PowerColor HD 7850 PCS+ Review - PAGE 14

By design the PowerColor HD 7850 PCS+ is built to deliver better thermal performance, stability and lower acoustic levels. All of these make it superior to the reference models, but with a default clock speed of 1000MHz it is also much faster than the cards using the standard 860MHz clock. In our testing this led to the PowerColor model being around 10% to 13% faster than the reference model on average. This is actually a decent increase in performance, considering most overclocked graphics cards have only a 5% boost which translates to a marginal increase in performance. In addition, this card is built around high-quality components so even with the higher clock speeds, the risk of the power circuitry failing is reduced.

Along with the increased performance the PowerColor HD 7850 PCS+ also includes an exceptional thermal solution. In our testing the Pitcairn Pro GPU never exceeded 68°C even during the most demanding benchmark. However, it did run slightly hotter than the reference model. The reason for this is the reference card we were sent used the larger heatsink designed for the HD 7870 with a blower style fan. This makes it hard to make a direct comparison, but the PowerColor design was close in terms of performance. When it came to noise levels though, the PowerColor model was in another class altogether. In fact, there was hardly a time when we heard the fan over the case fans installed in our Corsair 600T.

The only downside is there is very little headroom left for overclocking. This being the case, it would have been nice to see a voltage control option that allowed us to free up more juice for the core. This would result in a higher overclocking ceiling and since the thermal solution was more than adequate for the job, we wouldn't be surprised if the core could hit 1100MHz with additional power. Still, most HD 7850 graphics cards do max out at 1050MHz, so this is not an issue specific to this model.

For all that this card offers, it is surprising PowerColor is only charging $10 over cards using the reference design. This makes the final MSRP around $259, which in our opinion is a steal.