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The XFX HD7850 ships in dramatic box featuring an ‘icy' logo in the center.
The bundle is extensive, featuring literature on the product and the excellent XFX power supply range, powered by partner Seasonic. XFX also include a Crossfire connector, a metal ‘Black Edition' badge, and a ‘Do Not Disturb' door sign.
The HD7850 Black Edition features a two fan cooler, built around a metal cooling system on black PCB. We love the white and black metallic cooler.
The XFX HD7850 requires two 6 pin PCI power connectors, which breaks from the reference AMD configuration of a single connector. It is clear that XFX are pumping a bit more power into this card and they are allowing for higher potential clocks.
It features a single Crossfire connector meaning it can be used in 2 way configurations. If you want 3 or 4 way Crossfire, you need to buy 79xx series hardware.
The card is a dual slot design with a full sized DVI and HDMI port, and two mini Display Port connectors. It is Eyefinity capable. This card can simultaneously output multiple, independent audio streams from the HDMI and mini Displayport connectors at the rear of the card.
I must admit that the ‘warranty invalid' stickers over the GPU backplate screws really annoy me. I understand this principle with a power supply, but I like to apply my own thermal paste to a GPU core and I don't want to invalidate my warranty by doing so. XFX really do need to join the other AMD partners and trust the end user a little more. Ditch this way of thinking guys, please.
The cooler on this card features four small copper heatpipes which run into two racks of aluminum fins on either side of the core. Sapphire used two very thick copper heatpipes on their HD7850 cooler.
XFX have enhanced the core clock speed from 860mhz to 975mhz, a huge increase. The memory also receives a 50mhz boost (200mhz effective) to 5Gbps. The Pitcairn GPU is manufactured on 28nm technology and this specific card features 32 ROPS, 1,024 shaders and 2GB of GDDR5 memory which is connected via a 256 bit memory interface.
