HD7850 1GB meets Eyefinity - What will happen?!

[Xaser04]

Hi all,
Let me start this thread off my stating that the following benchmarks are a bit of fun. Whilst the performance shown reflects the performance experienced in all of the games tested, I am not suggesting anyone should use this as a purchashing decider.

Back Story: (please skip if you just want to laugh (or maybe not?!) at the benchmarks)

I recently built my wife a little gaming pc as she loves playing Left for Dead (1 & 2) via co-op, and since getting rid of my main system this was no longer possible. I had some parts left over from that build (case, psu, DVD-RW, RAM, HD & SSD), and running with a very strict £300 budget I put together the following:

- Fractal Design Define R3
- Thermaltake Toughpower XT675
- Asus A88X-A FM2+
- AMD Athlon II X4 760K (Richland) - clocked to 4.2Ghz on all four cores
- Antec Kuhler 620
- 4GB DDR3 1600MT/s @ 9-9-9-24 1T
- MSI HD7850 1GB
- Crucial C300 64GB boot drive
- 500GB HD (Steam)
- DVD-RW
- Win 8.1 x64

Overall it is a nice little system. It runs cool and quiet and handles everything my wife wants to play without an issue - and more as we will see below .
If you were to build this system brand new it would run to around £450 all in. Again not bad for something that will easily handle 1080p medium / high settings in all current games.
Anyway my wife is not happy with the system but I am wondering, will it be able to handle Eyefinity in a number of titles I have to hand (read: installed)?
Let's find out....

The Benchmarks

Test Setup

- Athlon X4 760K @ 4.2Ghz QC
- 4GB DDR3 1600MT/s
- MSI HD7850 @ 860/4800 Stock & 1000/5200 OC
- C300 SSD
- 3 x LG IPS231P monitors @ 5888x1080 (Bezel corrected)
- Windows 8.1 x64

Games Tested

Battlefied 3 - Medium settings - 5 minute playthrough of Operation Swordbreaker, starting once you leave APC
Left For Dead 2 - Max in game settings with 4xMSAA - 3 minute playthrough of Hard Rain - Return to town
Dishonoured - High in game settings with MLAA - 3 minute playthrough of Distillery District
Just Cause 2 - Max in game settings with 2xMSAA - In game benchmark "The Dark Tower"

Note - the colour coding is reversed on the FPS over time graphs. This was something I had meant to of changed last night but forgot.

Battlefied 3

With a mild OC on the HD7850 this is suprisingly playable. If I were to max out the OC to say 1200/5500 this would be breaking through the 50FPS average mark. Memory usage was in the high 800's meaning the card had no issue running at these settings.
Unsuprisingly turning the textures up to high made the game completely unplayable. The FPS counter was reading in the 30's but it was a stuttery mess. Interestingly though the memory read out didn't go above 1000MB. I am assuming that there was a lot of caching going on in the background preventing a breach but the game was requiring more VRAM than the card has.

Left For Dead 2

Absolutely maxed out Left For Dead 2 runs beautifully on the HD7850 1GB. No VRAM issues, no stuttering, just buttery smooth infected killing action. This is how my wife is actually playing L4D2 now. Everything else might be in 1080p but she has to have her triple screen fix.

Dishonoured

There is no minimum FPS shown for this game as there was a noticable period of stutter right at the beginning of the benchmark run. The game also behaved oddly with FRAPS running intially. This happened on both the stock and OC runs so is directly comparable. Once this stutter passed the game was perfectly playable at around 45FPS average. Running on the Unreal 3 engine I wasn't sure how this game would run but the 7850 1GB suprises me again by not batting an eyelid. I actually played this for a while after benchmarking and it played very nicely in Eyefinity.

Just Cause 2

This is the one game that I felt wasn't particularly playable on the 1GB 7850, at least not maxed out like I benchmarked it. Dropping MSAA completely improved things a bit but it still wasn't quite right. VRAM usage was low so I don't think that was the problem. It doesn't really stutter but there is a very subtle rubber banding type effect going on when gaming. I havn't played JC2 in quite a while so maybe this just how it is?!

Overall Thoughts

Suprising. This one word sums up my feelings after running these benchmarks. I knew the HD7850 technically had the grunt to run Eyefinity, however I genuinely thought the 1GB of VRAM would be a major hinderance. Ultimately whilst it is obviously holding things back somwhat, it wasn't really a problem in any of the games I played.

Again as I said at the start this was just a bit of fun. I am not suggesting anyone goes out and buys a HD7850 to run games in Eyefinity, or should look to upgrade to Eyefinity if you already run a HD7850. However, these results do show that a ~£120 mid range card can quite happily run some of the less demanding titles in Eyefinity whilst also remaining playable.
Now who's up for some Crysis 3.... (I think I actually heard the card cry a little then..)

Anyway, hope you enjoyed and stay tuned for some further benchmaking action in the future. I am going to see just how far a GTX780M can be pushed...

 

[GreiverBlade]

interesting review specially for me, since my next setup feature a A88X mobo and a X4 760K with a R9-270 (2gb)

as for crysis 3 the R9 handle it in high at 40ish fp but if i want near stable 60fps i need to set on the lowest (maybe medium ) settings, but i am playing on a Phenom (not II) X4 @ 2.3 at the moment (still waiting on the cpu) but not in eyfinity: i have 4-5 screens but none of the same size or resolution/ratio ... and the 270 is more a 7870ghz than a 7850.

 

[Xaser04]

interesting review specially for me, since my next setup feature a A88X mobo and a X4 760K with a R9-270 (2gb)

as for crysis 3 the R9 handle it in high at 40ish fp but if i want near stable 60fps i need to set on the lowest (maybe medium ) settings, but i am playing on a Phenom (not II) X4 @ 2.3 at the moment (still waiting on the cpu) but not in eyfinity: i have 4-5 screens but none of the same size or resolution/ratio ... and the 270 is more a 7870ghz than a 7850.

The 760K / 270 combo should be a good one. I would have gone for a 270 but I simply didn't have the extra budget. The 7850 is enough for my wife's needs anyway. For the budget I am very pleased with how the 760K performs, especially overclocked on all four cores. No it won't match my alptops i7 4700MQ (Haswell 4/8 i7 @ 3.4Ghz) but it is still potent enough.

I imagine the 7850 would handle Crysis 3 at 1080p "high" settings without any real issue (not at a solid 60FPS though). Eyefinity though would be too much I think. Not that this is really an issue. I completed the game quite a while ago and have no real desire to play it again for now. If I do I will run it on my laptop (which runs it at 1080p / High settings at a constant 60fps anyway.

 

[GreiverBlade]

The 760K / 270 combo should be a good one. I would have gone for a 270 but I simply didn't have the extra budget. The 7850 is enough for my wife's needs anyway. For the budget I am very pleased with how the 760K performs, especially overclocked on all four cores. No it won't match my alptops i7 4700MQ (Haswell 4/8 i7 @ 3.4Ghz) but it is still potent enough.

I imagine the 7850 would handle Crysis 3 at 1080p "high" settings without any real issue (not at a solid 60FPS though). Eyefinity though would be too much I think. Not that this is really an issue. I completed the game quite a while ago and have no real desire to play it again for now. If I do I will run it on my laptop (which runs it at 1080p / High settings at a constant 60fps anyway.

yeah indeed ... still a 7850 is a awesome bang for bucks deal even in 1gb , i was on a Xeon E3-1275V2 (i7-3770K without unlock) and a GTX770 before ... budget cuts and unexpected bill made me switch to that setup... still i am happy, because i don't care about AMD or Intel or Nvidia i love all three brands even if i am more an enthusiast than a budget gamer .... oh well i am an "enthusiast bound by a budget shackles" ... does not sound so bad in the end

and i just received the cpu by the post now unpacking and let the fun begin!

 

[Xaser04]

yeah indeed ... still a 7850 is a awesome bang for bucks deal even in 1gb , i was on a Xeon E3-1275V2 (i7-3770K without unlock) and a GTX770 before ... budget cuts and unexpected bill made me switch to that setup... still i am happy, because i don't care about AMD or Intel or Nvidia i love all three brands even if i am more an enthusiast than a budget gamer .... oh well i am an "enthusiast bound by a budget shackles" ... does not sound so bad in the end

and i just received the cpu by the post now unpacking and let the fun begin!

Awesome, have fun with it!

Like you, I also used to run a pretty powerful desktop system (3770K / GTX780 OC). I sold it in order to fund getting both "next gen" consoles as there were games on them I wanted to play . Ultimately for the games we are playing the relative lack of grunt, compared to say a GTX780, isn't noticable.

 

[Xaser04]

Quick update as I have been messing around with the system a bit more (don't get me started on the amount of times I have had to re-install the AMD drivers to get my Eyefinity profile back...).

So far after a little tinkering I have got the HD7850 up to 1150/5400 stable in everything I have thrown at it, and boy does it fly!
I have also squeezed the 760K up to 4.4Ghz on all four cores and stuck the NB frequency to 2200Mhz, just to give it that little bit more welly .


I have re-run my BF3 Eyefinity benchmark and these are the results:

Near as makes no difference 50fps average and a minimum over 40. A very nice improvement over the previous results.

Overall I am seeing a ~25% improvement over a "stock" HD7850 which a little bit more left in the tank to take it over the 50fps threshold.

I was going to get a faster GPU to do some Eyefinity testing but frankly I am having too much fun.

Oh and to finish, Crysis 3.... Yeah, No. Even with the clocks above it barely moved above 30fps at medium settings. I could run low settings but honestly, I have already completed the game and can't be bothered to play it again for a while.

 

[Vario]

Thank you for the info. I never got to try mine with Eyefinity but it works great with almost everything I own except BF4.
The 7850 is a very awesome card. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/549?vs=510
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/549?vs=511

 

[Xaser04]

Thank you for the info. I never got to try mine with Eyefinity but it works great with almost everything I own except BF4.
The 7850 is a very awesome card. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/549?vs=510
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/549?vs=511

Thanks. With a large enough overclock (1200+) it can easily surpass a HD7870 / 270x and even knock on the door of a stock HD7950. A HD6970 wouldn't even see where it went. I remember benchmarking an unlocked HD6950 in BF3 and barely scraping 35FPS in Eyefinity. Seems such a long time ago now, but that is how I used to play BF3, 35FPS with triple screen goodness!

 

[THE_EGG]

Impressive stuff thanks for the benchies

I picked up a 7850 1gb about 2 months ago for $110AUD (about $80AUD lower than normal) just because it was such a great deal. I have it as a spare card in a spare PC mining away unless I have a friend come over to play some games or a group meeting for uni and we have to work on something simultaneously.

I was amazed at how well it performs for such a cheap card ! With a nice OC it is even on par (sometimes outperforming) with my old 580 :O

 

[Xaser04]

Impressive stuff thanks for the benchies

I picked up a 7850 1gb about 2 months ago for $110AUD (about $80AUD lower than normal) just because it was such a great deal. I have it as a spare card in a spare PC mining away unless I have a friend come over to play some games or a group meeting for uni and we have to work on something simultaneously.

I was amazed at how well it performs for such a cheap card ! With a nice OC it is even on par (sometimes outperforming) with my old 580 :O

It is a cracking little card. Works lovely in 1080p (which it is used mostly in). Recently my laptop hasn't even had a look in as I have been having too much fun tweaking the 7850. My 780M is quicker (1536sp GK104 @ 980/6000 so it should be) but watching the 7850 shrug off a near 40% overclock like it is nothing is quite amusing.

 

[Xaser04]

Quick update, I have managed to pick up a R9 290 unlocked to a 290x for a little over £220.

I am interested to see what level of CPU limitation (if at all) I will see due to the 760K (overclocked of course). Obviously 1080p will be laughably bad in certain titles, but I am running 5888x1080.... Should be a good laugh.

I have HD7970 OC (1200-1250) & GTX 780 OC results to compare to. These were both run on a 2500K/3770K thus not CPU limited. The GTX 780 OC comparison will act as the baseline (for no CPU limitation) - the underlying performance being similar to a 290X.