I've had my Sapphire 7850 OC for a few months now, and I'm largely happy with it, but sometimes, it just doesn't seem to perform like I thought it would.
I'll use Battlefield 3 as an example, because it is such a demanding multiplayer game: I just purchased the Premium service, and I enjoy the new maps a lot, but the framerate on them can get really bad. With everything maxed out minus AA, I can get drops to the low 30s. Turn down the settings, you say? Well, when I change everything to its lowest, while staying in those same areas at those same moments, I still only get around 40. Furthermore, as I'm currently on an old CRT, this is happening at its standard resolution of 1280x1024. Is this normal for a 7850? Like I said, this is on the expansion maps. The stock maps do not give me the same heavy FPS drops, but I'm not always entirely pleased with the framerate on those either, and the same goes for some other games.
Drivers are 12.9 Beta (with CAP 1, although I'm not sure if those needed to be installed). And while I do think my other PC specs are up to scratch:
Motherboard: Gigabyte MA770T-UD3P rev 1.0 (BIOS up to date)
CPU: AMD Phenom II X2 550, unlocked to X4 B50 @ 3.7 GHz (well cooled, no errors in two 12 hour sessions of Prime95)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LP 2x4GB DDR3 PC3-12800 CL9
Hard drive: Seagate Barracuda 3TB
PSU: Corsair VX450W
OS: Windows 7
Finally, I might add that I have
posted here before regarding poor overclocking performance, in case that could provide some clue.