AMD Radeon HD 7850 Pro Reviews

The Radeon HD 7800 series is meant to supplant the Radeon HD 6900 series in AMD’s graphics card line-up. Looking back at the numbers, it seems AMD has executed well on that plan, as the newer Radeon HD 7800 series cards offered similar or better performance than their Radeon HD 6900 series counterparts, but with more features, markedly lower power characteristics and better acoustic profiles. If you can find Radeon HD 6970 and 6950 cards in stock, they’re currently selling for approximately $340-400 (6970) and $250-$300 (6950). As has been the case with the entire Radeon HD 7000 series thus far, AMD has priced the new Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition and Radeon HD 7850 right where they “can” be priced. The suggested e-tail price for the AMD Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition will start at $349 and the Radeon HD 7850 will start at $249, when they begin volume shipments on March 19. Considering the new cards have more features, are faster, quieter, and more power-friendly, those prices are easily justifiable. But as we’ve said in the last few AMD graphics card launches, we wish the company was more aggressive with regard to pricing this time around. GeForce GTX 570 cards, for example, can already be found for around $330 and GTX 560 Ti cards for about $230, so NVIDIA doesn’t really need to react with price drops on their competing current offerings. We get the feeling AMD is pricing these cards where they can, at least until NVIDIA officially shows their hand with their next-gen Kepler-based parts. Hopefully, we’ll have some news we can share with you on that front in the not too distant future.

We have two brand new video cards from AMD and feel very differently about each. We had a positive experience with the Radeon HD 7870 and walked away impressed and satisfied at the performance delivered. The Radeon HD 7870 is able to perform faster than a Radeon HD 6970, something we did not expect. We enjoyed a high level of gameplay experience either at 1080p or 2560x1600. The Radeon HD 7870 is very much a practical 2560x1600 gaming video card. It is an upgrade if you are a GTX 570, HD 6950, or lower owner. We think this video card is priced right to compete, and we look forward to custom video cards. The Radeon HD 7850 on the other hand seems underpowered to us. Considering it is $249 and that you can currently buy GTX 560 Ti's for $40 cheaper, the value of the Radeon HD 7850 just isn't there yet. While it is technically faster than a GTX 560 Ti, it isn't enough to change the gameplay experience. We feel either the price should be lowered, or the performance enhanced. We look forward to custom video cards, which may be the saving grace of the Radeon HD 7850. Based on these facts, we feel the Radeon HD 7870 has earned our [H]ardOCP Editor's Choice Silver award, it is a very good video card that we are impressed with. The Radeon HD 7850? We'll wait for custom video cards to see how add-in-board partners can improve on performance at this price point because the reference 7850 is lack luster at best.

What have we learned by looking at the performance of three Radeon cards from the last three generations? Well, a few things, actually. Taking the Radeon HD 5850, HD 6850 and HD 7850 into account in this same-frequency face-off, the first point to note is that AMD has demoted the x850 line from the best single-GPU silicon to second-best GPU. This fact alone renders this an apples-to-oranges comparison. Radeon HD 5850 is a better card than the name now suggests, and we can empirically prove this by how well it competes against the HD 6850 and HD 7850. Really, a 30-month-old card should be slaughtered by cutting-edge competition, even if the older GPU's clocks are raised, but this isn't generally the case. We feel comfortable in saying that Radeon HD 5850 owners, and there are many, shouldn't feel compelled to 'upgrade' to a Radeon HD 6850 or HD 7850 on the rather large proviso that the majority of their gaming takes place at 1,920x1,080 resolution and below. Meanwhile, Radeon HD 6850 shouldn't really be in the same class as the HD 5850 or HD 7850. Perhaps a better name for it is the already-taken HD 6750? AMD understands its positioning and has reduced the buy-in price of the GPU silicon enough for partners to sell retail cards for £110... and even as low as £99 on special deals. It's a decent-enough card once the price dropped to the present £110, we suppose. And this brings us nicely on to the Radeon HD 7850 2GB card that was paper-launched just the other day. It's a quality card that's the epitome of mainstream gaming - cool, small, and potentially very quiet - but widespread adoption may be stymied by the launch price of close to £200. It's almost guaranteed to drop to around £175 once NVIDIA retaliates with its own mainstream GeForce magic - which is currently wending its way through the manufacturing process and out to retail - and an HD 7850 costing £150, if it should come to pass, would represent an excellent investment.

Our advice would be to definitely consider these cards if you're upgrading from GPUs that are at least two, preferably three, years old: they are amongst the best cards for their price points, based on our analysis of speed, price and power. Any Radeon HD 6950 or GeForce GTX 570 user, however, will view them as a sideways move more than an advancement. As for which one we'd pick out of the Radeon HD 7870 or HD 7850 as the better GPU, the low power-draw of the cheaper Pitcairn processor lends itself to smaller cards suitable for a wider range of chassis. It gets our vote, just. Knowing the cards shan't be available for a couple of weeks there's plenty of time to make up your minds, dear readers.

Starting with the Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition, AMD is effectively in the clear for the time being. At roughly 9% faster than the GTX 570 there’s little reason to get the GTX 570 even with the 7870’s price premium; it’s that much faster, cooler, and quieter. With the launch of Pitcairn and the 7870 in particular, GF110 has effectively been removed from competition after a nearly year and a half run. As for the Radeon HD 7850, things are not so clearly in AMD’s favor. From a power perspective it's by far the fastest 150W card you can buy, and that alone will earn AMD some major OEM wins along with some fans in the SFF PC space. Otherwise from a price perspective it’s certainly the best $250 card you can buy, but then that’s the catch: it’s a $250 card. With GTX 560 Ti prices starting to drop below $200 after rebate, the 7850 is nearly $50 more expensive than the GTX 560 Ti. At the same time its performance is only ahead of the GTX 560 Ti by about 9% on average, and in the process it loses to the GTX 560 Ti at a couple of games, most importantly Battlefield 3 by about 8%. AMD has a power consumption lead to go along with that performance lead, but without retail cards to test it’s not clear whether that translates into any kind of noise improvements over the GTX 560 Ti. In the long run the 7850 is going to be the better buy – in particular because of its additional RAM in the face of increasingly VRAM-hungry games – but $199 for a GTX 560 Ti is going to be hard to pass up while it lasts.

The Radeon HD 7870 and 7850 offer impressive performance, extremely low power usage, and attractive estimated prices (at least in North America; we're sorry, Europeans) compared to cards offering similar performance. They run coolly and quietly, making them easy to live with, too. That covers the most important questions gamers ask when they hear about new graphics cards. From almost every angle, consider us impressed. Sure, we could complain yet again about the lack of VCE support several months after AMD announce the feature, but that doesn’t affect these cards’ ability to play games.

With the HD 7800-series cards heading to market in mid-March 2012, AMD has likely released the majority of its 7000-series cards without a matching response from Nvidia. The last Nvidia GeForce GTX 500-series card we saw was the GTX 550 Ti, in late March of 2011. Rumors swirl, however, that Nvidia will begin revealing its own next-generation lineup later this spring. That alone may give many a wary gamer reason to wait, hoping that AMD’s chief rival will offer up better performance in this price range, or that the emergence of new, competing GeForce cards will drive down the price of AMD’s latest offerings. As we said in our review of the Radeon HD 7870, if you have a graphics card that’s getting you by for the moment, it’s hard to argue against taking a “wait-and-see” attitude. That's especially true given that the new AMD cards, to our eyes at least, don’t offer any killer "must-have-now" features, unless you count their low power draw when idle.

The AMD Radeon HD 7800 series helps fill the void in the $250 to $350 price range and are great gaming graphics cards for those running 1920x1080 monitors and like to crank up the image quality!

For about $250, the AMD Radeon HD 7850 is a decent video card. But you can get almost as much performance from Nvidia models that cost less.

The HD 7850 2GB completes AMD’s masterplan of systematically making as many current Nvidia graphics cards as possible redundant. With the GTX 580 1.5GB bettered by the HD 7950 3GB and the GTX 570 1.3GB bested by the HD 7870 2GB, the HD 7850 2GB thrashes the GTX 560 Ti 1GB in all but BF3, where the two cards perform very similarly. What’s more, if the HD 7870 2GB is anything to go by, the HD 7850 2GB will deliver this performance with excellent thermals and low power consumption too, although we’ll have to wait to confirm this. Pre-order pricing of around £200 for a stock model also seems reasonable considering the HD 6950 2GB can still be found for around £210 and the GTX 560 Ti 1GB for around £180. The result is that, for the first time since the release of the GTX 460 1GB back in summer 2010 , there really isn’t an Nvidia card on the market right now we can recommend; AMD’s salvo of 28nm parts has made Nvidia’s line-up look decidedly dated. As with the HD 7870 2GB, we’ll hold fire on delivering a definitive review score until we get our hands on retail samples, but needless to say we’re very impressed so far with both the HD 7800 series cards. Nvidia will need to deliver its own 28nm Kepler GPUs soon to avoid being left behind.

Overall I'm very happy with what the new cards bring to the table. Gaming performance is sufficient for all titles; power consumption is at record low levels, like on the other HD 7000 Series cards; all essential non-gaming features are included and the cards overclock like champs. Actually the HD 7870 claimed a new record spot for maximum GPU clock in a TechPowerUp VGA review with 1205 MHz. This enables willing users to get some free extra performance from their card, basically bumping it up to the next faster card according to our testing. Noise levels were a bit dissapointing. It seems AMD has favoured low temperatures over reduced noise levels too much, which resulted in noise levels that are higher than what I expect from a brand-new card that is packed with power consumption reduction features. Price-wise, we've almost gotten used to AMD charging first-to-market premiums for their HD 7000 Series. In my opinion, the HD 7870 is $30 too expensive, and the HD 7850 would do much better if it were $10 cheaper. In terms of increasing budget, the following cards are great choices. At the lower end of the price range sits NVIDIA's $210 GTX 560 Ti, which offers best in-class performance per Dollar. My next more expensive choice would be HD 7850 at $250, possibly get a custom overclocked version. With $300 to spend the choice gets a bit difficult as there is no real "star" product at this price point. Maybe a used GTX 570 or the GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores. Once we reach $330, GTX 570 becomes a rock-solid choice, unless you are willing to dish out $20 more for AMD's Radeon HD 7870 which does offer much better power consumption than the NVIDIA card. So there you have it, right now there's a good choice at almost every price point, and we haven't seen what NVIDIA's Kepler GK104 can do!

Moving on to the Radeon HD 7850, at 2560x1600 it was just 2% slower than the GeForce GTX 570 and 9% slower than the Radeon HD 6970. It was 3% faster than the Radeon HD 6950 and 17% faster than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti.At 1920x1200 we saw mixed results. Here the Radeon HD 7850 was now 3% slower than the GeForce GTX 570, but just 7% behind the Radeon HD 6970 and capable of matching the HD 6950. The speed advantage it held against the GeForce GTX 560 Ti however was reduced from 17% to 9%.

In our tests, the Radeon HD 7850 was up to 16% faster than its main competitor, the GeForce GTX 560 Ti. The only exceptions were on FarCry 2 at 1920x1200, where the video card from NVIDIA was 9% faster, (at 2560x1600, however, the video card from AMD was 6% faster), and on DiRT3 at 2560x1600, where the GeForce GTX 570 was 6% faster (at 1920x1200, both achieved the same performance level). On Media Espresso, the Radeon HD 7850 was substantially faster than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti, with an advantage of 28 percent. This shows that the new “GCN” architecture is really optimized for the processing of “regular” programs, as promised by AMD. The Radeon HD 7850 is an excellent video card if you have USD 250 in your budget for one, and it deserves our recommendation for the savvy user who is looking for an affordable high-end video card. The GeForce GTX 560 Ti, however, has as an advantage a lower price, as it was released one year ago. It will take a while for the price of the Radeon HD 7850 to drop. The GeForce GTX 560 Ti is also a terrific option for the average user who prefers to save a little and doesn’t mind getting slightly lower performance.

These pint-sized cards pack some impressive punch for sub-£200 GPUs, but only if you take the risk overclocking them.

Where the Radeon HD 7900 cards were impressive from a pure performance stand point and the Radeon HD 7700 cards brought new features and performance per watt to the sub $200 market, the HD 7800 cards are really the ones we think warrant the most attention from gamers. For $250, the Radeon HD 7850 offers a significantly better gaming experience than the GTX 560 Ti from NVIDIA while offering enough overclocking headroom to reach towards the GTX 570. The Radeon HD 7870 is able to handle the GTX 570 in a decent fashion though it doens't stand apart from its direct competitor like the 7850 does.

Our one critique about many of AMD’s newest cards unfortunately remains true to form once again. While the move towards 2GB is a welcome addition, the HD 7850 is in no way a game changing card. It won’t provide any improvement if you already bought into the GF114 or Cayman Pro architectures and in some cases the $190 GTX 560 Ti can still be considered a better purchase for today’s applications. However, for anyone still using an HD 6870, GTX 460 or HD 5850 it provides a nearly perfect upgrade path, especially when the needs of upcoming games are taken into account. In today’s market, that makes the HD 7850 2GB a great buy for anyone that wants peace of mind for the next few years.

A competently quick upper-mid-range card at a good price