PowerColor HD 7850 PCS+ Review - PAGE 1

After the launch of the Kepler series, NVIDIA has essentially locked in the high-end market. Yet without a mid-range Kepler product, the AMD Radeon HD 7870 and HD 7850 still reign supreme in their respective price segments. This is due to Pitcairn based graphics cards having the same performance as last generation’s high-end boards, all while consuming less energy and creating less noise. The Pitcairn graphics we are going to be examining today comes to us from PowerColor, but seeing as it is part of the PCS family, it sports more efficient design and higher clocks speeds.

As part of AMD's Southern Islands architecture family, the PowerColor HD 7850 PCS+ comes with all the latest technologies such as Eyefinity 2.0, AMD HD3D technology, and Accelerated Parallel Processing. PowerColor has enhanced the reference board design by including their Gold Power Kit design along with a DrMos Digital PWM, multi-phase design and a large direct contact heatsink. Additionally, the PowerColor HD 7850 PCS+ has higher clock speeds than the reference boards. Out of the box, the PCS+ card has a GPU clock speed of 1000MHz, up from 860MHz, and a memory clock of 1225MHz.

Even with higher clock speeds, improved power circuitry and a robust thermal solution, the PowerColor PCS+ is priced only $10 higher than the reference models.