Introduction

The Radeon HD 7700 series wasn't kind to AMD due to the price of the series compared to current models still for sale under the HD 6800 series name and while the new HD 7800 series is a replacement to the HD 6800 series, the price point they'll come in at means they're going to be seen against the HD 6900 series.

The good thing about the HD 6900 series is that it pretty much no longer exists on the market, though. Unlike the HD 6800 series which is not only still being sold, but being sold in large quantities at super aggressive price points due to recent rebates.

While the HD 7700 series left us feeling overall pretty flat, the same can't be said for AMD's new HD 7900 series which offered us awesome performance. Along with strong numbers, though, we saw the new 28nm based cards run cooler, quieter and draw less power at both idle and load - they impressed us a lot.

We've got our fingers crossed that the HD 7800 series sits more in line with the HD 7900 series than it does the HD 7700 series. Considering AMD also have no older previous generation video cards at the $249 price point for the HD 7850 and $349 price point for the HD 7870, we're already off to a better start.

Of course what's really going to matter is the performance of the new model. Before we look at that, though, we need to see what's going on with the card itself. While we'd normally start off with the packaging, because we're dealing with a reference card from AMD, we don't have one. Once we've looked at the card and taken a closer look at the main specifications, we'll move into our testbed, which then of course leads us into the performance side of things.

Well, that just about covers that, so let's just take a closer look at the card and see what exactly is going on with this new series and model from AMD.