AMD Radeon HD 7850

AMD’s Radeon HD 7850 is an end-of-life GCN 1.0 graphics card built on TSMC’s 28 nm process. The Pitcairn die contains 2,800 million transistors across 212 mm², giving a transistor density of 13.2M / mm². It launched on 2012-03-04 with a launch MSRP of 249 USD, sitting between Northern Islands and Sea Islands in the Southern Islands (HD 7800) generation. The card has 1024 shading units, 64 TMUs, and 32 ROPs, and it uses a 2 GB GDDR5 frame buffer on a 256-bit bus. Benchmark results place it at the 3rd percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 891. That score is 1% above the NVIDIA NVS 315 and 1.3% above the NVIDIA NVS 310, while sitting 6.7% below the AMD Radeon R9 390 and 6.9% below the AMD Radeon Pro WX Vega M GL.

How It Compares

NVIDIA NVS 315: The HD 7850’s average benchmark score of 891 is 1% higher than the NVS 315’s 882. That is a narrow lead, and the two cards sit close enough in the listed data that the HD 7850’s advantage is meaningful but not transformative. The HD 7850 still occupies the 3rd percentile of all GPUs, which shows how low this cluster of scores actually is.

NVIDIA NVS 310: Against the NVS 310, the HD 7850 posts 891 versus 880, a 1.3% advantage. This is the smallest gap in the nearest-rival set. The benchmark result gives the HD 7850 the higher average score, but the performance envelope remains close to the bottom of the database distribution.

AMD Radeon R9 390: The R9 390 averages 955, putting it 6.7% above the HD 7850. Unlike the NVS comparisons, this is a clear step upward in average score. The HD 7850 trails by a meaningful margin, and the R9 390 represents the stronger overall performer in this rival group.

AMD Radeon Pro WX Vega M GL: The Pro WX Vega M GL averages 957, 6.9% above the HD 7850. That is the largest listed deficit among the nearest rivals. The ordering of the four rivals places the HD 7850 between the low-scoring NVS cards and the higher-scoring R9 390 / WX Vega M GL pair.

Who Should Consider It

The HD 7850 is best suited to legacy API workloads and lighter visual tasks. Its Passmark DirectX 9 score of 74 is far above its DirectX 10 score of 17, DirectX 11 score of 23, and DirectX 12 score of 18. That pattern points toward older DirectX 9-era software rather than demanding modern titles. For DirectX 11 or DirectX 12 workloads, the scores indicate that high-detail, high-resolution settings are not realistic targets. Users focused on 2D desktop acceleration or basic GPU compute may find the card more acceptable, given the Passmark G2D score of 569 and GPU compute score of 1647. The 2 GB memory capacity and 153.6 GB/s bandwidth give it some headroom for moderate texture loads at high resolutions, but the 1.761 TFLOPS FP32 rate and 27.52 GPixel/s pixel rate set a ceiling on how much visual complexity the card can handle.

Memory Subsystem

The Radeon HD 7850 carries 2 GB of GDDR5 memory with a 256-bit bus. The memory clock is listed as 1200 MHz, or 4.8 Gbps effective, producing 153.6 GB/s of bandwidth. For a card at the 3rd percentile, this memory subsystem is comparatively substantial. High-resolution frame buffers and large texture sets benefit from the 256-bit bus and the GDDR5 bandwidth. However, the memory subsystem feeds 1024 shading units, 64 TMUs, and 32 ROPs, which are capable of 27.52 GPixel/s and 55.04 GTexel/s. The 153.6 GB/s bandwidth is the listed throughput ceiling, and it works alongside a relatively modest FP32 compute rate of 1.761 TFLOPS. In practice, this combination supports high resolutions more comfortably than it supports high-detail modern rendering.

FAQ

Q: What is the card’s average benchmark score and percentile?

A: The average benchmark score is 891, placing it in the 3rd percentile of all GPUs in the database.

Q: Which APIs does the Radeon HD 7850 support?

A: It supports DirectX 12 (11_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.2.170.

Q: What are the memory specifications?

A: It has 2 GB of GDDR5, a 256-bit bus, 153.6 GB/s of bandwidth, and a memory clock of 1200 MHz / 4.8 Gbps effective.

Q: What power supply and connector are required?

A: The TDP is 130 W, the suggested PSU is 300 W, and one 6-pin power connector is required.

Q: Does it have dedicated ray tracing or tensor cores?

A: No dedicated ray tracing core count and no tensor core count are listed in the specifications.

Q: When did it launch, and what are its generational neighbors?

A: It launched on 2012-03-04, with Northern Islands as its predecessor and Sea Islands as its successor. Its generation is Southern Islands (HD 7800).

Benchmark Performance

The HD 7850’s average benchmark score of 891 anchors its 3rd percentile ranking. In the nearest-rival comparison, the deltas are lopsided: it is 1% higher than the NVIDIA NVS 315 (882) and 1.3% higher than the NVIDIA NVS 310 (880), while being 6.7% lower than the AMD Radeon R9 390 (955) and 6.9% lower than the AMD Radeon Pro WX Vega M GL (957). That places the HD 7850 between two performance clusters: the low-end NVS cards and the higher-scoring R9 390 / WX Vega pair.

The individual Passmark results reinforce this positioning. The DirectX 9 score is 74, the DirectX 10 score is 17, the DirectX 11 score is 23, and the DirectX 12 score is 18. The DirectX 9 result is by far the strongest of the API-specific tests. The G2D score of 569 and G3D score of 3889 show a much larger 3D result than 2D result, while the GPU compute score of 1647 sits between them. Overall, the score profile shows a card that is stronger in legacy 3D and compute workloads than in modern API-heavy rendering.

Power and Cooling

The Radeon HD 7850 has a 130 W TDP and a suggested power supply rating of 300 W. It requires a single 6-pin power connector. The cooler takes up a dual-slot width, and the card measures 210 mm / 8.3 inches in length. The bus interface is PCIe 3.0 x16. These figures indicate a modest power envelope: the 130 W TDP does not demand an oversized power supply, and the 300 W suggested PSU is a reasonable pairing for the card’s benchmark profile.

Ray Tracing and Feature Set

The Pitcairn chip is built on GCN 1.0 architecture and fabricated on a 28 nm process. The specifications list 1024 shading units, 64 TMUs, and 32 ROPs. No ray tracing core count and no tensor core count are provided, so ray-traced and tensor-accelerated features cannot be quantified from the data. API support includes DirectX 12 (11_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.2.170. Display outputs are 1x DVI, 1x HDMI 1.4a, and 2x mini-DisplayPort 1.2. For workloads that rely on DirectX 12 or Vulkan, the listed API support is the relevant baseline, while the absence of RT and tensor core data leaves those feature areas unspecified.