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 Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Prior to the launch of our new benchmark suite, we wanted to include The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which is easily the most popular RPG of 2011. However as any Skyrim player can tell you, Skyrim’s performance is CPU-bound to a ridiculous degree. With the release of the 1.4 patch and the high resolution texture pack this has finally been relieved to the point where GPUs once again matter, particularly when we’re working with high resolutions and less than high-end GPUs. As such, we're now including it in our test suite.
At 1920 we seem to be more CPU limited than GPU limited, but at 2560 we do see some greater differentiation between all of our video cards. Here the 7870 can edge out even the GTX 580, and the 7850 beats out even the 6970. What’s interesting to see is where the 1GB cards collapse due to the use of high resolution textures – the GTX 560 Ti collapses after just 1680, and the GTX 570 collapses beyond 1920. Going forward we expect more games to be like Skyrim, which will make additional VRAM all the more important.
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Kaboose - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
7870, beats GTX 570 and is about even with the GTX 580, uses 150watts less power at load, is quieter, is cooler, and has idle power draw > 23watts less. How is this a disappointment? The only disappointment i see is the price which is the result of no competition from Nvidia.Kiste - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
A new generation of GPUs used to give us a whole hell of a lot more performance at any given price point. The current AMD stuff does not and that is a disappointment.Case in point: you even have to talk these things up by basically saying "oh, well, at least they draw less power".
Kaboose - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
dropping power consumption by over 50% is something of a gimmick? Dropping load temps by 14c compared to the GTX 570 is not significant? 14c is a fairly large degree of deference, this gives higher room for overclocking as well as a cooler system overall. When Nvidia releases Kepler and we have both companies with 28nm then we can (hopefully) see some competition in price. In my opinion the 7870 at $325 would be a great card right now. Once Kepler is out $285-300 I think would be nice. I agree it is over priced right now however.If Nvidia releases Kepler and gives us a LOT more performance over last generation then I will concede that the 7xxx series is a failure. However from the way AMD is behaving it doesn't appear Kepler is going to do much in terms of raw performance either.
Kiste - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
While reducing power consumption might not be a gimmick, it is the result of the new process node and thus in itself not particularly impressive, especially when you more or less keep the performance the same as with the previous generation.I'm still not impressed, sorry. Price/performance plain and simply sucks ass with these cards, barely beating the stuff that's on the market right now in that regard.
And even with the high-end SI cards there's barely much of a performance boost compared to what's already been on the market for months.
Sure, less power draw is nice. I won't complain about it but if a brand new generation of GPUs comes out and I am not even one little bit compelled to upgrade from my aging, heavily overclocked GTX570, then something is cleary wrong here.
Exodite - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
We'll just have to wait and see what Nvidia provides when they finally decide to put competition on the market, won't we?I'd happily agree to finding the 7900-series not as high-performing as I'd like, and the 7700-series too expensive.
From the reviews I've read so far the 7800-series, the 7850 especially, is pretty much the perfect card ATM.
Low power, low noise, cool, 2GB VRAM and runs between a 560 Ti and 570 in performance.
It's definitely the card I'd recommend to anyone at this point, especially given the fact that we'll see better coolers than AMDs atrocities once we get release versions.
Iketh - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
You must live in a cold climate. You're happy with a heavily overclocked 570?? I live in FL, and that card increases my power bill $30-$70 each month over my 6870 during 3 of the 4 seasons, and I'm talking from experience. Do you have any idea how hard an A/C has to work in a small 2 bedroom house to counter the blast of heat from an overclocked gaming rig??If you live in a hot climate, test it for yourself.
You don't compare just the power draw of the cards themselves....
Kiste - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
I'm not quite sure if you're actually expecting a serious answer to that kind of hyperbolic drivel.Jamahl - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
You really don't get it do you? These cards REALLY DO heat up rooms. Where do you think the heat goes? Ever heard of the law of conservation of energy?londiste - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
oh damn, i need to get two of those, maybe they'll reduce my heating bill at winter :)Kiste - Monday, March 5, 2012 - link
Spelling "really do" in capital letter doesn't make it any more less ridiculous a statement.My whole PC (GPU, OCed CPU, 4 HDDS) draws slightly more than 300W under typical gaming loads. You can't "heat up a room" with that, much less with just the GPU.