HIS HD 7850 IceQ X Review

We take a look back at the HIS HD7850 IceQ X 1GB GDDR5 and compare to today’s entry level graphics cards. If silence is important, this could be just the ticket.

Product on Review: HD7850 IceQX 1GB
Manufacturer and Sponsor: HIS
Street Price: £155.99 inc. VAT (GBP)

With the release of the latest crop of entry level cards and subsequent price drops of the 78XX series, we take a look back and compare the HD 7850, specifically the IceQ X version courtesy of HIS.

The HD7850 is perhaps the enthusiasts entry level model in the AMD lineup of current graphics cards. The 7700 series simply did not have the power to play at today’s most popular resolutions. With today’s sample priced at a very reasonable £155 and with free games thanks to AMD’s current promotion, the HD7850 is considered to be somewhat of a bargain.

About HIS

HIS is proud to be AMD’s Authorized 1st Tier AIB Partner, Certified Partner and Launching Partner. Long term and favourable relationship with AMD, enable HIS to work closely with AMD to promote the HIS AMD Graphics Board; and to strive for best value on the marketing and sales of HIS AMD Product Line. In Sept 2003, HIS incorporated the state-of-the art Supreme Cooling Technology in the award winning HIS 9800Pro IceQ, which caught the attention of worldwide media. Since then, HIS IceQ series and the latest IceQ X series has been the limelight in the market for its outstanding performance and features over the other rivals. Today, HIS continues its avid commitment to quality product and service. HIS is certain to be Your Choice of Graphics Board Supplier.

Specification

The HIS HD7850 IceQ X is at an immediate disadvantage when compared to the NVIDIA card having 1GB of GDDR5 less. How this will effect benchmarks at 1920x1080p we will see later in the review but I fear it is the added filters such as AA that will cause the biggest deficit.

Nevertheless, the HD7850 still has plenty to shout about with the faster memory bus on test at 256bit compared to the 192bit on the NVIDIA card. So while the HIS HD7850 has 1GB less memory and despite it being clocked lower at 1200MHz (4800 effective), it still has the most bandwidth thanks to that memory bus, clocking in at 153.6 GB/s compared to the GTX650Ti BOOST’s 144.2 GB/s. The 7850 also has a higher pixel fillrate of 27.5 GPixels per second but loses 16.6% to the NVIDIA card when comparing texture fillrate.

All considered, the two cards look fairly evenly matched. The HD7790 is punching above its weight with this company, losing out in the majority of comparisons however it is by far the cheapest card on test so it will be worthwhile to see how much of an increase in performance the two middleweights give over the lightweight HD7790.

Features

AMD CrossFire™ Technology
The AMD Radeon™ HD 7700 GPU supports AMD CrossFire™ Technology and provides excellent multi GPU scaling. With the introduction of the AMD Radeon™ HD 6900 Series Graphics, AMD began delivering improved AMD CrossFire™ Technology scaling when using two GPUs. AMD is proud to continue to offer that amazing performance with its newest AMD Radeon™ HD 7000 series graphics products.

AMD Eyefinity Technology
AMD Eyefinity Technology provides advanced multiple monitor technology enabling an incredibly immersive graphic and computing experience with innovative display capabilities, supporting massive desktop workspaces and super-high resolution gaming environments. AMD Eyefinity technology with DisplayPort connectivity enables a single GPU to support up to six independent display outputs simultaneously, depending on the OEM implementation.
AMD Eyefinity technology works with games that support non-standard aspect ratios, which is required for panning across multiple displays. To enable more than two displays, one of two cases must be satisfied:

1) Additional panels with native DisplayPort™ connectors are used;
2) Certified DisplayPort™ adapters to convert your monitor’s native input to your cards

DisplayPort™ or Mini-DisplayPort™ connector(s) are used.
With the introduction and wide availability of DisplayPort™ to single-link DVI dongles, option 2 above is a low cost way to convert a set of already-owned monitors into an AMD Eyefinity technology ready display configuration.

Unlike a similar multi monitor gaming solution offered by NVIDIA, AMD Eyefinity technology does not require two graphics cards to work. Therefore, AMD offers a multi monitor gaming solution with potential for a lower setup cost.

Improved Tessellation
The latest iteration of architecture in the AMD Radeon™ HD 7770 GPU features a brand new Generation of Tesselator (Gen 9) in its Geometry Engine. This features optimizations such as; Increased vertex re-use, Off-chip buffering improvements and larger parameter caches. This helps Improve performance at all tessellation factors at up to 4x the throughput of AMD Radeon™ HD 6900 series graphics (Gen 8 ).

AMD HD3D Technology
AMD HD3D Technology is supported by an advanced and open ecosystem that, in conjunction with specific AMD hardware and software technologies, enables 3D display capabilities for many PC applications and experiences.

Your PC has evolved, offering unprecedented amount of games, photos and movies for you to play, watch, design, create, share and download in 3D. With the arrival of the latest in 3D technology you can now enjoy an enhanced visual experience on Stereo 3D-capable desktops and notebooks powered by AMD HD3D Technology.

HDMI 1.4a
More bandwith than standard HDMI allows full implementation of 60Hz Stereo 3D. Standard HDMI ports do not have adequate bandwidth for more than 3D 1080p at 24fps.

Ultra-high resolution (4k Panels)
– Current implementations currently use 4*DVI or 2*DP 1.1, which is expensive and unwieldy.
– AMD will move to a single-connector output for 4k via DP 1.2 HBR2 and HDMI 1.4a 3GHz mode.

AMD Quad Buffer SDK
– Native 3D support for Developers.
– functions with Dx9, 10 and 11
– Native support scheduled for Windows 8
Nearly 600 games support AMD’s implementation of 3D either natively or through middleware partners. Also support for many 3D displays already on the market including Samsung and LG’s proprietry implementation.

AMD Zerocore Power

When a discrete GPU is in a static screen state it works to minimize idle power by enabling a host of active power saving functions including (but not limited to); clock gating, power gating, memory compression, and a host of other features. However, GPUs with AMD’s exclusive ZeroCore Power technology can take energy savings to entirely new heights by completely powering down the core GPU while the rest of the system remains active.

Nearly all PCs can be configured to turn off their displays after a long period of inactivity. This is known as the long idle state; where the screen is blanked but the rest of the system remains in an active and working power state (ACPI G0/S0). As soon as the system goes into long idle state and applications are not actively changing the screen contents, the GPU enters the ZeroCore power state. In the ZeroCore power state, the GPU core (including the 3D engine / compute units, multimedia and audio engines, displays, memory interfaces, etc.) is completely powered down.

However, one cannot simply remove the GPU and its associated device context completely; particularly when it is the only GPU in the system as is the case in many enthusiast platforms. The operating system and SBIOS must still be aware that a GPU is still present in the system. For this reason, the ZeroCore Power state maintains a very small bus control block to ensure that GPU context is still visible to the operating system and SBIOS. The ZeroCore power state also manages the power sequencing of the GPU to ensure that the power up/down mechanism is self-contained and independent of the rest of the system.

The enablement of the ZeroCore Power feature is controlled by the driver. The driver monitors the display contents and allows the GPU to enter the ZeroCore Power in the condition that the GPU enters long idle and subsequent work requests are no longer being submitted to the engine. If any applications update the screen contents, ZeroCore Power technology can periodically wake the GPU to update the framebuffer contents and put the GPU back into the ZeroCore Power state. Furthermore, applications such as Windows 7 desktop gadgets are architected to minimize activity and save power in the long idle state. These applications are active during screen-on mode to display dynamic content such as weather, RSS feeds, stock symbols, system status, etc. but also have the intelligence to suspend any updates and activity when the system enters long idle. These applications will not wake the GPU from the ZeroCore Power state in long idle.

AMD ZeroCore Power technology delivers tremendous energy savings. Many PCs remain in the long idle state for a variety of use cases that are highly relevant to everyday consumers, enthusiasts and professionals. In ZeroCore Power mode, users can still enjoy non-graphics activities such as file serving/streaming, motherboard audio and music, and remote access while the GPU core is essentially powered off.

ZeroCore Power technology also scales with AMD CrossFire™ technology. With an AMD CrossFire platform, all non-primary GPUs are in the ZeroCore Power state when not in use. For AMD CrossFire workloads, the driver will engage the non-primary GPUs to deliver full performance on-demand. The primary GPU can also enter the ZeroCore Power state during long idle as well. This delivers scalable benefits for the enthusiast. First, it effectively removes the power increase for users of AMD CrossFire under idle and light (single GPU) workloads. Second, it removes the noise penalty multiGPU users have always had to endure since the GPU fans are off in ZeroCore Power mode.

GCN Architecture

Available on select, high-performance AMD Radeon™ HD 7000 Series graphics products, the Graphics Core Next (GCN) Architecture is a radically new approach to the design of a consumer GPU.

Most importantly, it is the world’s first 28nm GPU architecture, which enables AMD to fit up to 4.3 billion transistors-the most basic building blocks of a GPU-into approximately the same space once needed to fit 2.6 billion. Increasing transistor density by greater than 60% is more than just a feat of engineering-it’s responsible for the world’s most powerful and advanced GPU.1

Designed to push not only the boundaries of DirectX® 11 gaming, the GCN Architecture is also AMD’s first design specifically engineered for general computing. Equipped with up to 32 compute units (2048 stream processors), each containing a scalar coprocessor, AMD’s 28nm GPUs are more than capable of handling workloads-and programming languages-traditionally exclusive to the processor. Coupled with the dramatic rise of GPU-aware programming languages like C++ AMP and OpenCL™, the GCN Architecture is truly the right architecture for the right time.

Performance

In simple terms, increasing the number of transistors in a GPU has a big impact on the potential performance of a graphics card-but transistors alone are not enough. It takes a truly great design, like the GCN Architecture, to effectively utilize that potential for real-world performance.

Below you will find just a few examples of how this truly next-generation architecture delivers on one very simple design goal: enable the world’s most powerful graphics cards.1

Starting with GPU utilization, AMD has taken great strides to ensure that the GCN Architecture is capable of efficiently using its hardware resources. This seems like such a simple idea, but designing a GPU to frequently approach its peak theoretical performance is a challenge the GCN Architecture tackles with ease.

The GCN Architecture is designed for improved utilization, which ensures that the GPU is making optimal use of its resources for maximum performance.

DirectX® 11 tessellation has also seen incredible improvement from previous AMD Radeon™ products. On the left in the image below, a chart plots the AMD Radeon™ HD 7970’s performance across 32 levels of tessellation, and the results are stunning: a 350% boost at the highest factors.2 And on the right, the GCN Architecture’s ability to effectively utilize its potential again shines through: highly-tessellated games are decisively faster by an average of 79%!

The GCN Architecture also benefits from dramatically improved tessellation performance. Games featuring this DirectX® 11 technology are considerably faster than they were on the previous generation of AMD Radeon™ products.

Every gamer knows that the GPU’s clockspeed also has a big impact on the performance of a graphics card, and the GCN Architecture keeps that in mind.

But what many don’t know is that every graphics card is designed to draw only a certain amount of power from your PC’s power supply. This is called the Thermal Design Profile, or TDP, and it’s critical that the GPU architecture is capable of making the most of every watt. The GCN Architecture can do that thanks to a technology called AMD PowerTune technology.

AMD PowerTune is an intelligent system that performs real-time analysis of the games and applications that utilize a GPU. Examples of such software might include Battlefield 3 or Furmark. In the event that an application is not making the most of the power available to the GPU, AMD PowerTune can improve that application’s performance by raising the GPU’s clockspeed by up to 30%! Best of all, this technology is completely automatic and is designed specifically to improve gaming performance.

Available on all 28nm AMD Radeon™ products, AMD PowerTune is designed to enable significantly higher clockspeeds in your favorite games-automatically!

Image Quality

But performance is not enough for today’s demanding gamers. Image quality, or the clarity and accuracy of textures and effects, is equally important. The GCN Architecture is equipped with three key technologies that dramatically raise the bar in this regard.

Partially Resident Textures (PRT)
Even in the latest titles, gamers may have noticed that games often re-use or repeat textures, particularly on the ground or in background scenery such as mountains or trees. This is because increasing the physical size or number of textures in a game can have a negative impact on the performance of a GPU. PRT is a radical new technology that hopes to break this cycle.

PRT can utilize absolutely enormous texture files, up to 32 terabytes large, with minimal performance impact. PRT accomplishes this by streaming small bits of these massive textures into the GPU as needed, giving compatible games a virtually endless supply of unique texture data it can apply to the game world. The GCN Architecture in 28nm AMD Radeon™ products is the first GPU design to feature a hardware implementation of this technology.

Partially Resident Textures (PRT) enables future games to utilize ultra-high resolution textures with the same performance as today’s small and often repetitive textures.

Improved Anisotropic Filtering (AF)

Available on every modern GPU, anisotropic filtering is a technique that assists the GPU in making sure textures in your favorite games remain razor sharp, even at a distance. Most games now offer the ability to enable this feature, and the AMD Catalyst™ driver suite has long provided players with the option to force enable anisotropic filtering for all of their games.

Where every GPU design differs, however, is in the way the anisotropic filtering is actually executed. The GCN Architecture has been specifically optimized to produce superior results when AF is enabled.

Improved anisotropic filtering in products like the AMD Radeon™ HD 7900 Series ensure gamers get sharper, better textures when this technology is enabled.

Improved DirectX® 11 Tessellation
As DirectX® 11 titles become more mature, game developers are naturally pushing the envelope of realism by utilizing a greater degree of special rendering effects. One such effect is tessellation, which can dynamically generate additional detail in a scene on the fly.

A wireframe scene of a rally car in DiRT 3 driving through water. On the left, notice there are no ripples. On the right, after tessellation, there is new and dynamic detail in the game.

As with anisotropic filtering, tessellation is not new to GPUs, but the manner in which tessellation is executed can have a large impact on the gaming experience. Because of this, the GCN Architecture has again been optimized to deliver up to 4x the performance of the AMD Radeon™ HD 6000 Series in heavily-tessellated games.

Packaging & Accessories

The front of the packaging features typical IceQ styling with a frosty backdrop behind the main features of the card. To date, all modern IceQ packages look near identical save for the product title with the IceQ design remaining the same throughout the range.

Flipping the box over we find that HIS are keen to push The IceQ cooling claiming it is both cooler and quieter than the reference design. They also state the card has full solid state capacitors, solid state chokes and dynamic phase control PWM IC.

Removing the outer sleeve we find a black box with the HIS emblem strewn across the front lid which upon opening we get to the product itself. The Card is held in place by a rigid foam brace, beneath which we find the accessories.

The accessory list is short and sweet with just a driver disk, 6 pin-MOLEX PSU adaptor, Crossfire bridge and a VGA-DVI adaptor.

Let’s move on to the card…

First Look

The card is a break form the normal opaque and ridiculously long IceQ cooler we are familiar with. Instead we get a smaller, black shroud with a centralised 80mm blue ‘iTurbo’ fan complete with chrome effect surround.

We see HIS have stuck with their trademark blue PCB to the rear of the card. While we are not averse to blue, we at Vortez believe a GPU PCB should either be black. Any colourisation, while individual, does not always fit with PC colour schemes and thus limits the attractiveness of the product, particularly to those who care about such things.

From the side we see the twin heat nickel plated heatpipes dominate the appearance. You may also notice that the shroud of the cooler protrudes somewhat which we thought very odd as it seems to make the card longer for no purpose.

the I/O area features a DVI port, HDMI and 2x Mini DisplayPort.

This card only requires a single 6 pin power plug capable of producing 75W with a PSU rated at 500W as a minimum. While these are HIS’s recommendations, we feel this is perhaps very conservative with a 400W PSU likely to be ample to power both this card and a mid range PC.

Finally, we see the card has a single Crossfire tab meaning it can only be linked to one other card from the same AMD family.

Let’s look in closer detail…

Closer Look

The cooler was very easy to remove with just four spring loaded screws holding it in place. The cooler comprises of a aluminium finned array solder to a copper baseplate complete with
twin Heatpipes to assist in heat dissipation.

The PCB is a fairly standard affair with the memory chips framing the GPU core. Surprisingly, HIS have opted to position the VRM at the opposite end to the power port which may not be the most efficient place.

The VRM is a 4+1 affair and as the packaging promised, is made up from solid state chokes (3 x MOSfet each) and capacitors.

The memory is surprising in that it is produced by Elpida. With a product code of W1032BBBG 50-F we know this memory will require 1.455-1.5 VDD to operate correctly and is specified to run at 5.0 Gbps (effective).

Finally we reach the Pitcairn XT core. Based on 28nm technology it has a transistor count of 2.8 billion and is a trimmed down version of the range topping Tahiti core found on flagship HD7900 series cards.

Test Setup

How we test graphics cards

Testing a graphics card is an extremely lengthy process. We sometimes see reviews where a graphic card has been tested using out of date equipment, out of date games and out of date drivers. While the latter can be excused due to the sheer amount of driver updates making a thorough review impossible we will however notify the reader when we have used a different driver to the normal for example a pre-release driver. For the most part however we will always use the same hardware and where possible the same drivers unless a newer driver rectifies an issue we have encountered or significantly improves performance to such an extent that continuing with an outdated driver is not feasible.

We have also seen the emergence of frame time analysis. We covered this in a separate article here: GPU Reviews: Why Frame Time Analysis is important so we won’t go into the reasoning again but to summarise, our testing comprises both FPS testing and perhaps arguably more importantly, frame time analysis. We also look at overall performance by equating averages across the games and finally before concluding our review we take a look at value for money.

HardwareWith the latest Intel chipset release we decided to update our ageing X58 setup to the new X79 chipset. Not only that but we will be using the flagship Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition processor clocked to 4.5GHz to ensure we have no CPU bottlenecks. With 16GB of ram on board there should be minimal paging so the benchmarks we run today will hopefully give a true reflection of the graphics card’s performance.

High End Graphics cards on test:

HIS HD7850 IceQ X 1GB GDDR5
(AMD CAT 13.3 beta)
[color=red]HIS HD7790 IceQ Turbo 1GB GDDR5 (AMD CAT 13.3 beta)
[color=green]MSI GeForce GTX 650Ti BOOST OC 2GB GDDR5 (Forceware 314.22)

Motherboard: ASUS P9X79 Pro
CPU: Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition @ 4.5GHz
RAM – 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair Vengeance (Red) DDR3 @ 1866MHz 9-10-9-27
Power Supply – Thortech Thunderbolt Plus 1200W
Hard Drive – Kingston HyperX 240GB
Cooler – Corsair H100

Benchmarks
If you are a regular reader of our reviews you will know we like to test the latest hardware with the latest games and benchmarks on the market. Here are the games we have chosen:

Battlefield 3
Crysis 3
Far Cry 3
BioShock Infinite
DiRT: Showdown
The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

We also take into consideration the benchmarkers out there so have included 3 of the more popular synthetic benchmarks available:

Unigine: Valley
Unigine: Heaven 4
Futuremark 3DMark Firestrike

Let’s see how today’s graphics card performed…

Temperature, Acoustics and Power Consumption

Power Consumption

To test for power consumption we use the included iPower Meter found with our Thortech PSU. As system load figures obviously differ from idle it is extremely difficult to get an accurate figure of system draw and then simply take this figure away from the overall amount because each game will generate varying levels of CPU and hard drive activity. Dynamic power adjustments which fluctuate in game will also affect accurate power figures thus rendering any such power consumption calculations redundant at worst and approximate at best.

We will therefore take our system readings averaged over a benchmark run of Tessmark (100% load) and after 20 minutes of being idle in Windows 7. These can then be used as a comparison to other graphics cards to determine how much more or less power you can expect a GPU to consume.

The HIS consumed the most power out of the three cards despite having 1GB less memory than the NVIDIA counterpart. That said, 3W is well within the realm of digital error so it is fair to assume both cards are equal in this department consuming around the 250W.

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 would normally run Furmark for 20 minutes, taking the absolute maximum temperature attained however we found that this throttled the card and resulted in spurious results. So we set Heaven running continuously for 20 minutes and used this as a temperature result as the card did not throttle with this application.

The HIS card topped the charts but only just hitting 60c under load conditions. The card was however considerably cooler than the competition when idle.

Acoustics

We have been impressed with the IceQ coolers temperature management in the past but the IceQ coolers were notoriously loud when put under pressure. I am however happy to report the IceQ X cooler is much quieter. While it is still noticeable upon load with the fan set to manual speeds, in auto mode it barely rose above a murmur.

Futuremark 3DMark Fire Strike (Synthetic)

Fire Strike is the new showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for high-performance gaming PCs. It is Futuremark’s most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today.

Unigine: Heaven 4 (Synthetic)

Heaven Benchmark with its current version 4.0 is a GPU-intensive benchmark that hammers graphics cards to the limits. This powerful tool can be effectively used to determine the stability of a GPU under extremely stressful conditions, as well as check the cooling system’s potential under maximum heat output. It provides completely unbiased results and generates true in-game rendering workloads across all platforms.

Unigine: Valley (Synthetic)

Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird’s-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user.

Battlefield 3 (FPS)

Battlefield 3 leaps ahead of its time with the power of Frostbite™ 2, the next instalment of DICE’s cutting-edge game engine. This state-of-the-art technology is the foundation on which Battlefield 3 is built, delivering enhanced visual quality, a grand sense of scale, massive destruction, dynamic audio and incredibly lifelike character animations. As bullets whiz by, walls crumble, and explosions throw you to the ground, the battlefield feels more alive and interactive than ever before. In Battlefield 3, players step into the role of the elite U.S. Marines where they will experience heart-pounding missions across diverse locations including Paris, Tehran and New York.

Average and minimum frames per second were measured using Fraps during the parking lot scene on Operation Sword Breaker. High and Ultra presets were loaded at both resolutions.

Crysis 3 (FPS)

Crysis 3 from Electronic Arts is the fourth instalment of the Crysis franchise and sequel to Crysis 2. It uses the CryEngine 3 gaming engine which is perhaps the most advanced gaming engine to date and therefore the most demanding. The meme ‘Can it run Crysis’ has never been so apparent…

Far Cry 3 (FPS)

Far Cry 3 is a tropical survival shooter video game from Ubisoft Montreal and Massive studios. It’s open world design has similar traits to it’s forbear Far Cry 2 but it does it all so much better. With stunning visuals and settings to bring a PC to it’s knee’s, this game is so much more than the ‘just another console port’ it was reported to be.

BioShock Infinite (FPS)

Set in 1912 during the growth of American exceptionalism, BioShock Infinite is a thrid person shooter developed by Irrational games and published by 2K Games. It is the third instalment of the BioShock franchise. the game utilises the Unreal Engine 3, modifying it with their own lighting engine to present a visually stunning experience like no other.

DiRT: Showdown

DiRT Showdown is the new arcade racing game from the team that brought you the award-winning DiRT series, uncaged in 2012. Pick up and play controls combine with electrifying events, frenzied crowds and stunning graphics to deliver high octane, dive in and drive thrills from event one.

The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim (FPS)

Skyrim is not a direct successor to the very popular Oblivion. Instead it takes place 200 years after the events of Oblivion. The non-linear playing that made the Elder Scrolls such a popular series does however make a return along with the beautiful scenery the encompasses the world of Skyrim.

Average and minimum frames per second were measured using Fraps during the drop down passage to Riverwood. V-sync was disabled to allow fluctuating (higher the 60) FPS for these runs. It is however recommended that v-sync is left enabled during normal gameplay due to the games dynamics.

Value For Money

For those on a budget, this is perhaps the most important section of a graphics card review. For everyone else it will certainly make you think twice before calling the bank manager for an overdraft request. We calculate Value for money by taking the cost of the product and then dividing that figure by the overall performance figure which gives us a result in the guise of £ per frame – in effect how much every frame per second will cost you.

Gaming Experience (Frame Time Analysis)

Gaming experience is what we like to refer to as the Laymans term for Frame Time analysis. Frame time analysis is in its most basic sense how smooth your gameplay will be. Ever had a powerful card rendering at 100FPS with ease for it to stall for a split second before resuming? This is what Frame Time Analysis shows us: The peaks during an otherwise smooth gaming experience. This is presented to you in two ways, by showing you a line graph of a 60 second FTA capture using FRAPS and then by deducing the average and 99th percentile response times.

Some claim this should be the way graphics cards are tested and we won’t argue here because there is little point in having a card which churns out an average 100FPS if it has micro stutters lasting 50ms (GPU response time) which spoils the fluidity of the game.

Comment

The graphs above may appear very daunting however, what you want to see is a smooth line (not fuzzy) with very few peaks and troughs. While you are unlikely to notice peaks and troughs below 30ms, any peak above 30ms may be seen as a stutter during gameplay. This will however depend greatly on your own perceptions.

Average and 99th Percentile response times (Frame Time Analysis)

Here we take a look at both average (black) and 99th Percentile (coloured) response times of the graphics cards. It is highly unlikely a user will notice any micro stutter (also incorrectly referred to as lag but the effect can be interpreted to be similar) at anything below 30ms but every gamers perception differs.

[fullimage=21431]

Overclocking

For overclocking our AMD cards we will be using MSI Afterburner as this gives us all of the options we require.

Above is a screenshot of GPU-Z showing the reference speeds and reference boost clocks

Above is a screenshot of the actual overclock we achieved Afternurner. A pretty good 190 MHz was achieved on the core but more impressive was the memory with a 250MHz boost equating to an effective GDDR5 clockspeed of 5800MHz, 800 MHz faster than the specified memory speed – good old Elpida!

The resulting overclock allowed a decent improvement on the Heaven 4.0 benchmark with an extra 160 points gained for free.

Conclusion

To be fair to the HD7850 IceQ X it is an aging card and ‘only’ comes with 1GB. There are however 2GB versions available which in fairness would no doubt compete more favourably to the GTX650Ti BOOST. Clearly though, the HIS HD7850 can still holds its own when performance is compared to newer entry level GPUs. We have a 4GB version of the HIS HD7850 IceQ coming up soon so if the results today are anything to go by, the HD7850 with 4GB may well be the card to go for.

The design of the card was a little odd, with the shroud overhanging the PCB for no apparent reason other than aesthetics which if we are being honest, looked a little cheap with the chrome surround fan. Acoustics were however good and temperatures among the best we have tested at this price point so clearly, there is method to the madness.

The HIS HD7850 IceQ X stands between the HD7790 and NVIDIA GTX650Ti BOOST. When we first reviewed the GTX650Ti people still claimed the HD7850 was the faster card and while this is still true, it is not the best performing card. Sure it is slightly faster in terms of raw power when churning out raw FPS figures in many games but we feel the NVIDIA card gave us better fluid gameplay, a feeling that was reinforced by our frametime analysis results.

Value for money has to go to the HIS HD7790 however, this card struggles when filtering is applied so we would reserve this recommendation to those who are on a strict budget and only use for basic, no frills gaming. All three cards struggled with Crysis 3, none of them managing over 30FPS. We wouldn’t recommend any of these cards if that is the one game you want to play most.

To summarise:
The HIS HD7850 IceQ X is still a good graphics card. While newer cards are on the market, the HD7850 is still a very good entry/mid level buy and as long as you don’t expect huge FPS, you won’t be too disappointed.

Pros
+ Good Overclocking
+ Competitive performance
+ Low-noise

Cons
– Only 1GB GDDR5