Overclocking
One thing that really disapointed me was the lack of voltage control on this particular card. For benchmarkers that can be a dealbreaker. If you want to go with a mild overclock there is enough voltage to do so, but if you want to push the card to its limits you will come up very short. With that being said, the card will still overclock to a comfortable 1100mhz core frequency. The memory is rated for 5Ghz so I ran it at the rated speed. I am sure that it could easily bypass that frequency, but memory can really be hit and miss.
Temperatures:
Using the stock automatic fan profile the maximum temperature while overclocked was 62*C after running Heaven benchmark. This is very cool running and a nice change to previous generations of cards that would run very hot. Keep in mind that very little hot air will be blown out of the back of your case due to the design of the fan.
GPU-Z
3dMark Vantage
Physx Off:
A 4000 point boost in vantage?! Holy cow this thing scales amazingly with added frequency.
Heaven Benchmark
Direct X 9:
Roughly a 20% boost in speed? I love this little card.
Direct X 11:
This card continues to scale great with just a simple overclock.
Far Cry 2
Cards like this are what make overclocking great. Buying a cheaper card, overclocking it and enjoying the performance of a more expensive/ faster card.
Battlefield 3:
After overclocking, the playability of Battlefield 3 only increased. The Average FPS increased and smoothness went up as well. The 7850 can hang with the big boys maxed out, even if doesn’t get the same super high frame rates as the more expensive cards.
Stalker: Call of Pripyat
Again, overclocking helps this card out a bunch.
Street Fighter IV
I love the performance boosts this card gains though overclocking.
