We don't know for sure at this point, and we won't until the NDA is up and the cards released but it's looking likely that:
- both at stock clocks the 7850 will likely be slightly slower or about the same speed as 6950, but lower power consumption.
- Overclocked, the 7850 will likely have significantly more OC margin and end up faster than an OCed 6950.
Performance is said to be somewhere between the 4870 and 7970
Let's not forget that most 6950's can be unlocked and are essentially 6970's in sheep's clothing. It will be interesting to see OC comparisons for these 2 cards.
from the recent review, it seems like ATI needs more cards to fill more price points. i'm wondering what they are going to do for the $199 tier. very doubtful that they would price a 7850 for 199, if it beats a 6950 or 6970.
or lets say they do price 7850 $199 and 7950 like $250. then
what happens at the $300-$400 range?
Going by the specs and product positioning it should be slightly faster than the 6950. Same for the 7870 and 6970.
Kinda sad that they don't have a direct replacement for the HD 6870, unless they make an HD 7830 and I highly doubt that would exist.
After seeing 79XX and 77XX series pricing I just said a prayer over my GTX 480 in hopes that it lasts for another year or two and I can avoid this madness.
and some sources are claiming that power usage will fall between a light bulb and a Hummer
Quiet a gap between the 10 CU 7770 and the 28CU 7950, I would expect for there to be at least 3 78** SKUs, a 7830 might just come out later built from defective cores
You can probably start estimating the performance of the 7850 and 7870 at this point based on the expected configuration of Pitcairn and the performance of Cape Verde and Tahiti. Normalized to the 7770 you have 2.2x the shaders and TUs, 1.5x the ROPs, 0.95x the core clock, and 2.44x the memory bandwidth.
Compared to Tahiti, Pitcairn will have 0.69x the shaders and TUs, 0.75x the ROPs, close to the same clock speed, and 0.67x the memory bandwidth.
Cape Verde to Tahiti you see 3.2x the shaders and TU, 2x the ROPs, 0.93x the clocks, and 3.7x the memory bandwidth.
At 1200p per TPU, in BF3 the 7970 is 2.5x faster than the 7770, in B:AC it's 2.2x, in Metro it's 2.7x, in Unigine it's 2.5x. Games like Skyrim show lower gains, but they're less GPU bound.
My guess would be that the 7870 will be somewhere in the range of 70% faster than Cape Verde, which should put it around the same level as the 6970 is games like BF3, and considerably faster in games that benefit the new arch, like Civ5.
You can probably start estimating the performance of the 7850 and 7870 at this point based on the expected configuration of Pitcairn and the performance of Cape Verde and Tahiti. Normalized to the 7770 you have 2.2x the shaders and TUs, 1.5x the ROPs, 0.95x the core clock, and 2.44x the memory bandwidth.
Compared to Tahiti, Pitcairn will have 0.69x the shaders and TUs, 0.75x the ROPs, close to the same clock speed, and 0.67x the memory bandwidth.
Cape Verde to Tahiti you see 3.2x the shaders and TU, 2x the ROPs, 0.93x the clocks, and 3.7x the memory bandwidth.
At 1200p per TPU, in BF3 the 7970 is 2.5x faster than the 7770, in B:AC it's 2.2x, in Metro it's 2.7x, in Unigine it's 2.5x. Games like Skyrim show lower gains, but they're less GPU bound.
My guess would be that the 7870 will be somewhere in the range of 70% faster than Cape Verde, which should put it around the same level as the 6970 is games like BF3, and considerably faster in games that benefit the new arch, like Civ5.