Website: www.sapphiretech.com
It seems like forever ago that we reviewed the AMD Radeon HD 7850, courtesy of XFX, but the card has received some significant price slashing and even more significant overclocking since then. Here to help us revisit the 7850 is SAPPHIRE, with its 2GB OverClock Edition. The GPU under the hood takes advantage of AMD’s Graphics Core Next architecture and is built on AMD’s 28nm node. Features include support for DirectX 11.1, PCI-E 3.0, Eyefinity 2.0, AMD’s stereo 3D, universal bezel compensation, and Discrete Digital Multi-Point Audio, which utilizes your Eyefinity monitor’s built-in speakers to create a surround sound experience.
SAPPHIRE HD 7850 2GB OverClock Edition
The Radeon HD 7850 GPU features a stock 860MHz core clock and 1,200MHz memory clock. SAPPHIRE installed its Dual-X cooler on its 7850 and was able to extract significantly more horsepower: a 920MHz core clock and 1,250MHz memory clock. What’s more, you can use the dual BIOS switch on the top edge of the PCB to tweak the voltages and settings for even more gaming get-up-and-go. This card also features a 256-bit memory bus, 2GB GDDR5, 1,024 stream processors, 64 texture units, 128 Z/Stencil ROPs, and 32 color ROPs.
SAPPHIRE’s aggressive overclock is largely thanks to the card’s Dual-X cooler, which consists of a pair of fans bolted onto an aluminum heatsink. The cooler also consists of a large copper plate that rests on top of the GPU’s heat spreader and two copper heatpipes that thread through the cooler’s aluminum fins. According to SAPPHIRE, the Dual-X cooler is designed to cool efficiently and run quietly.
A lone 6-pin PCI-E connector supplies this card with all the power it needs to run. On the rear bracket you’ll find two DVI ports, a full-sized HDMI port, and a full-sized DisplayPort. Bundled extras include a driver disc, DVI-to-VGA adapter, 6-pin PCI-E power adapter, and a flexible CrossFire bridge. There’s no active DisplayPort-to-DVI adapter, so you’ll need to purchase one separately to enjoy Eyefinity from this card.
To see just how far SAPPHIRE’s aggressive overclock on this card could go, we tested the SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 7850 2GB OverClock Edition against a stock-clocked card. The numbers speak for themselves. The overclocked card from SAPPHIRE outpaced the stock card by more than 330 points in 3DMark 11 and by 2.1 frames per second in Unigine Heaven. In the real-world tests, the overclocked card came out on top every time and showed particularly well in Just Cause 2, running more than 10 frames per second faster at 1,920 x 1,200. In light of the new pricing, SAPPHIRE’s overclocked Radeon HD 7850 is a great card for gamers looking to upgrade.
