Here is what Sapphire says.“Some of our early HD 6850 samples were built with pre-production ASICs that have the higher number of 1120 Stream Processors enabled, like the HD 6870. These ASICs were supplied by the manufacturer as Pro (HD 6850) parts together with a BIOS for them running at Pro clocks, so it had passed unnoticed until some of them had already been sent out to reviewers. “ claims Sapphire.
They also went on record that the correct number of Shader processors for the HD 6850 is 960, as AMD is telling the world and that all mass production parts that ended up in shops and etail around the world have the corect number of Shader processors, 960. Unfortunately there won’t be any lucky end users who will end up with Radeon HD 6850 with 1120 shaders and PRO clocks. At least it should not be the Sapphire or XFX card, they are telling.
If you read more carefully it looks like Sapphire is claiming the pre-production ASIC (chips) for the issue, or should we say blame AMD back. Whoever is to blame, it has already happened.
