get to see what these cards will do.  Let's see what kind of card AMD has in store for us.

Specifications:

• GDDR5 memory interface

• PCI Express® 2.1 x16 bus interface

• "Eye-Definition" graphics

• Second generation graphics with full DirectX® 11 support

• Shader Model 5.0

• DirectCompute 11

• Programmable hardware tessellation unit

• Accelerated multi-threading

• HDR texture compression

• Order-independent transparency

• Image quality enhancement technology

• AMD Eyefinity multi-display technology

• AMD EyeSpeed visual acceleration

• AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) technology

• OpenCLSupport

• DirectCompute 11

• Accelerated video encoding, transcoding, and upscaling

• UVD 3 dedicated video playback accelerator

• Enhanced Video Quality features

• Advanced post-processing and scaling

• Dynamic contrast enhancement and color correction

• Brighter whites processing (Blue Stretch)

• Independent video gamma control

• Dynamic video range control

• AMD HD3D technology

• Stereoscopic 3D display/glasses support

• Blu-ray 3D support

• Stereoscopic 3D gaming

• 3rd party Stereoscopic 3D middleware software support

• AMD CrossFireX™ multi-GPU technology

• Dual GPU scaling

• Cutting-edge integrated display support

• Integrated dual-link DVI output with HDCP

• Integrated DisplayPort 1.2 output

• Integrated HDMI 1.4a with support for stereoscopic 3D

• Integrated VGA output

• Integrated HD audio controller

• Output protected high bit rate 7.1 channel surround sound over HDMI with no additional cables required

• Supports AC-3, AAC, Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio formats

• AMD PowerPlay™ power management technology

• Dynamic power management with low power idle state

• Ultra-low power state support for multi-GPU configurations

• AMD Catalyst™ graphics and HD video configuration software

• Certified drivers for Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP

• AMD Catalyst™ Control Center - AMD Catalyst™ software application and user interface for setup, configuration, and accessing features of ATI Radeon products

• Unified Graphics display driver - AMD Catalyst™ software enabling other PC programs and devices to use advanced graphics, video, and features of AMD Radeon™ products