Sapphire HD 7850 OC Radeon Review

Battlefield 3

The scores we obtain from the Battlefield 3 benchmark was very impressive. The HD 7850 OC only went under 20fps when Eyefinity was enabled and set to the “Ultra” setting. As a long time gamers, we seem to use any score that is sub 20fps as being noticeably bad. Some gamers would claim any score under 30fps would be noticeably bad, but it is really up the gamer and the game they are playing to say the refresh is the reason they are doing poorly.

Conclusion:

Sapphire has engineered another clear cut competitor in the video card market with their HD 7850 OC. We ran these benchmarks on the same rig as our 7950 review to have apples to apples comparison and also to see if PCI 3.0 would provide any additional benefit. What we found was the HD 7850 OC put up the same benchmark scores no matter if the benchmarks were done on a 2.0 or a 3.0 system. The price for a HD7850 OC’s performance (at time of review) is $265 which is a price point that isn’t too high for the general gamer to fork out the money for this much performance. The HD 7950 is ultimately the video card everyone would rather have with benchmark score which are almost two thirds higher/faster, but with a price tag of an additional $200 leaves it outside the reach of the general consumer. The added benefit that the HD 7850 OC brings to the table with eyefinity for the gamer who is looking to expand their view with the addition of two more monitors sets the HD 7850 OC apart from its NVIDIA counter parts (at time of this review). If you’re looking to upgrade your video card and are looking at NVIDIA’s 500 series or the Radeon 7800 series, we would recommend seriously considering the HD 7850 OC if your budget can afford it. Of course if budget can afford the 7950 (at time of this review) we would suggest obtaining it due to the huge performance increase.

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