XFX FX-785A-CDFC Pro Reviews

XFX looks to do something different this Christmas with the release of a Radeon HD 7850 card package with a twist. Striking an exclusive deal with UK online retailer Scan, XFX bundles the card with an array of unexpected treats, including a special carry-bag, mouse, high-quality mousepad, active mini-DP adapter and machine-gun casing. Cut past the bundle and the card is an overclocked version of the Radeon HD 7850 2GB GPU. Performance is solid at a 1080p resolution though, on average, a little behind a price-comparable GeForce GTX 660 OC. The answer to whether it's worth the £165 outlay is entirely dependent on whether you place greater emphasis on bundle or gaming performance, as a vanilla Radeon HD 7870 - a faster card - is available for a few pounds more. We do appreciate companies thinking outside the confines of the AMD/NVIDIA box and doing something a little different, and XFX certainly has done that with this Radeon HD 7850 bundle, which is worth around £50 on its own. Factor in the top-quality games and the actual cost of the card becomes rather attractive.

The XFX 7850 Black Edition brings solid performance with the reliability of an XFX product. When you're considering a new mid range gaming graphics card, put the XFX 7850 Black Edition near the top of your list.

We've always been happy with the Black Edition series from XFX and combining our love for the series with our love for the AMD Radeon HD 7850, a model that comes in at an excellent price point and offers great performance, we end up with a model that looks really strong. XFX has done a really good job here, the Double D cooler has proven itself again with some strong performance, we've got good cooling numbers coming from the core and noise levels also are very good. Outside of the cooler, though, one of the main standout features for the video card is the strong overclock that XFX is offering us out of the box. Going through our benchmarks we could see at times the overclock was enough to push us from unplayable to playable numbers. This is exactly what we love to see when it comes to overclocking.

I am glad to see that XFX is still hanging around and offering unique products to the market. They have very nearly caught up to the competition in terms of design, and they are able to offer their products at competitive prices. The quality certainly seems to have gone up over the past few years, and while the warranty is not nearly as nice as it used to be, it is competitive with the industry as a whole. The bonus of transferring a warranty is a big plus though, and certainly unique among manufacturers.The HD 7800 series of cards is in an interesting place right now. When they were first introduced AMD was very excited by what they were able to bring to the table. At the initial MSRPs of the stock products at $249 for the HD 7850 and $349 for the HD 7870, AMD had a decent lock on price/performance when compared to previous HD 6900 series cards and the competing NVIDIA GTX 500 series. Unfortunately for AMD, NVIDIA has thrown a wrench into the works with the GTX 670 priced at $399. The performance of that card vs. the HD 7870 is very compelling for the extra money. When we start looking at products like the XFX R7870 DD Black Edition for $389, the difference in performance with the GTX 670 is well worth the extra $10 spent. That particular card is a hard sell. The only real thing going for it is availability. The HD 7870 is well represented in retail while the GTX 670 is still sketchy.

In the end I have to say that I was very impressed with both XFX cards. However, I was more impressed with how close the XFX Double Dissipation HD 7850 was able to perform to the HD 7870. Considering the XFX Double Dissipation HD 7850 comes in at almost $100 cheaper than the HD 7870, it makes it almost a no brainer. Not only that, but we were easily able to overclock it enough for it to perform faster than a stock HD 7870, which again makes it a no brainer. Both cards gave extremely playable performance through every single one of our benchmarks. They also gave fairly decent performance in our Eyefinity/Surround tests as well. I must say that I was also pleasantly surprised about how well XFX's Ghost coolers work. Even before the dual fans had been spun up to 100% the temperatures were nice and easy to deal with. The cards kept a nice low power consumption as well. The XFX Double Dissipation HD 7870 comes in at $374.99, whereas the XFX Double Dissipation HD 7850 comes in at just $269.99! Considering how close the HD 7850 performs to the GTX 580, which is about $300 more expensive, I would recommend it to anyone looking to pick up a new video card. I would even argue that the HD 7850 is one of the best bang for your buck video cards currently available on the market. Both of the XFX cards overclocked very well too. Again though, if you are thinking of picking up a new video card, go for the HD 7850. It's about $100 less than the HD 7870, and can easily be overclocked to match the performance!