ATI 7850 from an ATI 3850, interface question

stormy13 said:

Bob you mixed up the 7870 with the 7850.

Also if that OCZ power supply is the Stealth Extreme or higher model, then it is more than enough to run a 7850 on; even if he upgrades the CPU to the x4 965.

I wasn't sure what you meant, but I checked: the 7850 has a single 6 pin PCI-E power connector.

I think that I must have looked at:

SAPPHIRE HD 7850 1GB OC GDDR5#

Foolish me. I wish that there was a maker of AMD graphics cards that gave detail like eVGA gives for their nVidia based cards. (Far from perfect though that is.)

The error aside, I didn't disagree with you.

I looked at an old 3850 HD review and I see it draws about 120W at idle and just over 210W during load but Guru3D's review on 7850 shows it puts more load especially during game use. (211W for 3850, 256W for 7850).

So I really should be OK, I was looking at 7870 and it draws a bit more but I would not get that because it recommends a 550W or more PSU.

Memory bus is 128 bit and I would prefer a card with 256 bit as I heard that is an important performance aspect. Also I don't run my games at max resolution but run them at a max of 1280x720 and low to medium AA so under load it probably will not draw as much.

Glaice said:

Memory bus is 128 bit and I would prefer a card with 256 bit as I heard that is an important performance aspect. Also I don't run my games at max resolution but run them at a max of 1280x720 and low to medium AA so under load it probably will not draw as much.

AnandTech | AMD Radeon HD 7790 Review Feat. Sapphire: The First Desktop Sea Islands

Yeah, looks like the 7850 is significantly better than the 7790, although the 256 bit memory on the 7850 may be less significant if you run at 1280X720.

The review gives a system level power consumption of 255W with the graphics max'd out with Furmark. That only confirms that your 500W OCZ PSU will be more than adequate.

I have a quick update about my Sapphire 7850 that arrived earlier today, it runs cooler while idle (32-35 C opposed to 45 C) and so far zero stability issues after giving it a run with Saints Row 3 in DX11 mode, Just Cause 2 with jacked up settings and almost an hour with Warframe in high settings.

The max load temperature has not exceeded past 45-47 C, which pleases me since my old 3850 has hit 65 C while under heavy load but it might have to do with the model having two fans and some heat pipes on it. :) It's not been a day and I am really happy with my upgrade so far.