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
As always we wrap up our review of a customized card with a look at overclocking performance. Since the HD 7870 OE is a semi-custom card - meaning it's using AMD's reference board - there aren't a lot of surprises here. With competent cooling overclocking comes down to the luck of the draw; Sapphire's basic binning process for their OE cards should push the better boards into the OE product line, but even then there's no real guarantee how much higher any of these boards can go.
When it comes to overclocking our HD 7870 SE topped out at 1150MHz for the core clock and 5.4GHz memory clock. This is a 100MHz (9%) core overclock and 400MHz (8%) memory overclock respectively. As with other 7870 boards a 5.4GHz memory clock is a rather constant factor since all of these reference boards start seeing diminishing returns on performance at higher memory clocks due to memory bus errors, while the core overclock is 50MHz lower than we've seen on other 7870s, but as we said before this comes down to the luck of the draw.
| Radeon HD 7800 Series Overclocking | ||||||
| AMD Radeon HD 7870 | Sapphire HD 7870 OE | HIS IceQ Turbo 7870 | PowerColor PCS+ HD7870 | |||
| Shipping Core Clock | 1000MHz | 1050MHz | 1100MHz | 1100MHz | ||
| Shipping Memory Clock | 4.8GHz | 5GHz | 4.8GHz | 4.9GHz | ||
| Shipping Voltage | 1.219v | 1.219v | 1.219v | 1.219v | ||
| Overclock Core Clock | 1150MHz | 1150MHz | 1200MHz | 1200MHz | ||
| Overclock Memory Clock | 5.4GHz | 5.4GHz | 5.4GHz | 5.4GHz | ||
| Overclock Voltage | 1.219v | 1.219v | 1.219v | 1.213v | ||
So how well does the HD 7870 OE hold up once further overclocked?
Our overclock pushed up power consumption by 10W under Metro and 18W under OCCT. Without any overvolting capabilities power consumption is largely kept in check, though we're still drawing nearly 40W more at the wall compared to a reference 7870.
The slight increase in power consumption (and thereby heat generated) does little to faze the HD 7870 OE much here. Temperatures rise between 2-3C; even under OCCT the card is still relatively cool at 73C.
The tradeoff for holding those temperatures however is that the HD 7870 OE does give up some of its noise advantage. At 45.7dB under Metro it still easily maintains its reputation as the quietest 7870, but its lead has diminished and by the time you move into OCCT it's not significantly quieter than any other overclocked 7870.
Finally, how does performance look? We'll skip the running commentary on performance, but overall overclocking the HD 7870 OE has the expected performance improvements. In games where the 7870 was already close to the 7950 to begin with overclocking can push performance ahead of stock 7950 performance, which makes the HD 7870 OE's low noise all the more impressive. The fact that we only hit 1150MHz on our sample does mean that it slightly trails the other retail 7870s we've reviewed, however.
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silverblue - Sunday, April 29, 2012 - link
Why show a card that the 7870 has no hopes of getting anywhere near?The 7950 is there to show how close the 7870 is.
The 7970 is there to show how much stronger it is than the 7950.
I admit that I'd have liked to see the 680 there, but with the 7970 on the graph, I think you can work out where the 680 would come in most games.
You're nitpicking and over nothing particularly important. You may have had a few bad experiences but there's no need to vent them in the comments section of a 7870 article. If you think AT is biased, go to Guru3D.
Spunjji - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
LOLOLOLOLOLOLDude, get a hobby or something. This site is in no way AMD biased.
Wreckage - Saturday, April 28, 2012 - link
No 680 in the benchmark? I would wait for the 670antef - Saturday, April 28, 2012 - link
I was excited by the Final Words until I saw the almost-7950 price and 2 year warranty. No thanks.Tunnah - Saturday, April 28, 2012 - link
are the ATI cards playing the same second fiddle to Nvidia their overlords do to the intel grand-daddies ?I know it's not such a wide gulf as between intel and AMD CPUs but it just seems Radeon cards are constantly playing catch-up against the much superior counter-brand.
kyuu - Sunday, April 29, 2012 - link
I dunno what you're talking about. For anyone not looking to spend half a grand on a (not-in-stock) GPU, which is pretty much everyone, AMD's 7xxx-series is the clear winner at the moment.If I were in the market, I'd probably be looking at a 7850. Great performance for the price.
CeriseCogburn - Sunday, April 29, 2012 - link
I do know what you're talking about like the other guy does as well but won't admit it, and you're correct.Galidou - Tuesday, May 1, 2012 - link
Hmmm I think your perception is really flawed, the wide gulf is really between AMD and intel's cpu. Nvidia and AMD's video card are never that far. Right now, AMD gets out a new cpu and it's hardly competing against last intel gen cpus.When AMD's and Nvidia's video card get to the market, you can see them all around in graphs. Look at intel vs AMD's cpu review graphs... all the AMD's cpu on the bottom, all intel on top... Currently, AMD's cpu performance compare to old core 2 duos almost... speaking mhz for mhz.
Galidou - Tuesday, May 1, 2012 - link
The much superior, LOL man what you smoke is really good. You must be the hell blind... OMFG the funniest shit I ever had to read!!! Way to go blind fanboys, get some new high tech glasses so they can give your sight back to learn to read graphs... I don't know but... anyway.plopke - Saturday, April 28, 2012 - link
Why does this card come with 2* pci express 6-pin power connecter?