Gigabyte HD7850 2GB any good??

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

A few B grade ones have popped up recently and I was wondering what people think of it?? Is it any good or should I spend the extra £20 to £30 on another HD7850 or a GTX660 as the latter has dropped in price.

I know the HD7850 is meant to be decent for overclocking,but are more models voltage locked now?? I am looking at some of the Sapphire and VTX models. I don't really want to spend much over £150 TBH and need a card under 9.5" long.

 

[Marine-RX179]

Most of them B-grades 7850 2GB are sold at around £125-£130, which is not that much of a saving, particularly when you have to take into the risk of possible problem/issue (whatever reason it was returned...not saying all B-grade card will have problem), shorter warranty (only 90 days with OcUK, and whatever remain warranty with the manufacturer), and no game bundle included (Gibbo has made it really clear no games will be included with the B-grade cards; but of course if you find some game codes inside the box, then count yourself lucky ).

I'd still rather get the new card with the game bundles (think you can get around £30..or close to it for selling the two games?)...make more sense than the little savings.

 

[LtMatt]

Most of them B-grades 7850 2GB are sold at around £125-£130, which is not that much of a saving, particularly when you have to take into the risk of possible problem/issue (whatever reason it was returned...not saying all B-grade card will have problem), shorter warranty (only 90 days with OcUK, and whatever remain warranty with the manufacturer), and no game bundle included (Gibbo has made it really clear no games will be included with the B-grade cards; but of course if you find some game codes inside the box, then count yourself lucky ).

I'd still rather get the new card with the game bundles (think you can get around £30..or close to it for selling the two games?)...make more sense than the little savings.

+1.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Thanks for the replies.

The current card I have is an HD5850 1GB,which I can get a 30% overclock on,so i get around HD5870 1GB level performance. It runs what I want fine ATM,TBF,but I am getting some upgradetitus.

A few upcoming games I am interested in are:
1.)The next Metro game
2.)Remember Me
3.)Saints Row 4
4.)D3 expansion

I can also get a Sparkle GTX660 OC with Metro:Last Light for £135,and a VTX HD7850 X-edition(pre-overclocked to 1GHZ) for around £140 to £150 with the game bundle. I could probably ditch the games,and get the HD7850 down to around £115 to £125.

OTH,Metro:Last Light is probably worth at least £20 to £25 anyway.

Edit!!

Here is the Sparkle card:

http://translate.google.co.uk/trans...http://www.xfastest.com/thread-96250-1-1.html

 

[Davedree]

theres been quite a few posts on here and on the net in other places , of 7850's randomly black screening between 10mins to an hour. i don't have solid info but my opinion is that cards affected suffer the capacitor black screen issue that was discovered on the Sapph 7870.
And quite a few of them were gigabyte 7850s,
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18491080
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18482055&highlight=7850
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18477859&highlight=7850+black+screen
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18476678&highlight=7850+black+screen
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?p=24086232#post24086232

If you're lucky and get a good 7850 then if it clocks to around 1175/1400 its pretty close to 7870 and a standard 800mhz 7950 performance. I bought a b grade sapphire dual x 7850 on here and it works really well.

 

[Litmoose]

You can sell 5850s on Ebay for about 150 at the moment(something about that gen of card being good for bit coin farming) so essentially you could upgrade for free and get a brand new card.

 

[Jony27]

5870s are the ones going for that much but the 5850s shouldnt be that much behind

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Thanks again for all the replies. I went for the GTX660 in the end,and hopefully it won't cost too much once I ditch my HD5850.

 

[Marine-RX179]

Thanks again for all the replies. I went for the GTX660 in the end,and hopefully it won't cost too much once I ditch my HD5850.

The GTX660 should still be overall a bit faster than the GTX580. But from views it has shown that in some games the 192-bit memory bandwidth hurt the frame rate quite a bit when using 4xAA with the frame rate dropping noticeably in bigger margin than cards with wider memory-bus, so it might worth dropping the AA down to 2x if you were willing to trade AA quality for performance.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Yeah,I was aware of that,and I would have liked to have got an HD7850 2GB,but it seems the cheaper cards at many retailers don't have the bundle any more as it has dried up. The VTX HD7850 2GB was only around £140 with two games too,and is a reasonable overclocker too,and the HD7850 PCS+ seems to be EOL now.

I have quite a small case,which won't fit the HD7870LE/XT cards which is a shame,as that would have been around £140 to £150 if I ditched the games.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

A few pictures of the card.

The package comes with no accessories,but comes with a software disc,installation guide and a copy of Metro:Last Light.

 

[whyscotty]

Please delete

 

[varkanoid]

DO NOT touch the b grade Gigabyte 7850's. Its a lottery whether you get a good one or not.

Gigabyte Radeon HD7850 OC 2Gb - Black screen/Sound loop