AMD's Mid-range GPUs Launch: Radeon HD 7870/7850 Reviewed

[Julio Franco]

Read the full article at:
https://www.techspot.com/review/504-amd-radeon-7870-7850/

Please leave your feedback here.

 

[mosu]

nice

 

[bielius]

It is nice you ran many benchmarks! I really appreciate it!
Going to buy the 7850 as soon as it comes out in Norway.

 

[Guest]

From the looks of that heatsink none of the heatpipes are welded to the fins, coming from a HVAC background welding/soldering them to each other can exponentially increase the cooling capacity. hopefully the after-market cards employ this technique..

 

[slh28]

The pricing still seems high... $350 was around the price for AMD's flagship card for the last few generations (6970, 5870, 4870 was even lower). A 7970 for $350 would make everyone REALLY happy

 

[WaveZero]

Yep I'm gonna so grab the 7870!

 

[indiangamer]

i will like to wait for kepler. then i will buy hd 7950 and if nvidia provides better performance for same money i will go with nvidia.and i think that amd will cut prices after kepler release.

 

[amstech]

The 11% this and 7% that are very misleading.
The 7870 gives you 570 performance, period.

Nothing more, nothing less.

 

[soldier1969]

Poor mans cards, meh. 2 gtx 580s 3gb versions in SLI is where its at, next up 2 gtx 680s this Summer for 2560 x 1600 res ftw.

 

[RH00D]

soldier1969 said:
Poor mans cards, meh. 2 gtx 580s 3gb versions in SLI is where its at, next up 2 gtx 680s this Summer for 2560 x 1600 res ftw.

I'm not sure why I'm even replying, as you're coming off as a die hard fanboy. But "where it's at" is your preference. AMD has great alternatives and equivalents to Nvidia's offerings.

 

[Lionvibez]

RH00D said:

soldier1969 said:
Poor mans cards, meh. 2 gtx 580s 3gb versions in SLI is where its at, next up 2 gtx 680s this Summer for 2560 x 1600 res ftw.

I'm not sure why I'm even replying, as you're coming off as a die hard fanboy. But "where it's at" is your preference. AMD has great alternatives and equivalents to Nvidia's offerings.

I agree what does his post have anything to do with the cards being reviewed.

And your bias is showing.

 

[Guest]

Aha, these cards are more in my region. I was tempted by the 7870 until I read the conclusion when it said the 7850 is nearly 30% cheaper, and only 14% slower. When the third-party versions with better cooling get released, that performance gap can be even smaller.

 

[Guest]

amd graphics cards are just a poor mans card compare to nvidias

 

[Guest]

Basically:

5870=6950=7850

Equal I will keep my 5870 for a year or more ^.^

 

[Xero07]

7850 looks about right for the new system I plan on getting. thanks for the review.

 

[captainawesome]

The new interface spec doubles its predecessor's bandwidth to 32GB/s. Unfortunately, no current processor or chipset supports this technology, so we'll have to test it down the road.

I thought that the X79 chipset from Intel (Sandy Bridge E) supports PCIe3.0 ? Am I wrong?

 

[howzz1854]

my thoughts are the 78XX will be a nice "replacement" for last gen 69xx users.. but it won't be an "upgrade" consider it's price tag. just a month ago, you could get a 6950 for $225 on newegg. the performance increase for the 78xx over 69xx is just not big enough to be considered an upgrade consider their price tags. but if you're in for a replacement, it'll be a nice treat.

on the other hand the overclocking potential on the 7950's are on average 30~40%. mine site at a relatively 37% overclock increase.

 

[Steve]

amstech said:
The 11% this and 7% that are very misleading.
The 7870 gives you 570 performance, period.

Nothing more, nothing less.

I really have no idea how you came up with that. How can stating the actual facts be misleading? Based on the 14 games that we tested with the Radeon HD 7870 was on average 12% faster than the GeForce GTX 570. There were just 3 games were it was slower and 11 were it was clearly faster. There were 3 games where it was more than 20% faster. Anyway again very strange logic there.

my thoughts are the 78XX will be a nice "replacement" for last gen 69xx users.. but it won't be an "upgrade" consider it's price tag. just a month ago, you could get a 6950 for $225 on newegg. the performance increase for the 78xx over 69xx is just not big enough to be considered an upgrade consider their price tags. but if you're in for a replacement, it'll be a nice treat.

on the other hand the overclocking potential on the 7950's are on average 30~40%. mine site at a relatively 37% overclock increase.

Its not an upgrade for Radeon HD 6900 series, its really more of an upgrade for Radeon HD 5800 series users. Still if you are happy to spend the money they are a nice upgrade for anyone with a slower card

 

[Mikymjr]

Sweet! Amd does a great job afterall with their graphics cards. Now let's see what Nvidia has to offer. Who knows prices might come down because of competition

 

[EXCellR8]

Doesn't look like the 7870 is a good enough upgrade for me coming from a 5870. Just gonna have to sit and wait for the price to come down on the 7970...

 

[Guest]

Excellent card.

Now I have a reason to waste a ton of cash and play the two nice PC games on the market.

Ha ha ha.

 

[captainawesome]

Can anyone answer this:

The new interface spec doubles its predecessor's bandwidth to 32GB/s. Unfortunately, no current processor or chipset supports this technology, so we'll have to test it down the road.

I thought that the X79 chipset from Intel (Sandy Bridge E) supports PCIe3.0 ? Am I wrong?

 

[captainawesome]

Oh, TechSpot, could you PLEASE benchmark Mass effect 3 performance on these cards? Pretty please.

 

[Guest]

Would especially nice if there is a bios flash option as with the 6950 to 6970 as in from 7850 to 7870, either way AMD did a great job, I just about bought a GTX570 glad I didn't rather get a 7870 maybe even a 7850 and Crossfire down the road.

 

[Jack Reacher]

All I noticed was that the previous AMD Radeons, (6970-6950), did not fair so well against the "lowly" 7850 or 7870. That in itself either pisses me off or makes me want to grab a pair of those 7850's.

And for you Nvidia fan-girlies keep hoping. One day you're dream will come true and you will be able to run 3 monitors like the big boys.