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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Ryan Smith - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
Whoops, flipped a number. Thanks!Dark_Archonis - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
Good to see AMD providing tough competition for Nvidia.Now, when do we see Kepler? Nvidia has been taking their sweet ass time with Kepler, it's frustrating. Fermi overall is a frustrating architecture, in that it's only fast in mid-high and high-end specifications. In mid-range and low-end cards Fermi sucks, when compared to equivalent AMD cards.
Well AT, how long do we have to wait for Kepler? I hope Kepler brings a big performance boost across the board for Nvidia. Intel will only keep improving their integrated graphics, so Nvidia's low and mid-range graphics offerings need to be MUCH better than they currently are, to be worth buying in the future. This is especially true in the laptop market.
Radnor - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
Really for the exception of 7750 witch has a really low power draw, my i will stick with my 4850 CF for now. No reason for upgrade. I mean no new demanding games and 7xxxx ati cards are just expensive.Death666Angel - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
"Once again the 7970 and 7950 place quite close to each other, particularly at 1920. "I think you mean 7870 and 7950? :-)
tech6 - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
For those waiting for nVidea to come to the rescue with an amazing next generation product, I would urge you not to get your hopes up. Nvidea sees their future in the mobile space creating Tegra APUs and mobile graphics and this is where they are spending their R&D budget. The desktop graphics market is simply not growing much anymore.DeViLzzz - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
some people care about Physx so we have to wait on Nvidia lolA5 - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
Why? There's like 2 games that use it.CeriseCogburn - Thursday, March 8, 2012 - link
There's actually like 2 hundred, but keep drinking the radeonaide.SpaceRanger - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
The lacking of WHQL Drivers has me shaking my head. Come on AMD. It's been 3 months and you STILL can't get a WHQL driver out for the 7xxx series!
DeViLzzz - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
if you already have a 560 Ti I guess you hope for another price drop on the cards so you can SLI themif you can get your hands on an affordable used 6970 or a new Power Color 2 GB 6950 and flash it to a 6970 then do so