AMD Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition & Radeon HD 7850 Review: Rounding Out Southern Islands
by Ryan Smith on March 5, 2012 12:01 AM ESTTotal War: Shogun 2
Total War: Shogun 2 is the latest installment of the long-running Total War series of turn based strategy games, and alongside Civilization V is notable for just how many units it can put on a screen at once. As it also turns out, it’s the single most punishing game in our benchmark suite (on higher end hardware at least).
Shogun 2 ends up being an interesting benchmark for the 7800 series today for a number of different reasons. First and foremost of course is a strong performance lead for the 7800 compared to both the 6900 series and NVIDIA’s lineup. The 7870 leads the GTX 570 by 26%, and even the GTX 580 is over 10% slower. At the same time the 7850 ties the GTX 570, while taking a smaller 14% lead over the GTX 560 Ti.
More importantly however, it’s the first test in our suite where even the 1.25GB of VRAM on the GTX 570 isn’t enough. One of AMD’s planks for marketing the 7800 series will be that they have 2GB of VRAM versus 1.25GB on the GTX 570 or 1GB on the GTX 560 Ti, and this is a showcase of that difference. Shogun 2 knows how much VRAM it needs for any given setting configuration and won’t run on cards that don’t meet the requirements – as a result the GTX 570 and GTX 560 Ti can’t even compete at 2560. This is admittedly a higher resolution than most of the cards were designed for, but it showcases the importance of moving beyond 1GB of VRAM going forward. Between Shogun, BF3, and Skyrim, we’re seeing modern games that need 1.5GB of VRAM or more to fully spread their wings.
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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.