AMD Launches the Radeon HD 7800 Series

[btarunr]

AMD just launched the Radeon HD 7800 series graphics cards, consisting of two models, the Radeon HD 7870, and the Radeon HD 7850, targeting crucial price-points that appeal PC gamers. The two models are based on new 28 nm silicon by AMD, codenamed "Pitcairn," which packs 2.8 billion transistors. The new chip takes advantage of AMD's Graphics CoreNext architecture.

The Radeon HD 7870 packs 1280 GCN stream processors, 80 texture memory units (TMUs), 32 raster operations units, and a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 2 GB of memory. This card is AMD's second "GHz Edition" model (after the Radeon HD 7770), sporting a core clock speed of 1 GHz. The memory is clocked at 1200 MHz (4.80 GHz GDDR5 effective).



The Radeon HD 7850, on the other hand, has 1024 stream processors, and 64 TMUs. The ROP count, memory bus width, type, amount, and clock speed remain the same. Its core is clocked at 860 MHz. The Radeon HD 7870 reference design graphics card starts at US $349, and the Radeon HD 7850 at US $249. Market availability is expected starting March 19.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[TRWOV]

So we get 6900 performance levels at 6900 prices? I guess I'll hold onto my 6850 a little while.

 

[devguy]

So we get 6900 performance levels at 6900 prices? I guess I'll hold onto my 6850 a little while.

If it matters to you, the power consumption and overclocking are far superior to the HD 69xx series.

 

[TRWOV]

Well, yeah, I must say that AMD's ZeroCore tech made me consider Crossfire for the first time. Maybe next year I'll go for a couple of 7870s but not now.

 

[afw]

after seeing the avg performance of these cards ... i think somethings wrong with the 79xx series ... i mean the 7950 has 40% more SPs and has a 384-bit memory ... but is only 7% faster ... somethings seriously bottlenecking the 79xx-s

 

[TRWOV]

Maybe they need a Windows patch? I kid, I kid... no seriously, I guess once drivers mature a little more we'll see what the 7900 are truly capable of. Is the first time AMD has had a 384bit bus so that might be part of it (DISCLAIMER: I know nothing about how the bus width affects driver support).

 

[Prima.Vera]

350$ !!! Whaat??!??

 

[Inceptor]

Whoever updated the product pages at amd.com did a horrible cut&paste job and just reused some of the 7770 info. The 7870 and 7850 specs are not quite right; the 7770 128bit memory interface is cited. Poor execution. That's one thing that should have been done in an exact and precise manner.

:shadedshu

 

[Aquinus]

So we get 6900 performance levels at 6900 prices? I guess I'll hold onto my 6850 a little while.

That's what I was thinking. I just bought myself another 6870. However the 7680 looks like a very nice and well placed GPU. Common nVidia, we need prices to get driven down!

Maybe they need a Windows patch? I kid, I kid... no seriously, I guess once drivers mature a little more we'll see what the 7900 are truly capable of. Is the first time AMD has had a 384bit bus so that might be part of it (DISCLAIMER: I know nothing about how the bus width affects driver support).

Theoretically memory access speeds on paper increase by 50% using a wider bus. This certainly depends on the implementation though.