Club3D Radeon HD 7850 Royal Queen review

Final Words & Conclusion

For roughly 200 EUR Club3D brings a fun card to the mainstream market with the Royal Queen model. Admittedly, it's not the most aesthetically pleasing product to look at though, the cooler looks a little cheap TBH and I just don't like red PCBs. Cooling wise it however copes with heat and noise levels just fine. Cooler performance however remains close to the reference cooler when it comes to noise and cooling performance.

A bit of a missed opportunity is the fact that this card didn't come even 1 MHz clock faster then reference. It makes this card a little dull and run of the mill really. In all fairness, there is a Royal King edition of the card as well. Priced at 230 EUR that one comes factory overclocked a little at 910 MHz. But for cards that can do 1050~1100 MHz easily you just expect a little bit more bite.

Okay back to that cooler, so while aesthetically the cooler looks do not appeal to me, it certainly does work good enough. During gaming that means the GPU will stay around or under 65 Degrees C and that is combined with normal noise levels.

The retail price for this product is roughly 200 EUR and that we think is a very fair amount of money for what you get offered. Why is this card cheaper you might wonder ? Well it's the 1GB memory. The reference models come with 2GB and it shaves off another 20~25 EUR.

For that money you still get to play your PC games at 1920x1080/1200 pretty darn well.  Just set your image quality preference and the cards will push very nice framerates. If we look at the RTS genre with Anno 2070 at 1920x1200, we get a good 53 FPS on average with the product. That game is locked in at the very best image quality settings with 4x AA enabled.

Battlefield 3 then, here's where we enabled that near silly Ultra quality settings mode and 4x AA. Now the R7850 is a little on the edge here with roughly 33 FPS on average. With our IQ settings and chosen level these are downright respectable numbers compared to other products in the same price range. If you need a little more performance, you can always disable AA.

Overclocking then, as you have noticed from the reference article and now this review, the 7850 cards are tweaking gems, overclocking towards 1 GHz is by itself not an issue. Unfortunately the CCC BIOS limitations are pretty restricted towards 1050 MHz and there is no support for voltage tweaking either.

Concluding then. The Club3D Radeon HD 7850 Royal Queen edition graphics card works pretty nicely. The 1GB framebuffer doesn't seem to be an issue if you game up-to 1920x1200, however with modern and upcoming games that 1 GB framebuffer  could be a future hindrance, and we definitely do recommend you a 2GB model for merely a 20 EUR price premium.

I understand this is subjective, built the card does not have the best looks, that is the one remark I need to make. If you are not bothered by that then I find the 7850 Royal Queen edition to be a pretty okay product really. The overall package is normal in it's key factors from noise to heat towards performance and features like monitor connectors.

The product carries 1GB  graphics memory, remember that alongside the reference clock frequency but for anyone with a monitor up-to 1920x1080 it offers 'okay enough' performance. Priced at 200 EUR we feel it's a fair deal we can recommend, Club3D also throws in two game coupons for you, Dirt Showdown and Sonic Generations. That adds to the overall value, as such the product definitely is recommended if it suits your budget and needs.

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