Capsule Review: Sapphire's Radeon HD 7870 Overclock Edition
by Ryan Smith on April 28, 2012 4:45 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- Sapphire
- Radeon HD 7000
Crysis, Metro, DiRT 3, Shogun 2, & Batman
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-3960X @ 4.3GHz |
| Motherboard: | EVGA X79 SLI |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 9.2.3.1022 |
| Power Supply: | Antec True Power Quattro 1200 |
| Hard Disk: | Samsung 470 (256GB) |
| Memory: | G.Skill Ripjaws DDR3-1867 4 x 4GB (8-10-9-26) |
| Case: | Thermaltake Spedo Advance |
| Video Cards: |
AMD Radeon HD 7970 AMD Radeon HD 7950 AMD Radeon HD 7870 AMD Radeon HD 7850 AMD Radeon HD 7770 AMD Radeon HD 6970 AMD Radeon HD 6950 AMD Radeon HD 6870 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1GB |
| Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA ForceWare 295.73 AMD Catalyst 12.3 |
| OS: | Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit |
As the HD 7870 OE ships with a fairly mild overclock, it effectively splits the difference between the reference 7870 and the other 7870s we've seen with larger core overclocks. That said all of these cards are fairly close, offering varying degrees of overclocks at similarly varying prices with no single card doing particularly better than the others in that respect.
AMD's recent 7900 series price drop means that the 7950 is now within $50 of the reference 7870 and onyl $40 of the HD 7870 OE, but at the same time these overclocks close what was already a small gap. While the remaining gap depends on the game, with a 250MHz advantage the HD 7870 OE makes a very good case for grabbing what's otherwise a smaller, less power hungry card over AMD's lower-tier 7900.
In any case, since all of these 7870 cards are so close we'll skip the running commentary here on game performance.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
37 Comments
View All Comments
Galidou - Tuesday, May 1, 2012 - link
LOL CeriseCogburn, don't be such a mad fanboy... Answering to a simple inflammaroty sentence with a whole paragraph... Go buy a GTX 680 and throw eggs at AMD's headquarter like you were doing before commenting here :POrigin32 - Sunday, April 29, 2012 - link
And another typical day at Anand. AMD fanboys accusing writers of being Intel fanboys and Nvidia fanboys accusing them of being AMD fanboys. lolSpunjji - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
It's tiring, isn't it.vicbee - Monday, April 30, 2012 - link
Ya'll should just get a life. Seriously... most arguments revolve around $10-30 price difference and possibly 10 fps for similar card category. Yawn!Until last week I have a liquid cooled GTX285 until a transistors fried. I was kind of glad something happened because I wanted a newer card but just couldn't fathom taking my rig apart to uninstall the liquid circuit. And who in their right mind would buy a 2nd hand card with a liquid cooling add-on... problem solved.
I've only owned higher end Nvidia cards so this time around I thought I'd try an AMD and got the Sapphire discussed in this article. It's a great card (like my Nvidia cards were great cards) and because it's an upgrade I get 20 fps more than with the old card. I did have a software install issue tied to a missing something .dll but on the 3rd download it solved itself. Problem solved now back to gaming...
Autisticgramma - Monday, April 30, 2012 - link
@CeriseCogburn. You doth protest too much.Next you'll be telling us that nVidia's Tegra 2 is better than the (new AMD card).
nVidia Isn't innovating, its reacting to AMD offerings. (in the desktop graphics realm) Granted most of the cards are about 10% better, and about three months later for about the same price.
When Fermi was released, it was obviously a data center add in card, the price, the heat and performance (for graphics) was outrageous.
I Tend to agree with the nVidia fan boys that they're (nVidia) holding stuff back, kepler looks good on paper, and the point of availability has been pounded to death.
If they can crush AMD, why don't they?
I'd be happy to give them my money, if they weren't the lazy hare in this race.
-gramma
Stempy59 - Monday, May 7, 2012 - link
Hmn, under clocked 680 still better, yeah the price is higher but they will be more available soon!Spunjji - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
Thank-you for that enlightening apples-to-oranges comparison. Meanwhile it was nice to see how AMD's second-tier card stacks up (better than its top-tier card, hilariously).