AMD fills out its upper mid-range with a
successor to a wildly popular card, but can the HD 7870 carry on the HD 6870’s
fine work?
AMD has recently debuted its pair of
high-end cards – the HD 7970 and HD 7950 – and followed them up with the
mid-range and disappointing HD 7770 and HD 7750, sot it’s only right that the
firm tries to regain some lost ground with its next pair of releases – the HD
7870 and HD 7850.
The last generation saw the equivalent
cards become the sweet-spot for single-screen gaming, so we’ve high hopes for
this year’s models. As expected, the specification is reduced but still
enticing: the Pitcairn core used for the HD 7870 is a cut-down version of the
chip used for the higher-end cards, with 2.8 billion transistors instead of 4.3
billion.
AMD
Radeon HD 7870
Elsewhere, there are 20 of AMD’s stream
processor clusters, with 1,280 included overall, and 2GB of GDDR5 RAM. It’s
still clocked at a respectable 1,200MHz, but it’s funneled through a 256-bit
memory bus – slightly narrower than the 384-bit bus used by AMD’s more powerful
cards.
It’s cut-down in most respects, but AMD has
an ace up its sleeve with the HD 7870L a 1GHz core clock. That’s the same
headline figure used by the HD 7770 – the first reference card to hit these
heights – and it certainly bodes well when it comes to our benchmarks.
Like the HD 7770, the HD 7870 rattled
through our benchmarks – but we still felt a little let down by its
performance. The HD 7870’s score of 46fps in our 1,920x1,080 Very High quality
Crysis test is excellent, but it’s only five frames better than the HD 6870
could manage 0 and, crucially, four frames behind NVidia’s 40nm GeForce GTX
570.
The HD 7870 proved more adept when running
Crysis 2. Its average of 43fps with the game at 1,920x1,080 and its Ultra
settings is faster than even the HD 6970 and far in advance of the GTX 570’s
29fps. Just Cause 2 also saw the HD 7870 returning better results, with a Very
High average of 88fps across one screen ahead of the 79fps scored by the NVidia
card.
AMD
Radeon HD 7870
The HD 7870 also has the legs to play at
higher resolutions and cross multiple screens. A score of 32fps in Crysis at
Very High settings and 2,560x1,600 is eleven frames faster than last year’s
chips could manage and four frames ahead of the GTX 570, and we recorded 36fps
in Crysis at High quality and 5,760x1,080 with three monitors hooked up to the
card. That’s four frames faster than the HD 6970, which was last year’s
single-core flagship, and a better result than the GTX 570 – after all,
NVidia’s card can’t run three screens without SLI being used.
That’s good performance across the board,
and it comes in a typical AMD package. The 249mm PCB isn’t large enough to
impede on all but the smallest of enclosures, and most PSUs should cope with
its pair of six-pin power plugs. It’s not hot or power hungry, either; despite
the increased power on offer, the HD 7870’s peak electricity draw of 242W when
loaded into our test rig is the same as the HD 6850, and the peak temperature
of 73o is fine.
Our main concern, though, is price. At
around $415, this is still an expensive card – and, while it’s very quick, it’s
still not the huge improvement that we saw from, say, the HD 7970. If you’re
playing on one screen, you could comfortable drop to last year’s HD 6870 and be
satisfied – and with NVidia’s 28nm cards around the corner, we’d recommend
waiting to weigh up the competition unless you want to buy right away.
With NVidia just around the corner, it’s
not quite worth our recommendation
Details
Price: $415
Manufacturer: www.amd.com
|
Configuration
28nm manufacturing process
1,280 stream processors
1GHz core
2.8 billion transistors
2GB 1,200MHz GDDR5 RAM
256-bit memory bus
2xsix-pin power connectors |
