There seems to be no answer to AMD Radeon’s HD 7000 series from Nvidia.No news of a 28nm counterpart to fight against the Big red.AMD’s new range of graphics cards are the 7870 which is priced at $349 and other being 7850 priced at $249$. Both are based on the Pitcairn GPU and hog the mainstream gamer spot below the Tahiti-based 79xx cards and far above the 77xx options. In terms of competition, these cards go head-to-head with the older NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 and GTX 560Ti, which currently retail for between $20 and $50 less.Check out some reviews where most of them recommend AMD ones even though it’s a few extra outlay on dough.
HotHardware –Compared the performance, low power consumption, noise levels and features of both cards, but added that they’re “not much faster than previous gen counterparts.” For example, 3DMark 11 benchmarks generally beat NVIDIA’s rivals by around two or three percent, while the Radeon HD 7850 barely scored any higher than its predecessor, the 6850, in that test.
AnandTech – They found the 7870 to be “faster, cooler and quieter” than Nvidia’s GTX 570, with a roughly nine percent performance advantage that puts AMD “in the front for the time being.” As for 7850, it was regarded as less of a steal, trailing the cheaper GTX 560Ti in some games — including an eight percent lag in games like Battlefield 3.
TheTechReport – said both the 7870 and 7850 are “better options than comparable GeForces,” because they deliver more FPS-per-dollar when Arkham City, Battlefield 3, Crysis 2 and Skyrim performances are averaged out.
PC Perspective — concluded that the Radeon HD 7870 “more or less matches” the GTX 570 in the six games it compared, with two wins, two losses and two draws for the AMD card, but is still “pretty impressive” for the price. The HD 7850, meanwhile, “completely dominates the performance metrics” while using “56 fewer watts!”
TechSpot – gave the Radeon HD 7850 slightly higher marks for being the “best mainstream card to buy at $250,” while also praising the HD 7870 delivering “excellent performance and overclocking” and “almost reaching the level of the more expensive HD 7900 boards.”
TomsHardware – The Radeon HD 7870 and 7850 offer impressive performance, extremely low power usage, and attractive estimated prices compared to cards offering similar performance.We’ve never seen a graphics card with so much potential for $250. But there are clearly issues to work out of the Radeon HD 7850.Both of the Radeon HD 7870′s in our labs work great, so there’s little stopping us from recommending that card. Priced at $350, it performs a lot like the $470-ish GeForce GTX 580 and the $465 Radeon HD 7950.We can’t issue the Radeon HD 7870 an award, since it’s not available for sale, but consider us impressed.
