The PowerColor’s own designed HD7850 graphics card is packed with selected power kit and efficient cooling system; with solid components onboard, easily enhancing the stability and thermal capacity, delivering truly rich and stunning HD performance with the support for vivid DirectX 11.1 gaming.
The PowerColor HD7850 has 860MHz core and 1200MHz memory; with advanced PCI Express 3.0 support, the latest series can boost up the power of GPU easily by doubling the bandwidth per land of previous generation.
The PowerColor HD7850 series equipped with industry-leading technology; by utilizing AMD Eyefinity 2.0 technology and AMD HD3D Technology, the HD7800 series supports multi-display stereoscopic 3Dcontent, allowing an immersive “wrap around” gaming experience. Also, with the support of AMD PowerTune technology and AMD ZeroCore technology, enabling the intelligent power monitoring to enable higher clock speeds and better performance when needed, delivering the most efficient way for gaming like never before.
GCN ArchitectureA new design for AMD’s unified graphics processing and compute cores that allows them to achieve higher utilization for improved performance and efficiency.
Microsoft DirextX 11Get intense gaming performance and unrivalled image quality with stunning 3D visual effects, realistic lighting and lifelike imagery.
AMD Eyefinity TechnologyRun multiple displays from a single graphics board and expand your gaming field of view across all displays.
AMD PowerTune and ZeroCoreTechnologyMaximizes performance under load conditions by dynamically increasing the GPU engine clock to take advantage of unused TDP headroom. Also allows users to configure their own TDP limit, within a provided range, for even higher performance or more power efficiency. AMD ZeroCore Power technology ensures ultra-low idle power when the connected display is in power saving mode.
AMD PowerPlay TechnologyAMD PowerPlay Technology dynamically adjusts clock speeds in response to GPU load, saving power for just when you need it.
AMD App AccelerationAMD App Accelerator creates a “co-processing” environment in which the compute processing potential in your AMD Radeon Graphics processor works together with the system central processor, to accelerate enabled applications.
Pros: Looks decent Plays games with ease. I have played the included games so far with it just a little. Bioshock at 1080P with highest settings almost always runs at 60 FPS. It sometimes drops during gameplay, but I've not seen it go below 30, and it seems smooth constantly. Tomb Raider, which I was not excited for really, looks absolutely stunning graphics wise and after just 30 minutes I wanted to play it! If I wasn't wanting to play Bioshock more, I would be. As for how the card performs, with all settings as high as they will go, again at 1080p, it runs but not well. You drop down in the teens a lot. It does not feel smooth. However, if you just turn the AA down a little to FXAA it will run between 30-40 FPS without any issue, and to me this is plenty playable. You could turn the settings down a little more and have the game look amazing and have 60 fps, but, this is the most graphically stunning game I have ever seen in my life and I am not turning it down! Overclocks very easy with AMD Overdrive.
Cons: Had an issue at first where it wanted to run at 100% usage no matter what, even just on the desktop. Something in my startup settings in msconfig was doing it, or a service. I turned off all of those I did not need and it works perfect now. Not an issue with the card, just a note encase anyone else has an issue to try this. Cooler does not cool the RAM just the CPU. I don't like this, but not a huge deal still works amazing.
Overall Review: I changed the thermal past on mine first thing to Zalman STG2. Not that the stock paste was bad, but I knew this stuff was better. My temps at max now are only 62, and thats after overclocking, and without changing the fan settings. Plenty cool for a GPU. I have it overclocked to 1000 core clock and memory at 1400. Having them maxed felt just a little unstable, but I didn't touch voltage at all either. I didn't need to. Performs well. In time I will buy a second and crossfire if I really feel I need more. For my results in the Pros section, I think my CPU may be limiting the card a little to be honest. I have a i3-3225 installed, great CPU, have it OC'd to 3.5 GHz and the voltage turned way down on it. Still performs well, but I think I am finally hitting its limit. An i5 or similar CPU will probably perform better.