AMD Radeon HD 7870 And 7850 Review: Pitcairn Gets Benchmarked
There's a big hole in between AMD's $450 Radeon HD 7950 and its $160 Radeon HD 7700. Today, the company introduces Radeon HD 7850 and 7870 to fill that gap, and they push a lot more performance than we expected. But are they really ready for prime time?
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Test Setup And Benchmarks
Today’s story is going to be a little different than what you’ve seen from us in the past. The Radeon HD 7850 that AMD sent our US office was so unreliable that it wasn’t usable in a vast number of benchmarks. More on that when we break into the individual tests. AMD wasn’t able to get us a working replacement, so much of our performance data comes from 3DTested DE by way of Igor Wallosek. The result is that we have two different test systems.
| Header Cell - Column 0 | 3DTested DE | 3DTested US |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core i7-2600K (Sandy Bridge), @ 4.5 GHz, Hyper-Threading enabled | Intel Core i7-3960X (Sandy Bridge-E), @ 3.6 GHz, Hyper-Threading enabled |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte Z68X-UD7 B3 Socket 1155, Chipset: Intel Z68 | ASRock X79 Extreme9 LGA 2011, Chipset: Intel X79 |
| Networking | On-Board Gigabit LAN controller | On-Board Gigabit LAN controller |
| Memory | Kingston HyperX, 2 x 4 GB, 1600 MT/s | Corsair Vengeance LP PC3-16000, 4 x 4 GB, 1600 MT/s, CL 8-8-8-24-2T |
| Graphics | AMD Radeon HD 6950 800 MHz GPU, 1 GB GDDR5 at 1250 MHz AMD Radeon HD 6970 880 MHz GPU, 2 GB GDDR5 at 1375 MHz AMD Radeon HD 7850 860 MHz GPU, 2 GB GDDR5 at 1200 MHz AMD Radeon HD 7870 1000 MHz GPU, 2 GB GDDR5 at 1200 MHz AMD Radeon HD 7950 800 MHz GPU, 3 GB GDDR5 at 1250 MHz Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti 822 MHz GPU, 1 GB GDDR5 at 1002 MHz Nvidia GeForce GTX 570 732 MHz GPU, 1.25 GB GDDR5 at 950 MHz Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 772 MHz GPU, 1.5 GB GDDR5 at 1002 MHz | |
| Hard Drive | Kingston V100+ 256 GB (SSD) | Samsung 256 GB (SSD) |
| Power | ePower EP-1200E10-T2 1200 W ATX12V, EPS12V | ePower EP-1200E10-T2 1200 W ATX12V, EPS12V |
| Software and Drivers | ||
| Operating System | Microsoft Windows 7 x6, Service Pack 1 | |
| DirectX | DirectX 11 | |
| Graphics Drivers | AMD Catalyst 12.3 beta |
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hardcore_gamer Wow..7870 has nearly half the power-draw of GTX 570 and performs better. IMO this is the most impressive card in GCN line up so far.Reply -
esrever AMD saved the best for last it seems. Although a bit over priced, these cards are amazing performance/watt with all the new features. Nice to see the 7870 take a few blows at the 580 in a few games. Can't wait to see what kepler can do as well!Reply -
alex3064 alex3064what date is this 7850/7870 actually launchedi mean when will it be launched in marketReply -
theuniquegamer impressive performance of 7870 (i was disappointed by the 7770's performance )And what about microshuttering? Is it present in 7870 CF?Reply -
hardcore_gamer ilysamlWatch the benches well, the HD 7870 almost beating the GTX 580.Reply
Looking at the performance graphs, 7870 performs very close to 7950 which has 40% more SPs and a 384 bit memory interface. I think AMD reduced the performance of 79xx series on purpose so that they can release a better card just before the launch of Kepler. -
_Pez_ the 7870 is quite impressive. O.O almost the same gaming capability of the 580 for 350. OMG!Reply -
hardcore_gamer alex3064i mean when will it be launched in marketReply
It is there in the first page. "You won’t be able to buy the card until at least March 19th, AMD tells us."