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

Benchmark Results: 3DMark 11 And Unigine

3DMark 11

As usual, we kick off the benchmarks with Futuremark’s synthetic 3DMark 11. This is the only test in which we'll run all three presets, and we see the dip in performance typical of GCN-based cards at the Extreme level.

A card with these specs was never intended for this test's Extreme setting. Using more conservative options, the 768-shader Pitcairn-based sample beats Nvidia's GeForce GTX 560 Ti by a small margin. We consider that to be quite an achievement considering 3DMark 11 tends to favor Nvidia cards.

Unigine Heaven 2.5

Unigine’s Heaven 2.5 paints a similar picture, with our Pitcairn engineering sample coming in just ahead of Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 560 Ti, nearly putting it on par with a Radeon HD 6950.

Unigine Sanctuary

In Unigine’s Sanctuary, the engineering sample can even beat out a GeForce GTX 570, although we should mention that cards based on AMD’s new GCN architecture generally do very well in this benchmark.

Meanwhile, AMD’s previous-generation cards fall to the back of the pack, even ending up behind the Radeon HD 7770. Speaking of which, the HD 7750 interestingly comes in ahead of its bigger sibling. We’ll chalk this up to a driver issue for now, and re-evaluate performance using the next driver update in the course of our normal charts revision.

Benjamin Kraft
  • 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