AMD Radeon HD 7870 And 7850 Review: Pitcairn Gets Benchmarked

[belardo]

Well... consider me sold on the 7850! To get 6970 performance (give or take) for $250.... I'll take it.

Why can't AMD's CPU division act like their GPU side?

 

[borden5]

@The_OGS: r u stupid ? It's Nvidia fault for not rolling out their new cards, not because of tom's don't want to review them, and this is mid range segment of hd 7xxx series what are you talking about ?

 

[borden5]

@The_OGS: r u stupid ? It's Nvidia fault for not rolling out their new cards, not because of tom's don't want to review them, and this is mid range segment of hd 7xxx series what are you talking about ?

 

[Guest]

[citation][nom]gam0reily[/nom]So? Are u suggesting that we dont move on to better tech. just coz "we can live without it"?[/citation]


NO, that is not what I am suggesting!

What I am saying, is there is not a balance between the HArdware being offered to us and the Software to run on said hardware.

My 2 Year old mid range system runs all current Software very well, with no need to upgrade! I do not see an specific titles I will need to upgrade to run in the near future!

My exact thought were stated clearly, INSTEAD of upgrading to 7870 like I originally planned... I am better off replacing my motherboard and 1055t to a faster i7 2600k/p67 and waiting to see if I will need to upgrade my 5850 when better games come out! When that happens then I will have the New nVidia around to chose from as well........


so WHERE IN MY RESPONSE... do you get that i say......" we should not move on to better tech. just coz "we can live without it"?

JOG ON KITTY!!!

 

[horaciopz]

If the reference cooler is doing that good, what about the aftermarker coolers? overcocked + Msi twinfrozr cooler = 7950 with less consumption, heat and noise lol

As belardo said, why AMD CPU's division are not doing that right? well, gotta wait pricesses down to remplace my 6790 to one of these !

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]alidan[/nom]can someone tell me why low settings were benched at the lowest resolutionmid settings at 1920x1080and the highest at 2560x1440 (and not 2560x1600)[/citation]

Because that's how the Tom's Hardware DE (Germany) does it, and we had to rely on their gaming benches this time around.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]bin1127[/nom]7850 looks great. But isn't it interesting that we're happy when amd's new generation cards just catches up to nvidia's last generation cards?[/citation]

Considering that it is an upper middle end card that is meeting Nvidia's flagship, no, it's not interesting that we're happy about it. Granted, it's a die shrink and a new arch, so it's to be expected, but it's still fun to see it. There will probably be a similar or even greater difference between the best of Kepler and GCN as there was for Fermi and VLIW5/4, but that's pure speculation. In the mean time, we have the 7870 rocking most of the current video cards, so don't hate.

[citation][nom]The_OGS[/nom]Just another review on Tom's Radeons...Don't even want to read about just that one brand all the time!They completely change their models every coupla months, to confuse.I don't care, I'll never use a Radeon.[/citation]

We don't get confusion from the Radeons and Nvidia are the ones that aren't releasing new cards yet so of course we only get to talk about the Radeons, that's all there is that has solid proof instead of speculation and rumors. The Radeons are proven to be better purchases than most comparable Nvidia cards so you're fighting an uphill battle. The only Nvidia card I'd consider is the GTX 560 TI. All of the others have far less value than the comparable Radeons. For example, the 6970 vs the GTX 570. The Radeon here has 768MB more memory, uses less power, and is cheaper. How could we not support it over the GTX 570? Do you honestly expect us to root for the Nvidia card when it is simply worse, yet more expensive anyway?

Then going up to the 7950 vs the GTX 580. The 7950 is about the same price, but has twice as much memory and again, uses less power. It's also a little faster at stock and it overclocks FAR better. Yet again, we see the Nvidia card to be a worse purchase.

Then we have the GTX 560 vs the Radeon 6870. The 6870 is a little faster, cheaper, and uses FAR less power. Memory isn't a problem here, but the other problems more than make up for it, the Nvidia card is yet again worse.

Then there is the fact that the 6950 has such awesome crossfire scaling that a 6950 CF vs. a GTX 570 SLI shows the 570s not winning, or at least not by enough to be distinguishably different. Considering the huge price premium for them, that's kinda disappointing. The same is true for the 560 TI 448 cores... 6950 CF is cheaper, yet out-performs it.

Don't even get me started on the crap that is the GTX 550 and 550 TI. Then we have the GTX 580... Often only marginally faster than the 6970, when it is faster, yet it costs so much more... You could get Radeon 6950 Crossfire for the same price and fly circles around that GTX 580. You might even be able to get dual 6950 2GBs instead of the 1GB versions.

Nvidia makes good cards, but the Radeons offer more value at every price point. If you saw driver problems, then maybe you should have looked into them prior to buying the 7970 AND then again before you replaced it. We already knew that the 7000 Radeons have driver problems so you should have known what you were getting into. Sorry, but I have no sympathy for someone who didn't even think to look into a purchase and then declares the entire brand junk when overall, it beats Nvidia. The only card from Nvidia seriously worth getting is the 560 TI, and even then I'd prefer the 6950 for obvious reasons. If given a Nvidia card for free or dirt cheap, I have no problem with using and it would go right into my rig, but I won't be paying for one unless they shape up with Kepler. Honestly, I'm expecting them too, or at least I was before they delayed yet again. Tech seems to be getting harder and harder on the designers/manufacturers because we see delays on almost everything nowadays.

[citation][nom]moricon[/nom]NO, that is not what I am suggesting! What I am saying, is there is not a balance between the HArdware being offered to us and the Software to run on said hardware.My 2 Year old mid range system runs all current Software very well, with no need to upgrade! I do not see an specific titles I will need to upgrade to run in the near future!My exact thought were stated clearly, INSTEAD of upgrading to 7870 like I originally planned... I am better off replacing my motherboard and 1055t to a faster i7 2600k/p67 and waiting to see if I will need to upgrade my 5850 when better games come out! When that happens then I will have the New nVidia around to chose from as well........so WHERE IN MY RESPONSE... do you get that i say......" we should not move on to better tech. just coz "we can live without it"?JOG ON KITTY!!![/citation]

Considering that the 5850 is a rough equivalent for the 6870, of course you have little trouble right now. Most games can be played at maxed out settings and 1080p with that. However, how much did you spend on that 5850? Unless you spent $150 or so, then you should see the benefits here. That same level of performance you paid for two years ago probably won't cost nearly as much now as it did then. This shows that video card performance for the money is on the rise and as far as I'm concerned, that's just as much progress as the video cards like the 7950/7970 that can be overclocked to beyond twice as fast as that 5850 you have.

Games also seem to be improving in video quality slower than they used too. It gets more and more expensive for game makers to make multiple versions of their games, especially at the quality we want so our video cards actually have to work to give playable frame rates. That could affect long term value of video cards because they can last longer.

 

[maxinexus]

Surprised with the results. Way better than I've expected. Although as few others had mentioned it is interesting to see 7870 closing on 7950 with 28 CUs in comparison to only 20 CUs.

 

[FunSurfer]

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.

It is the same with the power consumption ratio with the 7870 and the 6970 which got lower avarage game performance score than the GTX570. By the way the top line in the power consumption graph is the GTX580 which is missing below. The power consumption of the GTX570 in on par with the 6970.

 

[elbert]

Great review but it looks like AMD needs to fix image quality. I guess this is the reason the 7800's did so well. Once the image quality is fixed I would think the performance of the 7870 would only be about an equal to the GTX570. This does bring into question AMD's pricing as some 570's sale around $320. Much like the review I am a bit upset over the 7850 wasn't the 1GB $200 card as I had plans to purchase this card. Guess I may have to rethink this as the under quality 7850 doesn't appeal to me or wait for a $200 card.

 

[jankeke]

Impressive cards for the money ! I can't wait to see how the Keplers do !

I am building an Ivy Bridge rig in the next couple of months, I'll take the best single GPU card there is at that time. I have a 4870X2 in my current rig (which will be my secondary rig), it works very well but it's time to go DX11.

I haven't had a Nvidia card since the 7950X2 (2 cards bolted together) many years ago. ^^

 

[CaedenV]

The entire 7K lineup is awesome, but for people like me who need CUDA there is sadly a lack of options at present

 

[Onus]

My GTX560Ti does very well in all my games, but lately I've been seeing a lot of momentary screen blackouts NOT followed by anything in the Windows Event Log, and I also see some occasional flickering in some of my games, and other bizarre texture anomalies. The HD7850 may be an excellent replacement, but there's no hurry; I can wait for Kepler, and for the issues mentioned to be ironed out. The reduction in power use is outstanding. Performance OR power, yes, but for Kepler to do as well in all of those areas seems unlikely, although I'd love to see it.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]jtt283[/nom]My GTX560Ti does very well in all my games, but lately I've been seeing a lot of momentary screen blackouts NOT followed by anything in the Windows Event Log, and I also see some occasional flickering in some of my games, and other bizarre texture anomalies. The HD7850 may be an excellent replacement, but there's no hurry; I can wait for Kepler, and for the issues mentioned to be ironed out. The reduction in power use is outstanding. Performance OR power, yes, but for Kepler to do as well in all of those areas seems unlikely, although I'd love to see it.[/citation]

Considering that Kepler is a somewhat larger change from Fermi than GCN was from VLIW4, I'd be surprised if Nvidia doesn't catch up to AMD in power consumption. Remember, AMD did a new arch and die shrink, but Kepler is finally abandoning hot-clocking, something AMD already abandoned, so it could catch up from the improved power efficiency that losing hot-clocking offers. It has worked well for AMD so far and I'd be surprised if Nvidia screws it up.

 

[lradunovic77]

580GTX still rocks.

 

[blazorthon]

Also, considering how well Pitcairn is doing at stock, lets see it overclocked as far as it can safely go. Maybe not quite safely for a little fun. A lot of video cards tend to be right behind their more expensive brethren if they are brought up to the same clock rates, the 7870 is already highly clocked so we'll just need to see if it has what it takes to duke it out with the 7900 cards.

Also, if the 7870 is right behind the 7950 most of the time, how does the rumored 7890 fit into all of this? Unless, as we have speculated, the 7900 card have been stifled by their drivers significantly, the 7890 should outperform the 7950 and that would be an odd situation. Just what is going on here? Kepler is nowhere to be found with little to no info and AMD is doing who knows what. Are they trying to confuse us?

I'm sure we are also all wondering about this, but WTF is up with the 7850, and will the supposed 7830 have similar problems? Radeon 7000 has fairly impressive performance and power usage, but that's to be expected from the die shrink. I see little explanation, however, for the extreme quirks of Southern Islands.

Perhaps 7900 simply overclocks much further than 7800, in which case 7900 should have higher clock rates at stock to compensate for the 7870 being this close because it is just too close to 7900, especially with another card supposed to be between 7900 and the 7870. That doesn't tell us what will happen with the 7890. This is all very odd. Maybe AMD will figure this all out and hopefully Nvidia doesn't have something similar going on. These new cards are just too weird.

 

[fulle]

It's a relief to see that these cards perform as they should. I'm still pretty perplexed on why the 79xx cars performed roughly 30% worse than I expected... meanwhile these 78xx cards are doing exactly what they should, based on specs. I don't get it, but these benchmarks are a definite good thing.

 

[verbalizer]

everyone who knows me knows that I'm an nVidia guy but I have been saying for months now that the HD 7870 was going to be nice.

side note:
1920 x 1080 resolution.
GTX 460 (SLi) slightly better than GTX 580 which is slightly better than the HD 7870.
so an HD Radeon upgrade from SLi GTX 460's is more than likely a HD 7970.
= too much..

nVidia GTX 6 series to the rescue..

 

[computernerdforlife]

It's official: my GTX260 sucks now!

 

[misha87]

how stupid of me i just got the 560 ti lol its time to get this !

 

[misha87]

[citation][nom]jtt283[/nom]My GTX560Ti does very well in all my games, but lately I've been seeing a lot of momentary screen blackouts NOT followed by anything in the Windows Event Log, and I also see some occasional flickering in some of my games, and other bizarre texture anomalies. The HD7850 may be an excellent replacement, but there's no hurry; I can wait for Kepler, and for the issues mentioned to be ironed out. The reduction in power use is outstanding. Performance OR power, yes, but for Kepler to do as well in all of those areas seems unlikely, although I'd love to see it.[/citation]
wait for the 660 ti

 

[cinergy]

This article failed to test the over-clockability which is very impressive based on e.g. Techreports article. +20% core quite easily with stock fan.

 

[blazorthon]

It's a relief to see that these cards perform as they should. I'm still pretty perplexed on why the 79xx cars performed roughly 30% worse than I expected... meanwhile these 78xx cards are doing exactly what they should, based on specs. I don't get it, but these benchmarks are a definite good thing.

Technically, it's incorrect to say that 7900 performs ~30% worse than it should. You can up the frequencies by about that much without even changing voltage much, if at all, and then it performs the way it should. Honestly, I have no idea why AMD would have such low clock rates unless they lowered voltages too because it is very wasteful and it seems that no 7970 is unable to get a huge overclock without increasing voltage much, if at all.

Look at it this way: The 7870 has 1280 shaders @ 1GHz. The 7950 has 1792 shaders at only 800MHz. This is grossly oversimplified, but 1280*1 equals 1280 and 1792 * .8 equals 1433.6. Since shader count increases don't improve performance nearly as linearly as clock frequency boosts, I'd say that the if AMD expected the 7950 to be too different from the 7870, then they really don't even understand graphics tech as much as I do and I'm not an engineer. Due to the non-linearity of the shader count performance improvements, it's not unreasonable for the 7950 and 7870 to perform similarly.

Has AMD hired a bunch of ignorant fools when it comes to performance scaling of graphics cards? We've known this for a while now. Just comparing a 6950 and 6970 or unlocked 6950 at the same clock rates shows near identical performance despite the $100 price difference, same for the 7950 and 7970 at the same clock rates.

Basically, overclocking a cheaper card will save you $100. Considering that the 7950 seems to overclock equally well as the 7970, perhaps even slightly better, it can even outperform it's bigger brother.

 

[cinergy]

[citation][nom]lradunovic77[/nom]580GTX still rocks.[/citation]

Yes, barely beating AMD's mid-range offering.

 

[blazorthon]

@BigMack70

AMD drivers are far better than they used to be. However, your caution proved helpful because I heard that GCN Crossfire isn't working yet at all. However, AMD's Crossfire for the Radeon 6000s and older works very well if you have the recent Catalyst/driver versions.

Once AMD gets Crossfire going on the GCN cards, it will be interesting to see if it works better/at least as well as 6900 Crossfire does. 6900 Crossfire is the best multi-GPU tech for scaling. For example, GTX 570 SLI fights with Radeon 6950 Crossfire because it has worse scaling. Despite that, I think that the SLI might be slightly smoother in some cases, but you shouldn't discount Crossfire because of AMD's earlier failures.