Asus AMD Radeon HD 7850 DirectCUII 2GB
This is the latest AMD enthusiast level GPU to be given the DirectCUII treatment from ASUS
The Southern Islands family comes in three flavours, Tahiti, Pitcairn and Cape Verde and the 7850 is possibly the final version to come out of the Pitcairn mould
Flouting the latest Graphics Core Next (GCN) can this littlest of the enthusiast series keep up with the rest
Specifications
Graphics Engine
AMD Radeon HD 7850
Bus Standard
PCI Express 3.0
Video Memory
GDDR5 2GB
Engine Clock
870 MHz
Memory Clock
4840 MHz ( 1210 MHz GDDR5 )
RAMDAC
400 MHz
Memory Interface
256-bit
Resolution
D-Sub Max Resolution : 2048x1536
DVI Max Resolution : 2560x1600
Interface
D-Sub Output : Yes x 1 (via DVI to D-Sub adaptor x 1)
DVI Output :
HDMI Output : Yes x 1
Display Port : Yes x 2 (Mini DP)
HDCP Support : Yes
Software
ASUS Utilities & Driver
ASUS Features
DirectCU Series
Dimensions
10.2 " x 4.5 " x 1.7 " Inch
The big stuff is the 1024 stream processors, 32 ROPs and 64 texture units on a new 28nm fab
The GPU clock is set to 870MHz which is a mere 10MHz over the reference boards with the memory at 5020/1210MHz on a 256-bit memory bus
And of course there is PCI-E 3.0, which doubles your available bandwidth
Packaging
ASUS have continued with the heroic knight theme on their packaging with the red background for an AMD card
The reverse shows the benefits of the cooler and the output connections available
The back also introduces me to the new overclocking software which I haven’t used as yet
Come on, anything has to better than SmartDoctor, Smart! It only smarts when you rub it, lad
The card is well secured in a foam surround with the accessories box sat on top
Accessories is the bare minimum of a crossfire bridge, DVI/D-Sub adapter, software CD and quick setup manual
The card itself is amazingly light; I think the packaging weighed more than the card
I am so used to the coolers on cards weighing like you could get money off the scrappy for them that it was a pleasant surprise when the brother handed me this
The cooler on this card is so much smaller and lighter than it looks it deceived me, truth is, there’s nothing to the cooler
Compared to the mighty thing that sat on the 6970 that the brother has, this thing is tiny
As you can see the card is quit short, it’s not much longer than the 6770 I tested recently, but the cooler makes up the length
The top card is the 6770
Only one 6 pin PCI-E power connector and the 6 pin extension lead came already fitted to the power socket
As it’s a tight squeeze between the cooler and the socket and you might as well leave it there, unless you like scraping the skin off your fingers
Test setup
Motherboard: MSI Big Bang Marshall PCI-E 2.0
Processor: Intel Core i7-2600K
Graphics card: ASUS HD7850 DirectCUII 2GB
Memory: 16GB 2133 [RipjawsZ] F3-17000CL9Q-16GBZH (4GX4)
HDD: 2 x Western Digital Black WD1602ABKS 160GB in RAID0
Cooling: Swiftech Apogee XT rev. 2 CPU water block
Radiator: Swiftech MCP320QP
Pump: Swiftech MCP355
Power supply: Silverstone SST-ST1000P 1000watt modular PSU
Operating system: Windows 7 64Bit Ultimate
Please note this is a PCI-E 2.0 motherboard and quite possibly you may get better performance from a PCI-E 3.0 setup so this by no means a definitive result in that sense
But if you also have PCI-E 2.0 setup then it should be relevant
Overclocking/GPU Tweak
At last ASUS, about time you gave us a decent overclocking tool for the GPU
Well done. It looks good and it works although it does put me in mind of a 60s jukebox
It is so easy to max out the GPU clock allowance that is given us that it leaves me wandering what it could really do if there was a bit more freedom in the bios
Although I couldn’t max out the memory and there is only voltage tweaking for the GPU in GPU Tweak
There is only a GPU temperature reading in GPU-Z so we don’t know how well the cooler works on the memory or power circuit but throughout the tests the GPU maxed out at 57c~59c whilst idling at 30~34
3DMark Vantage
A reasonable performance I think
The GTX460 results are a reference point in performance as the overclock isn’t that far behind the 7850
The stock result isn’t far behind the 6970 Lightning at stock and the overclock beats it
The overclocked 6970 cards are way ahead of it and I have lost my GTX580 stock results and will run them again later
3DMark 11
A pretty good performance at stock and overclock both beating the 6970 Lightning at stock though the overclocked 6970 again shows it’s superiority
Considering the original price point for these was £200ish I am getting a bit disappointed with the inability to overclock more
Again a decent result against the MSI 6970 at stock but it’s much of the same overclock wise
No GTX580 results for this yet
HWBOT Unigine
The 6970 lightning didn’t do so well on this test with the overclock not even reaching the ASUS 6970 stock result
The GTX460 is a decent performer in this test
The 7850 puts up a good effort but the 6970 overclocks still leave it trailing and the GTX460 overclock is still shadowing it
Skyrim
No overclocks are used here in order to see how it performs out of the box
The Ultra preset is chosen in the games option menu so all the graphics detail is set to high or ultra and the resolution is 1920x1200
A very playable minimum of 35 FPS is a good enough result but the 6970 Lightning is ahead in the gameplay
Conclusion
This is on UK websites at £190~£230 although Aria have a 7850 at £176.87 but they only have one manufacturer available at this time and it looks very much like a reference unit
At the £190~£230 price point these cards are competing with the outgoing 6900 series although they are meant to be a replacement to the outgoing 6800 series
Overclocking the card is as easy as it gets with the new GPU Tweak software but it left me feeling that there was a lot more available if you could only get at it somehow
The GPU Tweak software is a joy to use compared to the cruelty that was SmartDoctor
Easily as good looking as MSI Afterburner and just as easy to use
The cooler also demands a mention as it kept the card cool even when maxed out and was barely audible at all times
Considering how light this is then it does an excellent job,
Unfortunately it’s designed so that it blows the air around your case rather than out the back of it, fortunately though it doesn’t get that hot
Performance 8
Presentation 9
Price 7
If this was priced at £170~190 then I’d give it silver
If you also added a bit more tweaking for a better overclock I’d give it gold
As we can’t have our pie and eat it then it gets a bronze from me
This is the latest AMD enthusiast level GPU to be given the DirectCUII treatment from ASUS
The Southern Islands family comes in three flavours, Tahiti, Pitcairn and Cape Verde and the 7850 is possibly the final version to come out of the Pitcairn mould
Flouting the latest Graphics Core Next (GCN) can this littlest of the enthusiast series keep up with the rest
Specifications
Graphics Engine
AMD Radeon HD 7850
Bus Standard
PCI Express 3.0
Video Memory
GDDR5 2GB
Engine Clock
870 MHz
Memory Clock
4840 MHz ( 1210 MHz GDDR5 )
RAMDAC
400 MHz
Memory Interface
256-bit
Resolution
D-Sub Max Resolution : 2048x1536
DVI Max Resolution : 2560x1600
Interface
D-Sub Output : Yes x 1 (via DVI to D-Sub adaptor x 1)
DVI Output :
HDMI Output : Yes x 1
Display Port : Yes x 2 (Mini DP)
HDCP Support : Yes
Software
ASUS Utilities & Driver
ASUS Features
DirectCU Series
Dimensions
10.2 " x 4.5 " x 1.7 " Inch
The big stuff is the 1024 stream processors, 32 ROPs and 64 texture units on a new 28nm fab
The GPU clock is set to 870MHz which is a mere 10MHz over the reference boards with the memory at 5020/1210MHz on a 256-bit memory bus
And of course there is PCI-E 3.0, which doubles your available bandwidth
Packaging
ASUS have continued with the heroic knight theme on their packaging with the red background for an AMD card
The reverse shows the benefits of the cooler and the output connections available
The back also introduces me to the new overclocking software which I haven’t used as yet
Come on, anything has to better than SmartDoctor, Smart! It only smarts when you rub it, lad
The card is well secured in a foam surround with the accessories box sat on top
Accessories is the bare minimum of a crossfire bridge, DVI/D-Sub adapter, software CD and quick setup manual
The card itself is amazingly light; I think the packaging weighed more than the card
I am so used to the coolers on cards weighing like you could get money off the scrappy for them that it was a pleasant surprise when the brother handed me this
The cooler on this card is so much smaller and lighter than it looks it deceived me, truth is, there’s nothing to the cooler
Compared to the mighty thing that sat on the 6970 that the brother has, this thing is tiny
As you can see the card is quit short, it’s not much longer than the 6770 I tested recently, but the cooler makes up the length
The top card is the 6770
Only one 6 pin PCI-E power connector and the 6 pin extension lead came already fitted to the power socket
As it’s a tight squeeze between the cooler and the socket and you might as well leave it there, unless you like scraping the skin off your fingers
Test setup
Motherboard: MSI Big Bang Marshall PCI-E 2.0
Processor: Intel Core i7-2600K
Graphics card: ASUS HD7850 DirectCUII 2GB
Memory: 16GB 2133 [RipjawsZ] F3-17000CL9Q-16GBZH (4GX4)
HDD: 2 x Western Digital Black WD1602ABKS 160GB in RAID0
Cooling: Swiftech Apogee XT rev. 2 CPU water block
Radiator: Swiftech MCP320QP
Pump: Swiftech MCP355
Power supply: Silverstone SST-ST1000P 1000watt modular PSU
Operating system: Windows 7 64Bit Ultimate
Please note this is a PCI-E 2.0 motherboard and quite possibly you may get better performance from a PCI-E 3.0 setup so this by no means a definitive result in that sense
But if you also have PCI-E 2.0 setup then it should be relevant
Overclocking/GPU Tweak
At last ASUS, about time you gave us a decent overclocking tool for the GPU
Well done. It looks good and it works although it does put me in mind of a 60s jukebox
It is so easy to max out the GPU clock allowance that is given us that it leaves me wandering what it could really do if there was a bit more freedom in the bios
Although I couldn’t max out the memory and there is only voltage tweaking for the GPU in GPU Tweak
There is only a GPU temperature reading in GPU-Z so we don’t know how well the cooler works on the memory or power circuit but throughout the tests the GPU maxed out at 57c~59c whilst idling at 30~34
3DMark Vantage
A reasonable performance I think
The GTX460 results are a reference point in performance as the overclock isn’t that far behind the 7850
The stock result isn’t far behind the 6970 Lightning at stock and the overclock beats it
The overclocked 6970 cards are way ahead of it and I have lost my GTX580 stock results and will run them again later
3DMark 11
A pretty good performance at stock and overclock both beating the 6970 Lightning at stock though the overclocked 6970 again shows it’s superiority
Considering the original price point for these was £200ish I am getting a bit disappointed with the inability to overclock more
Again a decent result against the MSI 6970 at stock but it’s much of the same overclock wise
No GTX580 results for this yet
HWBOT Unigine
The 6970 lightning didn’t do so well on this test with the overclock not even reaching the ASUS 6970 stock result
The GTX460 is a decent performer in this test
The 7850 puts up a good effort but the 6970 overclocks still leave it trailing and the GTX460 overclock is still shadowing it
Skyrim
No overclocks are used here in order to see how it performs out of the box
The Ultra preset is chosen in the games option menu so all the graphics detail is set to high or ultra and the resolution is 1920x1200
A very playable minimum of 35 FPS is a good enough result but the 6970 Lightning is ahead in the gameplay
Conclusion
This is on UK websites at £190~£230 although Aria have a 7850 at £176.87 but they only have one manufacturer available at this time and it looks very much like a reference unit
At the £190~£230 price point these cards are competing with the outgoing 6900 series although they are meant to be a replacement to the outgoing 6800 series
Overclocking the card is as easy as it gets with the new GPU Tweak software but it left me feeling that there was a lot more available if you could only get at it somehow
The GPU Tweak software is a joy to use compared to the cruelty that was SmartDoctor
Easily as good looking as MSI Afterburner and just as easy to use
The cooler also demands a mention as it kept the card cool even when maxed out and was barely audible at all times
Considering how light this is then it does an excellent job,
Unfortunately it’s designed so that it blows the air around your case rather than out the back of it, fortunately though it doesn’t get that hot
Performance 8
Presentation 9
Price 7
If this was priced at £170~190 then I’d give it silver
If you also added a bit more tweaking for a better overclock I’d give it gold
As we can’t have our pie and eat it then it gets a bronze from me
