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Which 6850 GPU to buy: Gigabyte OC, Sapphire or Asus?

M

Mac-Rumours

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 23, 2010
144
1
All 3 GPUs are similarly priced (the Gigabyte is a bit more).

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3630#ov
http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation/product/?psn=0001&pid=497
http://www.asus.com/Graphics_Cards/AMD_Series/EAH6850_DC2DIS1GD5V2/#specifications

The gigabyte is factory over clocked to 820MHz but can't be over clocked much more than this whereas the Sapphire and Asus can be over clocked to about 950 MHz.

I want the card to run games at 720p and also build a Hackintosh.
 
Seriously, any decent card from the last few years won't break a sweat at 720, why such a low res? You'll be more CPU then GPU bound. Just buy the cheapest one.
 
Rodus said:
Seriously, any decent card from the last few years won't break a sweat at 720, why such a low res? You'll be more CPU then GPU bound. Just buy the cheapest one.
Click to expand...

The PC is attached to an HDTV (not full HD). I'm sure I'll upgrade the TV to full HD in the future, but when I do there will probably be much better and faster GPUs available.
 
I would check at whatever site you're using for information on building the computer to see if any of the cards work better than others, Hackintosh wise. Most should work fine, but there are occasional differences and different methods may affect each card differently.

Personally, I'm using a Gigabyte 6870 and it worked great out of box, but the 6850s may be different.
 
I think any of them will be fine for a hackintosh. My favorite brand out of those three is Sapphire, never had any problems with their GPUs.... so I'll suggest you buy that one, but whichever one you pick is fine.
 
Cboss said:
I would check at whatever site you're using for information on building the computer to see if any of the cards work better than others, Hackintosh wise. Most should work fine, but there are occasional differences and different methods may affect each card differently.

Personally, I'm using a Gigabyte 6870 and it worked great out of box, but the 6850s may be different.
Click to expand...

Hastings101 said:
I think any of them will be fine for a hackintosh. My favorite brand out of those three is Sapphire, never had any problems with their GPUs.... so I'll suggest you buy that one, but whichever one you pick is fine.
Click to expand...

I wanted to buy a Gigabyte 6850 as this is recommended by tonymacx86.com in their CustoMac builds but the shop I'm buying from only has the OC version (which ironically doesn't allow any extra over clock). I was then looking at the Sapphire which I see people have working with Hackintosh builds (as well as real Mac Pros).

Now I'm thinking to buy the Asus as it seems to have slightly better cooling with DirectCU and can be over clocked higher.
 
Depends how you over clock, but the over clock is usually not working Mac OSX after reboot.
Also if the card has a custom PCB it sometimes doesn't work too well with OSX either.

My hackintosh has a GTX 285, which worked out of the box with OSX, no extra drivers and config. I did also install with a normal OSX 10.6(.3 i think DVD) I bought on my local apple store.
 
cluthz said:
Depends how you over clock, but the over clock is usually not working Mac OSX after reboot.
Also if the card has a custom PCB it sometimes doesn't work too well with OSX either.

My hackintosh has a GTX 285, which worked out of the box with OSX, no extra drivers and config. I did also install with a normal OSX 10.6(.3 i think DVD) I bought on my local apple store.
Click to expand...

I'll only be over clocking whilst playing games (Windows 7) so I don't mind that it'll revert to stock speeds when rebooting into OS X.

The Graphics Card Wiki lists the Asus and Sapphire cards as working so hopefully they do work.

http://www.tonymacx86.com/wiki/index.php/Graphics_Card_Database
 
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