Gigabyte or Saphire HD7850

S

srothman

Expert Member
Joined
Mar 30, 2010
Messages
2,756
Reaction score
10
Location
Pretoria
I'm looking at putting an HD7850 in my system I am busy building. Which one will get your vote?

Sapphire HD7850, 2GB 256bit 4 channel DDR5, with dual fan, PCI-E 3.0

or (at around R200- less)

GIGABYTE GV-R785OC-2GD, HD7850, 2GB 256bit GDDR5, CrossfireX, PCI-E 3.0

EDIT: Or this one, mind you:
Club 3D HD7850, 2GB 256bit DDR5, PCI-E 3.0
 
Last edited:
The Gigabyte one for sure! It has a 3 year warranty.

Are you going to get it from Rebeltech for just under R2700?
 
Agreed, the longer warranty on a GPU always wins the day.
 
Pada said:
The Gigabyte one for sure! It has a 3 year warranty.

Are you going to get it from Rebeltech for just under R2700?
Click to expand...

Yip. Busy putting an order together with them now, hoping to get everything delivered on Friday. Plan is to get an extra one later and Xfire it.
 
If you plan on going for CrossFire, make sure that you have:
1) good enough PSU (with enough PCI-E power connectors)
2) big case with a good amount of airflow too
3) motherboard with 2x 16x @ 16x slots, preferably one with 2-3 PCI/PCI-E slots inbetween the 16x PCI-E slots so that your top card does not run that hot
 
Archer:
You're right about the @8x slots. It is better if you can get one with 16x speed, but it is probably not worth it if it'll cost much more.

At this moment I'm actually running a GTX460 SLI setup with 16x + 4x slot combination, although I'm not so sure that the 4x is just a 4x slot on my MSI X58A-GD65 motherboard.
GPU-z reports it as 4x, but my performance is exactly the same as what I got from my Asus P6T Deluxe v2 with 2x 16x slots.
 
Crossfire is a fail IMHO. I have a crossfire setup, and will likely go back to single card tomorrow...
Way too many driver issues. Things like 3d acceleration not working properly anymore in VirtualBox, sometimes one of the cards will not enter powersave mode. When the PC wakes up from sleep, one of the cards will be utilizing 99% GPU for absolutely no reason until I actually use it, then it will drop down again. I am really disappointed and hope they sort out these obvious driver defects before you attempt to crossfire...

And that is before I mention the disappointing actual performance in games. Sure the benchmarks are good, I get good results, but the actual experience is far from amazing...
 
Thing is, I can't afford to drop R5000 on a high-end card right now, so I want to try and spread it out a bit, getting the benefit in the longer run. Maybe I must just taddle on with the on-board graphics until I have enough saved up for a 7970... :-)
 
No, buy the card now, and save up for a GTX680 (why would you pay more for a slower 7970?), then sell the card and buy the GTX680...
 
P924:
What graphics cards are you running in CrossFire?

I'm running 2x GTX460's and I experience BF3 crashes every now and then. Otherwise I'd say scaling is very good for BattleField(s) + Call of Duties + Benchmarks.

Some games don't scale well in CrossFire/SLI though.

Lastly, the heat coming from 2 graphics cards are pretty intense for small cases. Like I'd say that my Coolermaster 690 II is the bare minimum!
 
P924 said:
No, buy the card now, and save up for a GTX680 (why would you pay more for a slower 7970?), then sell the card and buy the GTX680...
Click to expand...

Hmmm, I think that is an absolute waste of money. The HD7850 is more than capable of running Battlefield on high, and with a little overclocking it can play on ultra. The 7850 is incredible at overclocking too, guys are hitting 1300MHZ core clock :eek:.

Anyway, I really don't think the performance jump is worth it...
 
Both cards have almost the same cooling solution. Gigabyte has 3 years warranty and it is cooler. Sapphire has 2 years warranty and is cheaper. I will recommend you to get Gigabyte over Sapphire. That tiny amount of savings by losing 1 year warranty is not worth it.
 
Pada said:
P924:
What graphics cards are you running in CrossFire?

I'm running 2x GTX460's and I experience BF3 crashes every now and then. Otherwise I'd say scaling is very good for BattleField(s) + Call of Duties + Benchmarks.
Click to expand...

Running 2xHD6850's @850MHz @ 2560x1440... I suspect 1920x1080 will be way better, once the framerate breaks through 60FPS, most in-game problems go away. But that still means the system is flawed, and my non-gaming issues remain.
 
Last edited:
scotty777 said:
Hmmm, I think that is an absolute waste of money. The HD7850 is more than capable of running Battlefield on high, and with a little overclocking it can play on ultra. The 7850 is incredible at overclocking too, guys are hitting 1300MHZ core clock :eek:.

Anyway, I really don't think the performance jump is worth it...
Click to expand...

Depends on if you want to play the newest games at max settings (and whether you play at 1920x1080 or 2560x1440 or higher...)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X