The HD7850 arrives at a factory overclocked corespeed of 975MHz and a memory clockspeed of 1200MHz (4800MHz effective):
As we have seen with both the 7900 and 7700 graphics card families of AMD's range, the latest range come highly clocked but with that there has been ample overclocking headroom. Adjusting Powertune to eradicate and power consumption interference we adjusted powertune to its maximum and set about overclocking.
We managed to max out the slider on the core reaching an impressive 1050MHz. Sadly this is as far as AMD's overclocking tool would allow us to go so we fired up fired up sapphires TRIXX utility but sadly this proved to be pretty much pointless due to the measly extra 35 Mmhz it afforded on the core. Memory overclocks were also good reaching 1350MHz (5400MHz effective).
While the overclocking results above are impressive it has to be said that the GIGABYTE cards was a very stubborn beast, locking up frequently and failing to recover which is less than impressive when you consider no such problems are encountered with reference varieties. I did sample CAT 12.1-12.4 and regardless of driver revision, the card exhibited the same behaviour which could be as a result of inadequate power regulation at the maximum overclocked speeds.
Power Consumption
To test for power consumption we do not use anything to technical, just a wall meter which measures the total system power draw minus the monitor.
With no voltage adjustment available it came as little surprise that the card consumed little power. Even when overclocked to the maximum stable speed, the card drew little over AMD's specified TDP of 130W with a full system draw measured at just 279W.
Temperature
To test temperatures we measured idle temperatures after booting windows, letting all applications finish loading and ran a few benchmarks. Once the benchmarks were complete we left the card to reach a cooling plateau where we then took the idle temperatures. For the load tests, we ran Furmark for 20 minutes, taking the absolute maximum temperature attained.
If graphics cards were T.V characters then the GIGABYTE HD7850 OC would be 'The Fonz' of Happy Days fame, it is that cool! The GIGABYTE card had temps just 27c above ambient at the factory overclocked speeds which is an amazing achievement and rightly deserves a place at the pinnacle of our chart. Even when overclocked, the Windforce cooler didn't break a sweat with just an additional 4c measured.
Let's move on to our suite of benchmarks...
As we have seen with both the 7900 and 7700 graphics card families of AMD's range, the latest range come highly clocked but with that there has been ample overclocking headroom. Adjusting Powertune to eradicate and power consumption interference we adjusted powertune to its maximum and set about overclocking.
We managed to max out the slider on the core reaching an impressive 1050MHz. Sadly this is as far as AMD's overclocking tool would allow us to go so we fired up fired up sapphires TRIXX utility but sadly this proved to be pretty much pointless due to the measly extra 35 Mmhz it afforded on the core. Memory overclocks were also good reaching 1350MHz (5400MHz effective).
While the overclocking results above are impressive it has to be said that the GIGABYTE cards was a very stubborn beast, locking up frequently and failing to recover which is less than impressive when you consider no such problems are encountered with reference varieties. I did sample CAT 12.1-12.4 and regardless of driver revision, the card exhibited the same behaviour which could be as a result of inadequate power regulation at the maximum overclocked speeds.
Power Consumption
To test for power consumption we do not use anything to technical, just a wall meter which measures the total system power draw minus the monitor.
With no voltage adjustment available it came as little surprise that the card consumed little power. Even when overclocked to the maximum stable speed, the card drew little over AMD's specified TDP of 130W with a full system draw measured at just 279W.
Temperature
To test temperatures we measured idle temperatures after booting windows, letting all applications finish loading and ran a few benchmarks. Once the benchmarks were complete we left the card to reach a cooling plateau where we then took the idle temperatures. For the load tests, we ran Furmark for 20 minutes, taking the absolute maximum temperature attained.
If graphics cards were T.V characters then the GIGABYTE HD7850 OC would be 'The Fonz' of Happy Days fame, it is that cool! The GIGABYTE card had temps just 27c above ambient at the factory overclocked speeds which is an amazing achievement and rightly deserves a place at the pinnacle of our chart. Even when overclocked, the Windforce cooler didn't break a sweat with just an additional 4c measured.
Let's move on to our suite of benchmarks...