Which card is better

Since those are all old dx9 game engines any half decent dx11 card is going to blow them away. ...except fable 3, the engine is a little weird for it so performance may not hold up even on good hardware.

Personally I would go with a 6850 out of the two.
I would get it from xfx though.
Newegg.com - XFX HD-685X-ZCFC Radeon HD 6850 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card
few dollars more but it does come with dirt 3.

Yea, dont expect much out of Fable 3. You can tweak it, and raise the 30FPS cap from 30 to 60FPS, and getting running much better but ... it still doesnt run as smoothly as it should.

...and yes having dealt with many companies over the years for returns and various tech problems.
I've found xfx to be one of the better support lines to deal with.
They aren't quite as fast as they were way back when (return for my old 6800gt nvidia card was pretty much instant) but they are still fairly quick.

stormy13 said:

Performance wise, flip a coin between the GTX 460 and HD 6850. Some games one is faster than then other and vice versa, with the difference only a couple of FPS either way in most cases,

HIS Radeon HD 6850 1 GB Review - Page 1/32 | techPowerUp

Comes down to price and features, and only you can decide if one has the features you want over the other.

As for the difference between the Sapphire and the XFX, the biggest difference is in the warranty between them. Two years for the Sapphire and lifetime for the XFX. If that is important to you, then the extra for the XFX might make sense. Spec-wise they are identical, both have the same core and memory speeds. The XFX also has the reference AMD cooler on it and the Sapphire uses a custom cooler (which I can personally vouch is whisper quiet at idle and barely noticeable when the card is at load as it is the same one I have). You also get DIRT 3 with the XFX (I got it with my Sapphire as well), so if that game is of interest another reason to lean towards the XFX.

Now for the Duration of your life double warranty to take effect you Must register at the XFX site before 30 days pass...or the warranty is only 2 years....

AMD is sponsoring the DIRT 3 giveaway so a lot of cards are coming with the game. I recently got the MSI card on sale and it is fine.

As you can see the XFX , Sapphire and MSI have the free Dirt 3 game.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007709%20600083901%20600083830&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&CompareItemLis t=48|14-127-576^14-127-576-TS%2C14-150-573^14-150-573-TS%2C14-102-908^14-102-908-TS

XFX and Sapphire rebate expires on 11/15 and MSI on 11/30

They ship a DIRT 3 coupon in the outer box so be sure and look for it. Then you have to activated the card, send a picture of it to AMD and then they send you a code to download the game from Steam. Nice game.

Jim

6850 All the way...