AMD Radeon HD 7870 And 7850 Review: Pitcairn Gets Benchmarked

[aravind4297]

nevskilolincase u didnt notice nevskilol the 580 is $450+ and the 7870 is to have an MSRP of $350.
and kepler.. ihv no intention of waiting a 100 years.

 

[MANOFKRYPTONAK]

Crappy drivers, I buy this because I like crashing on WOW!!! My old 2007 computer can play WOW without crashing, what a joke! The drivers kill this big time, maybe when there FIXED, I will buy from AMD, they make great cards just need great support for win!

EPIC FAIL!!!

 

[alexdh01]

AGREE WITH ALIDAN. Bench 1920x1080 on ultra!!

 

[Guest]

Looking at some of these benches they do seem a little biased to the way AMD handles AA and memory. Crysis 2/BF3 for example they show extreme/high presets at 1080p then go up to ultra on 2560 by 1440 which would benefit AMD due to the larger amount of memory available.

Also AMD are a lot more resourceful on the AA so benching on less demanding settings at lower resolutions where only pre- dx11 features are getting used like AA which nvidia cards are always going to come off worse due to them being resource hogs in that department.

Not saying that this card isn't capable of standing up against a 580 but it would be better if they did show the full ultra benchmarks at 1080p and below instead of just showing us how AMD's AA performs better.

 

[fafnr]

@Don Woligroski from Toms: Have you guys had any updates on the incompatibility thing with certain i7 setups? I have an i7 860 with the 7870 and Battlefield 3 can run for all of a minute before crashing, and 3D mark crashed the first time I tried it, and just squeaked through the 2nd time... It's really extremely frustrating!

 

[vakuma5000]

I have to say.... These new gfx cards are really a step-up!!! Bith AMD's and Nvidia's new architecture are completely badass!! I'm not a fanboy, so I will take whatever offers the best framerates per dollar, and right now that looks like an HD7870. But Nvidia has only released it's 680, so I'm going to wait for at least another month to see what the rest of their lineup looks like.

On the topic of being a fanboy.... I tried it a while back.
I built my first serious gaming rig a few years ago, it was a AMD Phenom II 955 BE @ 4Ghz with a Sapphire HD6870. I was completely impressed by it's performance and I turned into an AMD fanboy for about a year there... I was totally seduced by the value for money they offered. An unlocked 64bit quad core for 150$??? I was in love... Thought for sure AMD had the low-mid cpu range dominated. I knew that intel had the fastest processors around, but they were the 1366 socket $1000 extreme acpu's and I couldn't afford it. i couldn't even afford an I7 920.
Then Sandy-Bridge came out.
And I watched as Intel displaced AMD from the low-end all the way to the High-end. It was a mind shattering experience, to see a dual core locked multipleir i3 2120 stomp all over everything AMD had. And it also put 1156 and 1366 to shame as well. It really opened my eyes. From that point on, I swore to never be a fanboy again. I'd chose whatever componenets had the best performance per dollar.
Now I have an I5-2500k and a MSI GTX 560Ti 2GB running 2 HD displays. I can max out all my games, so I don't really need a GFX upgrade but......
My Friend has an i7 2600k and an HD6970, and my pride can't stand to be second best!
He always wins in the "benchmark wars"......
So I really want to upgrade my GFX card.
I'm debating what to do though....
Get a new Nvidia 600 series or AMD 700 series card
or
Get another 560Ti and SLi them!!!
I'm not sure yet.....
I may not be able to power 2 560Ti with my current psu. It's an OCZ 600W modular, and I don't think it can handle a pair of 560Ti's... So if I wanted to go that route I might have to get a better psu. Which adds to the cost of my upgrade. And if I have to get a better psu, than maybe it's more cost effective to just get a newer single GPU setup than trying to go for 560Ti Sli setup...
It would cost me roughly 100$ for a nice PSU, plus around 150-180 for another 2GB 560ti. I haven't really decided yet. If I was smart, I'd just be happy with what I have. But pride is a biatch.

 

[mark13]

I think AMD have some serious hardware manufacturing problems and a large number of those 7800 cards currently in the market are buggy (just try googling for "driver stopped responding").
I bought 7850 recently and I had to return because of exactly the same instability issues as described in this article:
1. Left 4 Dead crashing randomly (4 - 10mins), worked on lowered frequencies
2. 3dMark2011 working fine
3. 3dMark06 crashing immediately, worked on lowered frequencies
4. DeusEx R crashing randomly even on lowered frequencies.

Do not believe it is a software issue...

 

[Guest]

Guys, what you think, 7850 or 7870, which is the most efficient buy for it's money/performance ?

 

[welsh jester]

There is little difference in performance in the benchmarks, seriously.. 3-4 FPS.. not worth arguing about, if we were talking 20-30fps difference all the time then i would agree to argue over it.

I still have a 5870 which is like 20% slower than a 7870 so it's still a good card, i am actually surprised it has held up so well.. no point in upgrading from my 5870 yet unless it was at least 80% faster imo.

Plus the thing i hate about some games, is the fact that they run as low as 20-30FPS, remember Crysis? a hog of a game that wasn't that great.. ran like crap for at least 2 years until cards came out powerful enough to run it 60+FPS.

All games should run at 60+FPS, 30 and lower is NOT that good, seriously..

 

[welsh jester]

There is little difference in performance in the benchmarks, seriously.. 3-4 FPS.. not worth arguing about, if we were talking 20-30fps difference all the time then i would agree to argue over it.

I still have a 5870 which is like 20% slower than a 7870 so it's still a good card, i am actually surprised it has held up so well.. no point in upgrading from my 5870 yet unless it was at least 80% faster imo.

Plus the thing i hate about some games, is the fact that they run as low as 20-30FPS, remember Crysis? a hog of a game that wasn't that great.. ran like crap for at least 2 years until cards came out powerful enough to run it 60+FPS.

All games should run at 60+FPS, 30 and lower is NOT that good, seriously..

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]welsh jester[/nom]There is little difference in performance in the benchmarks, seriously.. 3-4 FPS.. not worth arguing about, if we were talking 20-30fps difference all the time then i would agree to argue over it.I still have a 5870 which is like 20% slower than a 7870 so it's still a good card, i am actually surprised it has held up so well.. no point in upgrading from my 5870 yet unless it was at least 80% faster imo.Plus the thing i hate about some games, is the fact that they run as low as 20-30FPS, remember Crysis? a hog of a game that wasn't that great.. ran like crap for at least 2 years until cards came out powerful enough to run it 60+FPS.All games should run at 60+FPS, 30 and lower is NOT that good, seriously..[/citation]

The difference between the 7870 and the 5870 is greater than 20%, especially when the 5870's 1GB of VRAM becomes a bottle-neck (some games push well past 1GB even in 1080p with the quality settings maxed out and some AA).

 

[ungabungamk]

I have C2Q 9550 oc 3.6ghz, 4gb dominator ddr2 and my new asus 7850 dc2. I game at 1680x1050 res. and all the games are buttery smooth. Previosly I had sapphire hd4870 1gb vapor-x which still serves me very well , I have it since 2008. Between the 2 gpus there is great performance benefit even on my old system. Sorry for my bad english. ASUS 7850 dc2 is priced 250 euros in my country but i got it for 200 . I have the card for over a month now and it runs great in games no problems whatsoever

 

[Akron727]

HD 7870......this is the card thats supposed to be in the PS4. seems legit

 

[huntx23]

my plan is to get one of these now because its an awesome card, then down the road, pick up a second and crossfire for amazing performance. how long should that setup last me?

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]huntx23[/nom]my plan is to get one of these now because its an awesome card, then down the road, pick up a second and crossfire for amazing performance. how long should that setup last me?[/citation]

It should last you until you decide to upgrade or there is a hardware failure. Can't give any actual length of time because that depends on a huge amount of factors that not all of which can be accounted for in any estimate.

 

[kaitheus]

Wow this just convinced me to go grab an HD7870 to replace my Ancient HD4890, I mostly play Skyrim, Deus Ex:HR, Mass Effect Series and a few other less intensive games so this'll be perfect for me, and now that they have dropped in price considerably its a perfect time to get one.

 

[bigcyco1]

lol i find it sad the 7870 can keep up with the 580 yet nvidia still has not dropped price what are they thinking

 

[Guest]

Excellent article!

Thank you for the in depth review!

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]Kuchiki Daisho[/nom]Excellent article!Thank you for the in depth review![/citation]

It's very outdated. If you want a relevant review, you'd have to read one that isn't like six months old.

 

[fuzg13z]

Have the WoW stability issues been worked out? How's the compatibility with Ivy bridge? This card performs very well at an attractive price point and I'm a little torn between this and the 7950..

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]fuzg13z[/nom]Have the WoW stability issues been worked out? How's the compatibility with Ivy bridge? This card performs very well at an attractive price point and I'm a little torn between this and the 7950..[/citation]

I have no stability problems in WoW on my 7850, they're compatible with Ivy Bridge, and although the 7870 and the 7950 have similar stock performance, if you're an overclocker, keep in mind that the 7950 has a lot more headroom than the 7870 does (which is already impressive).

 

[DreamU]

I have the ASUS 7850 running on a quad i7. I want to report that it has no problems with World of Warcraft, unlike your test card. In fact, my old GTX 460 used to stutter in the Jade Forest flying over Fox Grove - the only place it had a problem in Warcraft. But I'm pleased the 7850 allows me to fly smoothly over that terrain.

 

[GamerFreak]

Hi , i have a intel assrock h61m vs mb, i3 3320 cpu a radeon 7850 2gb oc edition 8gb 1333mhz ram , 490w psu 80gb ssd and i run bf 4 @ 1440x1080 at ultra settings and 4x AA and get an average of 77 fps .