October 27 News from Around the Web

“Last week when I started to receive HD 6850 samples, as usual I take the normal GPU-Z screen shot and discover that the numbers are wrong or unknown in GPU-Z 0.4.6. This isnt unusual at the launch of a new card. Anyway, later that day GPU-Z 0.4.7 came out and it displayed everything. Unfortunately the Shaders showed as 1120, where it shouldve been 960. I checked my other HD 6850 and it had the same thing, so I put it down to a software error.

Over the next 36 hours it had come out that some HD 6850s did carry with them 1120 Shaders. This is what we know; the HD 6850s that we (and some other sites) received for launch carried with them HD 6870 cores and companies had forgotten to disable the extra Shaders. What we dont know is, do all the HD 6850s carry the same cores on a retail level and companies have now disabled the extra Shaders via a BIOS? We hope to find that answer out in the next few days.”