Benchmarking AMD's 768-Shader Pitcairn: Not For Public Consumption

Features
By Benjamin Kraft, Igor Wallossek
published

Last week we reported that an engineering sample card with 768 shaders accidentally found its way into our lab instead of the HD 7850 we were expecting. This GPU may be meant for engineers, but it piqued our interest, since it happens to fill a large gap.

Benchmark Results: Mafia II, GTA IV, And Batman Arkham City

Mafia II (DirectX 9)

Despite the progress we saw in Crysis 2, it looks like AMD still has some driver optimizations to tackle in a few older DX 9 titles. In the end, this has little impact on actual playability at our test settings, with the mystery chip turning in smooth frame rates. We would have expected some of the GCN-based cards to turn in higher numbers, based on the previous results, though.

GTA IV: Episodes from Liberty City (DirectX 9)

As in Mafia II, the Radeons finish just behind their GeForce counterparts, albeit by a slim margin. On the whole, all of these results are pretty good for a halfheartedly-ported console game.

Batman: Arkham City

Since the Radeon HD 7850 turns in unusually low numbers here, it’s only natural that its pared-back little sibling falls behind as well, placing behind the Radeon HD 6870 for the first time in this story. Still, the frame rates are still easily sufficient for smooth game play, although we wouldn’t mind seeing a few more driver tweaks for this title that seems to prefer Nvidia cards at the moment.

Benjamin Kraft
Benjamin Kraft
71 Comments Comment from the forums
  • woe96
    i want one, that a amazing place in performance and probably only be $200
    Reply
  • s3anister
    I would never buy this card for myself but I would find myself recommending a 1GB model, like you mentioned, to family and friends. If the price is right AMD could have a great mid range card.
    Reply
  • wolley74
    while a nice card, the 6850 is incredibly close and nearly $60 cheaper, the only thing is it does consume more power
    Reply
  • borden5
    oh man that single slot would be really nice for people who wanted small factor rig
    Reply
  • slomo4sho
    Wouldn't 2 7750s in crossfire perform better than this rig and also consume less power at the ~$200 price point?
    Reply
  • erraticfocus
    Slomo4shOWouldn't 2 7750s in crossfire perform better than this rig and also consume less power at the ~$200 price point?
    Maybe, depending on your local market, but the single slot and price point is the whole point to this...
    Reply
  • Say hello to the AMD HD Radeon 7790.
    Reply
  • pwnorbpwnd
    This card would be an AMAZING pick for an HTPC, Single slot, Low power, 2gb DDR3 for HDTV's, not to say 1gb wouldn't be okay. But really AMD, do it up! All of this positive feedback is great reason to make a crippled 7850!
    Reply
  • weatherdude
    This card performs great and a 1 GiB version selling at ~$200 would fill in a very large gap in the market. It would only make sense if AMD is cooking up something they'll likely call a 7830 to do just that. I guess though it would differ from this engineering sample if they're so insistent that they aren't bringing it to market. Maybe it'll have less texture units or ROPs.

    Still this card with 1 GiB at ~$200 would be pretty sweet AMD *nudge* *nudge*.
    Reply
  • Doesn't the 7770 have 40 Texture Units and not 14?
    Reply