AMD Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition & Radeon HD 7850 Review: Rounding Out Southern Islands
by Ryan Smith on March 5, 2012 12:01 AM ESTCrysis: Warhead
Kicking things off as always is Crysis: Warhead. It’s no longer the toughest game in our benchmark suite, but it’s still a technically complex game that has proven to be a very consistent benchmark. Thus even four years since the release of the original Crysis, “but can it run Crysis?” is still an important question, and the answer continues to be “no.” While we’re closer than ever, full Enthusiast settings at a 60fps is still beyond the grasp of a single-GPU card.
As we’ll see throughout today’s benchmarks, Crysis ends up being a good proxy for the 7800 series’ performance, especially compared to the outgoing 6900 series. Ahead of the Southern Islands launch there was some doubt that AMD could deliver 6900 series performance with the 7800 series, and this doubt increased after the 7700 series underperformed the 6800 series. Results like what we're seeing with Crysis should make it clear that the 7800 series is more than a competitor for the 6900 series, with both the 7870 and 7850 equaling or beating the 6970 and 6950 respectively in almost all tests.
Overall at 1920x1200 the 7870 gets 39.9fps, which isn’t quite enough to smoothly handle enthusiast quality and 4x MSAA. Meanwhile the 7850 is farther down the line at 35.4fps; both cards would need Crysis’s settings turned down to reach 60fps here. Compared to the 7950 the 7870 trails it by 17%, giving AMD’s next card up a fairly wide lead in this game.
Meanwhile compared to NVIDIA’s lineup the 7800 series does quite well here, reflecting the fact that the 7800 series doesn’t have a true equal in NVIDIA’s existing lineup. At 1920 the 7870 leads the GTX 570 by 12% and is within spitting distance of the GTX 580, while the 7850 is virtually tied with the more expensive GTX 570 while it leads the GTX 560 Ti by 19%. Elsewhere at 2560 the 7870 has a similar lead, while the 7850 has a 41% lead on the GTX 560 Ti; while 2560 is not the ideal resolution for either card, it’s something to keep in mind when we begin discussing the impacts of the 7800’s 2GB of RAM.
When it comes to minimum framerates in Crysis the relative rankings are nearly identical. The 7800 series extends their lead over the 6900 series by a slight degree, while the lead over NVIDIA’s cards shrinks slightly.
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mak360 - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
Enjoy, now go and buyImSpartacus - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
Yeah, I'm trying to figure out if a 7850 could go in an Alienware X51. It looks like it uses a 6 pin power connector and puts out 150W of heat.While we would lose Optimus, would it work?
taltamir - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
optimus is laptops only. You do not have optimus with your desktop.ImSpartacus - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
The X51 has desktop Optimus."The icing on the graphics cake is that the X51 is the first instance of desktop Optimus we've seen. That's right: you can actually plug your monitor into the IGP's HDMI port and the tower will power down the GPU when it's not in use. This implementation functions just like the notebook version does, and it's a welcome addition."
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5543/alienware-x51-t...
In reality, if I owned an X51, I would wait so I could shove the biggest 150W Kepler GPU in there for some real gaming.
But I'm sure the X51 will be updated for Kepler and Ivy Bridge, so now wouldn't be the best time to get an X51.
Waiting games are lame...
scook9 - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
Wrong. Read a review.....The bigger issue will be the orientation of the PCIe Power Connector I expect. I have a tightly spaced HTPC that currently uses a GTX 570 HD from EVGA because it was the best card I could fit in the Antec Fusion enclosure. If the PCIe power plugs were facing out the side of the card and not the back I would have not been able to use it. I expect the same consideration will apply to the even smaller X51kungfujedis - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
he does. x51 is a desktop with optimus.http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/3/2768359/alienware...
Samus - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
EA really screwed AMD over with Battlefield 3. There's basically no reason to consider a Radeon card if you plan on heavily playing BF3, especially since most other games like Skyrim, Star Wars, Rage, etc, all run excellent on any $200+ card, with anything $300+ being simply overkill.The obvious best card for Battlefield 3 is a Geforce GTX 560 TI 448 Cores for $250-$280, basically identical in performance to the GTX570 in BF3. Even those on a budget would be better served with a low-end GTX560 series card unless you run resolutions above 1920x1200.
If I were AMD, I'd concentrate on increasing Battlefield 3 performance with driver tweaks, because it's obvious their architecture is superior to nVidia's, but these 'exclusive' titles are tainted.
kn00tcn - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
screwed how? only the 7850 is slightly lagging behind, & historically BC2 was consistently a little faster on nvalso BF3 has a large consistent boost since feb14 drivers (there was another boost sometime in december, benchmark3d should have the info for both)
chizow - Tuesday, March 6, 2012 - link
@ SamusBF3 isn't an Nvidia "exclusive", they made sure to remain vendor agnostic and participate in both IHV's vendor programs. No pointing the finger and crying foul on this game, it just runs better on Nvidia hardware but I do agree it should be running better than it does on this new gen of AMD hardware.
http://www.amd4u.com/freebattlefield3/
http://sites.amd.com/us/game/games/Pages/battlefie...
CeriseCogburn - Monday, March 26, 2012 - link
In the reviews here SHOGUN 2 total war is said to be the very hardest on hardware, and Nvidia wins that - all the way to the top.--
So on the most difficult game, Nvidia wins.
Certainly other factors are at play on these amd favored games like C1 and M2033 and other amd optimized games.
--
Once again, on the MOST DIFFICULT to render Nvidia has won.