Introduction
One of the products from AMD that offers really good value for money we feel is the Radeon HD 7800 series, the AMD Radeon HD 7850 and 7870. AMD's partners are very savvy to release graphics cards based on these cute products as they perform well for the money, quite well actually.
For those that missed it or need a little extra information, two graphics cards have been released in the 7800 series, Pitcairn XT (GPU codename) is the AMD Radeon HD HD7870 - it comes with 20 Compute Units carrying 1280 Stream Processors, 80 texture units and 32 ROPs. The AMD reference core and memory frequencies clock in at an impressive 1000 MHz on the GPU and 1200MHz (4800MHz effective GDDR5) on the memory, this product is equipped with 2GB memory running over a 256-bit memory interface. AMD brands this product the "One GHz Edition" due to the reference clock frequency. This means that AMD's partners can release products clocked even higher.
Pitcairn Pro is the GPU that empowers the Radeon HD 7850, it features 16 Compute Units, 1024 Stream (shader) Processors, 64 texture units and 32 ROPs. Its core and memory frequencies fall behind that of the 7870 but it is still clocked at a good 860 MHz core with 1.20GHz (4800 MHz effective) on the memory. The 7850 tested has 2GB of graphics memory, but for this model we expect to see both 2GB and 1GB memory variants in the stores. Again, the memory is based on a 256-bit interface.
HIS jumped the 7800 bandwagon as well with several models, and for this review we'll be looking at their Radeon HD 7850 IceqX TurboX model. The product comes factory overclocked very nicely for you as it is running a precipitous 1 GHz clock frequency. HIS uses a small PCB and pretty slim dual-slot cooler making the card very easy to install. Despite that factory overclock and that cooler the noise levels remain at normal levels whereas the GPU temperatures remain downright excellent as we'll show you in this review.
The graphics card is equipped with one 6-pin PCIe power connector. As mentioned the card comes factory overclocked at a full GHz (860 MHz is reference) whereas the memory is clocked at a 5000 MHz frequency (4800 MHz is the reference).
Have a peek at the 245 EUR card, and then let's start up this review.
