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Hardware MSI Radeon HD 7850 1GB review

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by brumgrunt, 5 Nov 2012.

  1. brumgrunt

    brumgrunt What's a Dremel?

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  2. David

    David μoʍ ɼouმ qᴉq λon ƨbԍuq ϝʁλᴉuმ ϝo ʁԍɑq ϝμᴉƨ

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    It does look like a proper bargain - although I expected it to run into memory problems, and get shaded by the 2GB model, even at 1920x1080.

    What is even more surprising is the 15% performance gain from overclocking!
     
  3. TheDodoKiller

    TheDodoKiller Minimodder

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    Stonking value.

    I think for a while, there was a general lack of decent mid range cards, and the 650 & 650ti didn't exactly help.

    What's Nvidia going to do now? 650ti 888? Goodness knows.

    Mind you, the amount of staff being laid off at AMD isn't something to be proud of. Hopefully they can pick it back up with Piledriver and the 8XXX Series.

    (I do think AM3+ needs to be gone, though. It's a limiting factor)
     
  4. yanglu

    yanglu Hmm...

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    Why are you testing with Catalyst 12.8???

    Using Catalyst 12.11 would give another 10% boost in performance...
     
  5. Shirty

    Shirty W*nker! Super Moderator

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    Hmm. Do I sell the 670 on the marketplace and buy this, using the proceeds for a new pair of lenses of my Oakleys, or do I sit tight knowing the 670 will probably buy me another year of gaming after the 7850 is no longer good enough?
     
  6. David

    David μoʍ ɼouმ qᴉq λon ƨbԍuq ϝʁλᴉuმ ϝo ʁԍɑq ϝμᴉƨ

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    I reckon your 670 will for last years at 19x10.
     
  7. Shirty

    Shirty W*nker! Super Moderator

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    I reckon it'll still be playing most things on high in 2015 :D

    The 7850 will probably start to get left behind in the next 12-18 months.

    Problem is that all I'm playing at the moment is Torchlight 2, so the 670 feels a bit wasted...
     
  8. Bloodburgers

    Bloodburgers Minimodder

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    Really good timing on the review have been weighing up a replacement for my HD4870 went to go play Arkham city on full on my 40" and it started to show its age.

    Although if you could pick up a ASUS RADEON HD 7870 2GB DIRECTCU II for £180 what would be the best option?
     
  9. Baz

    Baz I work for Corsair

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    Because re-testing 20 graphics cards everytime Nvidia and AMD get into a driver argument would mean we'd never stop benchmarking GPUs. We think it's more useful to see the whole market in our graphs, not just 2 or 3 comparable cards.
     
  10. Baz

    Baz I work for Corsair

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    Sit on the 670; great card, will age very well.
     
  11. Shirty

    Shirty W*nker! Super Moderator

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    :thumb: I thought that would be the general consensus. Problem is I'm not ageing very well, so good sunglasses are a must :p
     
  12. Hustler

    Hustler Minimodder

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    The BF3 results surprise me, I've seen benchmarks with Vram usage at over 1.5Gb on the settings used in your tests.
     
  13. Kodongo

    Kodongo What's a Dremel?

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    I don't actually have this exact card, I have the MSi 7850 2GB Power Edition. For that card, I found that I was initially unable to overvolt at all either.

    The resolution is to download MSi Afterburner 2.2.1 - emphasis on the version - and keep a copy of the file 'atipdlxx.dll'. Then once you update Afterburner to the latest version, just drop the 'atipdlxx.dll' copy in the install folder. After a reboot, you should be able to overvolt all the way 1300mV and overclock past 1050MHz assuming you have enabled the unofficial overclocking.

    I would be really interested to see if MSi has actually locked this card from overvolting or whether the steps above would unlock overvoltage. If this card could get to 1250MHz with a slight voltage bump, its value becomes that much greater.

    With regards to the 1GB not being limiting, I have noticed when games like Crysis 2 at 1080p with the second highest settings and 4xAA, my card ends up using 1.9GB of memory. Even a relatively simple game like F1 2012 maxed out at 1080p uses 950MB. Maybe there is some kind of dynamic memory management whereby the games loads more things into graphics memory only if it's available.
     
  14. Baz

    Baz I work for Corsair

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    I think it's similar to having 4GB vs 8GB of DDR3 system memory. If it's there, the system will use it, but when it's not allowances are made to negate any tangible drop in performance. We test Crysis 2 at the ultra settings with high-res textures and DX11, so if it's ever going to get limited, those would be the settings to do so.
     
  15. lepre

    lepre Minimodder

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    I ordered this card yesterday evening. The review was somehow relieving for the choice. :)
     
  16. rollo

    rollo Modder

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    As i and others have said before at 1920x1080 1gb 2gb frame buffer will never be the limit to your gpus performance it will just be sheer grunt or lack of as the case maybe.

    Where the 2gb frame buffer would help is above that rez but this card will never run those resolutions so the extra 1gb does crap all, The tests I have run and others on this forum proved you got the same fps with 2gb or 4gb when we were comparing the 680s to each other. Till you go into multimonitor resolutions then things change.
     
  17. MrJay

    MrJay You are always where you want to be

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    Some comparison against the 6850 would be nice : )
     
  18. David

    David μoʍ ɼouმ qᴉq λon ƨbԍuq ϝʁλᴉuმ ϝo ʁԍɑq ϝμᴉƨ

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    Well, seeing as there was nothing between the 1GB and 2GB models at 19x10, this should give you a pretty good idea.
     
  19. stupido

    stupido What's a Dremel?

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    +1 to the above...
    because 6850 & 7850 are just generation apart...
     
  20. MrJay

    MrJay You are always where you want to be

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    Cheers for the link, very useful : )

    I only ask because the Sapphire 6850 i have is a cracking card, Just the right amout of power draw for me, however is getting on a bit now.

    So its only logical if im looking for an upgrade in the same 'Package' first place id look would be the next gen verson of that same card (Yes i know its a different process and double the memory).

    Judging buy link

    It gives a marked increse in performance for the same wattage...
     

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