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're keeping it simple today. What we've decided to do is just include the two HD 6850s; this Sapphire HD 6850 that carries with it the correct 960 Shaders and the original sample we received which carried with it 1120 Shaders.

We want to know just how much of a difference having these extra Shaders impacts our performance and if having them affects our overall thoughts on the model.

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.

Under Vantage we can see there's a bit of a difference. 1000 points at P and 700 at X can be seen here, but nothing too serious. We're more interested in real world performance numbers.