As we go through the benchmarks, you’ll see that the Radeon HD 7800s do an incredibly good job of applying Adaptive anti-aliasing to our Skyrim benchmark sequence. The numbers were so impressive, in fact, that we went out of our way to snap screenshots in order to validate the resulting image quality, too. As it turns out, they do; Adaptive AA on the 7800s looks similar to the Radeon HD 6900s, putting our minds at ease.
While we were scrutinizing those Adaptive AA results, however, we couldn’t help but notice that some textures appeared noticeably blurrier in the Radeon HD 7800 screenshots. We first assumed a setting had changed in the game or driver. But double-checking proved that wasn’t the case. Further investigation showed that the Radeon HD 7800-series cards match the Radeon HD 6900’s crisper output if the Catalyst A.I. texture filtering quality slider is moved from its default (Quality) to the highest (High Quality) setting.
So, to be clear, using the exact same 8.95.5 driver at its default settings, the Radeon HD 7800s deliver blurrier textures than the Radeon HD 6900s. Take a look:

The differences are not colossal, and you probably wouldn’t notice them during game play (we didn’t). But they're easily identifiable in screen shots. We don’t want to overstate the impact of what we’re seeing. But, on the other hand, we take reductions in image quality seriously because the slope is slippery, and we’ve seen this before.
This issue came up very late in our testing. We asked AMD for comment, but don’t have an official response as of yet. Moreover, questions remain: Are the Radeon HD 7800 cards enjoying higher performance as a result of an optimization? Could this be an unintentional bug? How much better would the Radeon HD 6900s look if we also bumped their Catalyst A.I. slider up to High Quality? We absolutely plan to answer all of those questions after we collect more data. And we’ll update the story once we get some more feedback from AMD.
- Radeon HD 7870 and 7850: A Paper Launch by Any Other Name
- Features, MLAA 2.0, And SSAA Updates
- Texture Optimizations And The Radeon HD 7000s
- Test Setup And Benchmarks
- Benchmark Results: 3DMark 11 And Unigine Heaven
- Benchmark Results: Battlefield 3
- Benchmark Results: Metro 2033
- Benchmark Results: Aliens Vs. Predator
- Benchmark Results: Crysis 2
- Benchmark Results: Mafia 2
- Benchmark Results: GTA IV
- Benchmark Results: Batman: Arkham Asylum
- Benchmark Results: DiRT 3
- Benchmark Results: StarCraft II
- Benchmark Results: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
- Benchmark Results: World Of Warcraft
- Benchmark Results: Sandra 2012
- Benchmark Results: MediaEspresso, Luxmark 2.0, Bitmining
- Power Consumption
- Temperature And Noise
- Radeon HD 7800s: Great Performance, Price, And Power. But Are They Ready?
low settings were benched at the lowest resolution
mid settings at 1920x1080
and the highest at 2560x1440 (and not 2560x1600)
i mean most of us play games in the 1920x1080(1200) range, and if we are spending 200+ on a gpu, we will have about that kind of monitor... while if you have a 2560x1440(1600) monitor, you aren't wasting your time with these cards, even if its for crossfire.
what im saying is i would rather see the 1920x1080 resolution get the highest possible settings, as thats what most of us who want to max the settings will play at.
i mean when will it be launched in market
Looking at the performance graphs, 7870 performs very close to 7950 which has 40% more SPs and a 384 bit memory interface. I think AMD reduced the performance of 79xx series on purpose so that they can release a better card just before the launch of Kepler.
It is there in the first page. "you won’t be able to buy the card until at least March 19th, AMD tells us."
what a card !!!
DAY 1 BUY !
And all of this can be had for $350. Without question the best deal in the lineup.
btw, none of the AMD partners use blower design cooler? wtf!!! Blower card is what I need! Especially my existing mid tower ATX aluminium case are old design from way back in AthlonXP.
low settings were benched at the lowest resolution
mid settings at 1920x1080
and the highest at 2560x1440 (and not 2560x1600)
i mean most of us play games in the 1920x1080(1200) range, and if we are spending 200+ on a gpu, we will have about that kind of monitor... while if you have a 2560x1440(1600) monitor, you aren't wasting your time with these cards, even if its for crossfire.
what im saying is i would rather see the 1920x1080 resolution get the highest possible settings, as thats what most of us who want to max the settings will play at.
Your are definitely right here m8