Reviews - AMD Radeon HD 7870 and HD 7850 graphics cards

[HEXUS]

AMD looks to corner high-end graphics market.

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[kalniel]

Nice review Hexus - like the Trusty Table(TM)

The cards are pretty good too - minus that driver issue on one of the games - to already be doing so well on bang4buck/watt is a good sign. Looks like there's room for nVidia to target between the 7800 series and 7900 series though - guess that's where the gk104 is going to slot in nicely - lots of choice for the consumer, but could do with two equal cards to drive competition!

[HalloweenJack]

awesome review - as allways

now - is it me or is there a huge hole in AMD prices? between the 7770 @ £120 and the 7850@ £190

and , will there be a review in CF? would be ncie to see how these compare to 5850/6850 etc in CF

[salk0pu]

good card

[ZSTom]

Good review, and well written too.

I'm very tempted to order two HD 7850s when they become available, but my wallet tells me to wait for Kepler in hope of slightly lower prices. If the HD 7850 were £165, it'd be irresistible. The currently proposed price, £185, puts it right at the top end of what's acceptable to many mainstream buyers (from my perspective, at least).

P.S. Full stop missing, I believe, on p. 2 ('... forth benchmarks[.] AMD supplied HEXUS ...') and p. 12 (' ... taken into account[.] The graph ...'). I wouldn't normally be so anal as to point such out, but considering the review has such good overall grammar and punctuation, I thought the editor might care to know.

[Tarinder]

Good review, and well written too.

I'm very tempted to order two HD 7850s when they become available, but my wallet tells me to wait for Kepler in hope of slightly lower prices. If the HD 7850 were £165, it'd be irresistible. The currently proposed price, £185, puts it right at the top end of what's acceptable to many mainstream buyers (from my perspective, at least).

P.S. Full stop missing, I believe, on p. 2 ('... forth benchmarks[.] AMD supplied HEXUS ...') and p. 12 (' ... taken into account[.] The graph ...'). I wouldn't normally be so anal as to point such out, but considering the review has such good overall grammar and punctuation, I thought the editor might care to know.

These launches are the bane of my working life. AMD dropped this on us just before the launch of the CeBIT trade show - we're out in Germany now - so the premise with this kind of review is to give you, the readers, a well-balanced, informative and in-depth editorial evaluation in the face of stringent time pressures. And I also need to clean my monitor!

Anyway, there are more Radeon HD 7800-series goodies coming up... including an examination of the progression made by AMD when moving from Radeon HD 5850 to HD 6850 to HD 7850, evaluated with the GPUs running at the same frequencies.

[Brewster0101]

now - is it me or is there a huge hole in AMD prices? between the 7770 @ £120 and the 7850@ £190
CF

Good review, and well written too.

I'm very tempted to order two HD 7850s when they become available, but my wallet tells me to wait for Kepler in hope of slightly lower prices. If the HD 7850 were £165, it'd be irresistible. The currently proposed price, £185, puts it right at the top end of what's acceptable to many mainstream buyers (from my perspective, at least).

Prices will drop very quickly when Nvidia bring out their new 2012 models. AMD are milking the price for now - which makes business sense. I think the 7850 will drop down to £150 price within a 3 - 4 months, pending Nvidia's release dates and models.

[HalloweenJack]

bit tech`s own 6850 review priced it at £150 , and i do think APPLE are a reason for these prices - huge contracts for 28nm production(they wanted TSMC to go apple exclusive)

[Tarinder]

Assuming that AMD doesn't change the MSRP in the next two weeks, which is unlikley, I'd take my hat off and eat it if add-in partners and retailers released HD 7850s at £150.

£175 is the lowest it'll go, IMHO, until mainstream Kepler strikes.

[HalloweenJack]

aye they want as much as they can whilst `top dog` before prices head south

[kalniel]

These launches are the bane of my working life. AMD dropped this on us just before the launch of the CeBIT trade show - we're out in Germany now

You love it really

[ZSTom]

These launches are the bane of my working life. AMD dropped this on us just before the launch of the CeBIT trade show - we're out in Germany now - so the premise with this kind of review is to give you, the readers, a well-balanced, informative and in-depth editorial evaluation in the face of stringent time pressures. And I also need to clean my monitor!

Anyway, there are more Radeon HD 7800-series goodies coming up... including an examination of the progression made by AMD when moving from Radeon HD 5850 to HD 6850 to HD 7850, evaluated with the GPUs running at the same frequencies.

If I weren't impressed with the article I would have never bothered mentioning. Doing a great job! Not to sound too dull (too late) but the level of grammar, punctuation and general journalism here at Hexus is refreshingly high. Most sites... well, anyway...

Looking forward to future articles/reviews! In regards to the HD 7850, I'll likely be favouring Sapphire for my purchase, or possibly MSI's Twin Frozr III, so will be especially interested anything comes up about those.

Prices will drop very quickly when Nvidia bring out their new 2012 models. AMD are milking the price for now - which makes business sense. I think the 7850 will drop down to £150 price within a 3 - 4 months, pending Nvidia's release dates and models.

£150 would make the 7850 a very popular card, I'm sure! I just don't think I can wait 3–4 months... I've been chomping at the bit just waiting for the March release! I guess at £185 it still offers a pretty good deal over the 6950... Considering the price of 77xx cards I was half expecting the 7850 to be £200 or more.

[Jimbo75]

These launches are the bane of my working life. AMD dropped this on us just before the launch of the CeBIT trade show - we're out in Germany now - so the premise with this kind of review is to give you, the readers, a well-balanced, informative and in-depth editorial evaluation in the face of stringent time pressures. And I also need to clean my monitor!

Anyway, there are more Radeon HD 7800-series goodies coming up... including an examination of the progression made by AMD when moving from Radeon HD 5850 to HD 6850 to HD 7850, evaluated with the GPUs running at the same frequencies.

Looking forward to that one. Rumour has it you might well have another gpu of the green variety dropped on you soon as well...

[Fraz]

Feeling pretty underwhelmed, especially after looking at the Anandtech review that includes numbers for a 5870. I've got a 5870 that's overclocked by about 10%, and despite being a card that's two and half years old, I'm yet to see anything that's really worth upgrading to. AMD are asking similar (possibly more? Can't remember) money to what I paid ~2 years ago for something that is only marginally better in most cases.

[Jimbo75]

Feeling pretty underwhelmed, especially after looking at the Anandtech review that includes numbers for a 5870. I've got a 5870 that's overclocked by about 10%, and despite being a card that's two and half years old, I'm yet to see anything that's really worth upgrading to. AMD are asking similar (possibly more? Can't remember) money to what I paid ~2 years ago for something that is only marginally better in most cases.

If you bought a 5870 new you probably paid £300 for it at best, and that was only if you got it in the first 2 weeks otherwise it was probably £330 at best. The 7870 is actually very good value at £260 but we've been spoiled by an ongoing price war between AMD and Nvidia.

The 7850 too is a lot faster and a bit cheaper than the 5850 was. I paid £210 for my 5850 and that was before the price rose to ~£240 after 2 weeks.

I think these are priced pretty fairly - don't forget they both have double the VRAM as well. I'd have given them 4 stars, I mean come on the gtx 580 got 4 stars http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphi...review/?page=2 while costing £400.

There really has been a lot made about AMD's prices and I feel that they are justified in the cases of Tahiti and CV, but not for Pitcairn.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The HD7850 1GB is the fastest card for between £150 to £200 and makes the HD6950 1GB and 2GB look redundant now. The HD7870 1GB is somewhat more expensive than I expected but still makes the HD6970 2GB and GTX570 look redundant too.

I still don't understand why the HD7850 2GB is getting only 3.5/5 from Hexus, with a value score which is the same as a GTX560TI?? Not only is it faster,but consumes less power and has 2GB of VRAM. Why not rate both the HD7850 2GB and HD7870 2GB separately?