AMD Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition & Radeon HD 7850 Review: Rounding Out Southern Islands
by Ryan Smith on March 5, 2012 12:01 AM ESTDiRT 3
For racing games our racer of choice continues to be DiRT, which is now in its 3rd iteration. Codemasters uses the same EGO engine between its DiRT, F1, and GRID series, so the performance of EGO has been relevant for a number of racing games over the years.
DiRT3 is a game that greatly benefitted from AMD’s GCN architecture, rocketing the 7900 series cards to the top of our charts and giving a similar boost to the 7800 series. Compared to the 6970 the 7870 is an incredible 30% faster at 1920, an impressive showing when we are generally only expecting the 7870 to match the 6970’s performance. The 7850 brings us back down to earth however, with a much more modest 10% lead.
Meanwhile compared to NVIDIA’s cards, the 7800 series lead isn’t nearly as large here as NVIDIA has historically done well at DiRT 3. The 7870 enjoys a 9% lead over the GTX 570 here, while the 7850 is virtually tied with the GTX 560 Ti.
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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