The Retail Radeon HD 7870 Review: HIS 7870 IceQ Turbo & PowerColor PCS+ HD7870
by Ryan Smith on March 19, 2012 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- PowerColor
- Radeon HD 7000
- HIS
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 Beta 8.95.5 |
| OS: | Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit |
As both the PCS+ HD7870 and the IceQ Turbo 7870 ship with an identical core overclock and similar memory clocks, the performance of the two will be nearly identical. The PCS+ has an edge (however slim) in all situations, but as we’ll see there’s very little separating the two cards when it comes to performance.
Overall the factory overclocks on the PCS+ HD7870 and IceQ Turbo 7870 net about a 5% to 7% increase in game performance compared to the stock 7870. The lack of a significant memory overclock on either card appears to be holding back performance some, keeping game performance gains from reaching parity with the core overclocks.
Interestingly, because of the same frontend & ROP reasons we saw the 7870 do so well relative to the 7950 in our initial review, these factory overclocked cards do one better. Both cards overtake the 7950 at times, such as under DiRT 3 and Total War. More interestingly perhaps is that with the 7870 already nipping at the GTX 580’s heels in these games, the overclocked cards also regularly surpass the GTX 580 in 3 out of the 5 games so far.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
53 Comments
View All Comments
Cisephys - Tuesday, March 20, 2012 - link
Any word on retail availability? Some 7850/7870 cards finally popped up on NewEgg this morning (or maybe late last night), but the PowerColor one there is not the PCS+ version, it's the stock, non-factory-overclocked one.Seems like a fairly clumsy launch... But then, I'm likely just impatient.
CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, March 20, 2012 - link
Why didn't the article mention it's near barren ?Is this now 'just forgotten" ?
Is AMD favored this much ?
Really it is absolutely unbelievable the bribe must be spectacular.
( i believe it's the free Island Vacation AMD sponsors for 500 of these 'lucky reviewers" - it's an 'information and learning gathering' and 'fact finding mission', of course...
--
It's actually missing from the entire article... the phrase paper launch let alone 'availability" is washed over as we are told AMD has after 'unveiling" two weeks ago 'released to retail '...
So will this be another 2.5 months of near barren shelves ?
How is it we hear nothing on this matter in the entire article... what sorry excuse will we be given - if any at all.
There's no mention of manipulating the market with this underhanded tactic and early empty release either ...
Sorry it's just inexcusable and no you're not impatient, we've been deceived.
CeriseCogburn - Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - link
That excuse is beyond ridiculous, as the higher the cards level, the more likely it is one has a willing and avid overclocker.It's really getting deep in here. 6970 6950 both top cards of this level a gen back were proclaimed as highly valuable for the OC bias switch.
I mean it's really, really deep in here, my chest is soaked and fear I might be drinking slop soon
Let's just tell the truth,
AMD fans love this, this time.
But when the nVidia based GTX460 EVGA OC was included to trounce the amd cards in price/perf, the outcry was nothing short of enormous.
Worse yet, we have just recently been treated to exclamation points on the 7970 20% possible on stock volt Oc'ing raves.
It's really sad, now please, I'd like to not have to brush my teeth and gargle right now.