XFX HD7850 Black Edition Review

We have a soft spot for the AMD Pitcairn hardware, they are without question the best value for money discrete cards in the current AMD lineup. Last week we reviewed the Sapphire HD7850 Overclock Edition which impressed us, and XFX have answered their performance claims by releasing an even faster card.

The XFX HD7850 Black Edition is the fastest HD7850 on the market today, clocked at an incredible 975mhz on the core, and 1250mhz on the memory, this translates into noticeable real world performance improvements, increasing the frame rate by a clear margin with the games we tested today.

The card is exceptionally quiet, almost on the same level as the Sapphire card, thanks to the capable dual fan solution. XFX have volted this card a little to ensure stable performance at these increased clock speeds, this means that the temperatures are a little higher than the Sapphire card, although the performance improvements out of the box are easy to see. XFX have opted for the lowest possible noise, while maintaining excellent thermal results.

Overclocking the HD7850 has proven fruitful so far and we are limited only by the Catalyst Control Center, which has a 1050mhz core restriction at time of press. The XFX card can be cranked to the limits in Catalyst Control Center with complete stability, ensuring even more performance gains with minimal effort. We didn't even need to adjust the fan settings as the reference profile maintained low noise emissions.

If you want a mid range priced card, the market is flooded with quality solutions, and the XFX HD7850 deserves serious consideration. There is a small premium to pay for this card, retailing for £227.99 inc vat in the United Kingdom today.

The two best in this specific range are the Sapphire HD7850 Overclock and the XFX HD7850 Black Edition, the latter having a slight performance edge with faster ‘out of the clock' core speeds.

Pros:

• Beautiful cooler design.
• Quiet.
• high ‘out of the box' speeds.
• huge headroom on the core, maxing out CCC sliders.

Cons:

• due to voltage tweak it runs a little hotter than Sapphire's card.
• A little more expensive than some other options.

Kitguru says: The fastest HD7850 on the market, and it is quiet into the bargain!

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