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ASUS EAH 6850 DC and 6870 DC |
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| Wed, December 01 2010 | 5:58PM | PermaLink |
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In closing, we have to hand it to ASUS again, they have come through with some superior offerings based on the latest GPU technology delivered by AMD. Among the “improvements” over the reference design is also the port layout of the EAH6850 DC, that is going back to a full size DisplayPort. This is primarily important for Eyefinity since the cards only feature two TMDS (transmission minimized differential signaling) transmitters, meaning that each card only natively supports two displays unless an active DP-DVI adapter with integrated TMDS transmitter is used. Those adapters are not overly pricey as long as a full DP port is the card interface (we found them for ~ $30.-). However, if a miniDP to DVI solution is sought, the adapters might as well be made from unobtainium, the only one we even found listed sold for $130.- last time we checked. Arguably, there are miniDP to DP dongles available and the best source right now appears to be Monoprice but realistically, there is no point to support six displays on a midrange card that is further limited with respect to CrossfireX expandability. In so far, ASUS did exactly the right thing by throwing out one of the miniDP ports and having only one full size port on the card. It makes life so much easier.
Two cards are sitting in front of me but I only have one award to give. The EAH 6870 is the more powerful card but lacks some of the more attractive features like super-quiet operation. Most likely we will see a custom design along the same ASUS Extreme Design guidelines shortly.
The EAH 6850 DC is the more balanced card and there is really not that much of a performance delta to claim that one or the other game would be playable with the 6870 but not with the 6850. Add the more conventional port layout for easier configuration of Eyefinity and the EAH6850 DirectCU has all the makings of a winner.
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