AMD Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition & Radeon HD 7850 Review: Rounding Out Southern Islands
by Ryan Smith on March 5, 2012 12:01 AM ESTThe Test
For the Radeon HD 7800 series launch AMD provided an early version of Catalyst 12.3, version number 8.95.5-120224a. Along with adding support for the 7800 series this adds support for MLAA 2.0 and LOD biasing for DX10+ SSAA. Game performance is largely unchanged, although we did see an increase in SmallLuxGPU performance across Cayman and Southern Islands.
Unfortunately these drivers still do not enable support for the Video Codec Engine (VCE), AMD’s fixed function H.264 encoder. At this point VCE has been absent for over 2 months into what’s likely a 12 month lifecycle for the 7900 series, which is moving the feature into the chronically late territory. AMD is telling us they’ll have more news on VCE later this month, but it’s still not clear when we’ll actually be able to use it.
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-3960X @ 4.3GHz |
| Motherboard: | EVGA X79 SLI |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 9.2.3.1022 |
| Power Supply: | Antec True Power Quattro 1200 |
| Hard Disk: | Samsung 470 (256GB) |
| Memory: | G.Skill Ripjaws DDR3-1867 4 x 4GB (8-10-9-26) |
| Case: | Thermaltake Spedo Advance |
| Video Cards: |
AMD Radeon HD 7950 AMD Radeon HD 7870 AMD Radeon HD 7850 AMD Radeon HD 7770 AMD Radeon HD 7750 AMD Radeon HD 6970 AMD Radeon HD 6950 AMD Radeon HD 6870 AMD Radeon HD 6850 AMD Radeon HD 5870 AMD Radeon HD 4870 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 |
| Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA ForceWare 295.73 AMD Catalyst Beta 8.932.2 AMD Catalyst Beta 8.95.5 |
| OS: | Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit |
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medi01 - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
AMD released cards that are better than competitors in all areas: pricing, power consumption, performance, yet he found a way to be "dissapointed"You can't reason with fanboi.
Kiste - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
You're the one who seems obsessed with which company releases the "better cards".I'm merely commenting on the 78xx line of cards, which I find underwhelming in terms of price/performance ration - and I am not alone wiht this if you bothered reading the other comments here.
So who's the fanboy?
formulav8 - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
You are. Your annoying as well.chizow - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
Try laying off the personal attacks and focus on the arguments instead.I don't see how anyone can defend the pricing of AMD's 7 series stack in good conscience though, if roles were reversed and Nvidia were the one doing this, EVERYONE would be disappointed too I'm sure.
Kaboose - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
wasn't it everyone who said the 6000 series was too expensive back in october of 2010 and when Nvidia released the 500 series prices would come down a lot, then Nvidia released the 500 series right in between what AMD had and neither company really lowered prices for months. I think we will keep seeing more of that when the 600 series is released. This way BOTH companies profit.chizow - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
Not sure what you're referring to, Nvidia launched GTX 570/580 before AMD launched the 6-series.And no Nvidia didn't raise prices on their 470/480 at the time which were at the same price points even though the 500 series extended that lead.
AMD priced the 6000 series accordingly, and I don't recall anyone complaining other than being disappointed it didn't offer more performance.
SlyNine - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
5870 user here. What everyone defending the 7xxx node change doesn't consider that most of us dissopointed in SI are compairing it to other fab shrinks.Iketh - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
You're on nvidia's payroll. Get off this site.sseemaku - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
Are engineers in nvidia thinking in the same way and not releasing their cards! Good for AMD.medi01 - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
7850 outperforms 570 while costing 80$ less.nFanboi much?