AMD Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition & Radeon HD 7850 Review: Rounding Out Southern Islands
by Ryan Smith on March 5, 2012 12:01 AM ESTStarcraft II
Our next game is Starcraft II, Blizzard’s 2010 RTS megahit. Much like Portal 2 it’s a DX9 game designed to run on a wide range of hardware so performance is quite peppy with most high-end cards, but it can still challenge a GPU when it needs to.
Once again the 7870 and 7850 place quite close to each other, particularly at 1920. Here the gap between the two is only 6%, the smallest lead the 7870 will ever have over the 7850. The good news is that this means the 7850 ties the GTX 570, however the bad news is that it means the 7870 doesn’t get much farther ahead. The 7800 series ends up looking quite good compared to the 6900 series though, with leads in the 10-15% range,
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
173 Comments
View All Comments
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?