SAPPHIRE HD 6850 gets a Boost with 2GB Buffer

Meeting the increasing demands of the latest games and applications, world leading graphics card supplier, SAPPHIRE Technology has just introduced a new model of the SAPPHIRE HD 6850 with an enhanced frame buffer memory of 2GB.

The SAPPHIRE HD 6850 2GB has the same internal architecture as the standard model, based on the second generation 40nm DirectX 11 graphics core from AMD with 960 stream processors and 48 texture processing units. It has clock speeds of 775MHz for the core and 1000Mhz (4.0 Gb/sec effective) for the memory delivering excellent performance for a wide range of applications. The larger 2GB frame buffer more easily caters for more demanding applications and specific graphical demands such as large texture maps in the latest games.The versatile output configuration of the SAPPHIRE HD 6850 2GB includes one DVI-I, one DVI-D, one HDMI and one standard DisplayPort connectors. One legacy VGA monitor can be supported from the DVI-I port with the adapter supplied. Using two of the DVI/HDMI outputs as well as the DisplayPort output enables this card to support three monitors in Eyefinity (SLS) mode, with a suitable DisplayPort monitor or active adapter.

The efficient SAPPHIRE original cooler ensures that there is a good margin for performance tuning (overclocking) by enthusiast users. A new overclocking tool - TriXX - is available free to download from the SAPPHIRE website – just follow the links to the TriXX pages.

In the SAPPHIRE HD 6850 the third generation UVD (Unified Video Decoder) supports MVC (Multi-view Video Coding) for the smooth decoding of Blu-Ray 3D with reduced CPU load as well as other HD file formats. Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio are supported, and HDMI capability has also been upgraded to HDMI 1.4a. This now provides deep colour, enhanced high resolution output for Digital Theatre applications and 3D stereoscopic support as well as 7.1 high bit-rate audio.

The multiple stream processors of the HD 6800 series can be used to accelerate other applications such as video transcoding. The latest generation of web browsers can be GPU accelerated, and this is also supported for enhanced productivity in Microsoft Office 2010.

The SAPPHIRE HD 6800 series is supported by AMD's DirectX 11 WHQL certified graphics driver which delivers support for all of the key DirectX 11 features for enhanced gaming experiences as well as GPU acceleration of supported applications (APP Acceleration).