Temperature Measurements
ASUS Radeon HD 7870 DirectCUII TOP 2GB
GDDR5: 63
Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 OC 2GB GDDR5: 56
HIS Radeon HD 7870 IceQ Turbo 2GB GDDR5: 61
MSI Radeon HD 7870 Hawk 2GB GDDR5: 65
Sapphire Radeon HD 7870 OC 2GB GDDR5: 58
AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB GDDR5: 55
AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB GDDR5: 61
AMD Radeon HD 6970 2GB GDDR5: 73
AMD Radeon HD 6870 1GB RDDR5: 68
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 1.5GB RDDR5: 69
Degrees Celcius (lower is better)
Operating Temperatures
With a wide variety of cooler designs on
our custom cards, the one that stood out was Gigabyte’s WindForce 3X model,
which was almost on par with the reference card’s temperature despite its much
higher clock speeds. Sapphire’s Dual-X cooler also scored well, but this was
expected with its lower overclocked figures out of the box. ASUS and MSI, which
are clocked higher and designed for overclocking purposes, consumed more power
than most other cards out of the box and thus, had much higher operating
temperature as well.
GeForce
GTX 680 WindForce 3X
Total System Power Consumption
(in Watts)
ASUS Radeon HD 7870 DirectCUII TOP 2GB
GDDR5: 245
Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 OC 2GB GDDR5: 241
HIS Radeon HD 7870 IceQ Turbo 2GB GDDR5:
240
MSI Radeon HD 7870 Hawk 2GB GDDR5: 252
Sapphire Radeon HD 7870 OC 2GB GDDR5: 226
AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB GDDR5: 211
AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB GDDR5: 230
AMD Radeon HD 6970 2GB GDDR5: 298
AMD Radeon HD 6870 1GB RDDR5: 220
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 1.5GB RDDR5: 331
ASUS Radeon HD 7870 DirectCUII TOP 2GB
GDDR5: 92
Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 OC 2GB GDDR5: 90
HIS Radeon HD 7870 IceQ Turbo 2GB GDDR5: 90
MSI Radeon HD 7870 Hawk 2GB GDDR5: 100
Sapphire Radeon HD 7870 OC 2GB GDDR5: 88
AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB GDDR5: 90
AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB GDDR5: 91
AMD Radeon HD 6970 2GB GDDR5: 103
AMD Radeon HD 6870 1GB RDDR5: 99
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 1.5GB RDDR5: 121
Watts (lower is better)
Power Consumption
Power consumption on Graphics Core Next
architecture-equipped cards continues to impress, with the reference Radeon HD
7870 consuming only 211 watts (on average) at load. As for the custom edition
cards, as expected, Sapphire had the best power consumption with only a 6%
increase compared to the reference card thanks to its lower clock speeds. The
rest of the custom cards were quite close, consuming about 13-14% more than the
reference, with only MSI drawing much more at 19% more than reference
(presumably due to the GPU Reactor PCB).
And the best Radeon HD 7870 is…
Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 OC
Our winner for the Best Performance Award
is the Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 OC for providing the best cooling solution, a
generous factory overclock of 1100 MHz at the core, as well as solid test
results across the board. Best of all, you get all this for just $510, which
isn’t much more than the reference AMD Radeon HD 7870.
Gigabyte
Radeon HD 7870 OC
Sapphire Radeon HD 7870 OC
The best Value Award goes to Sapphire, who
has managed to price their HD 7870 offering at $485, slightly below the average
reference model SRP ($490) and $25 cheaper than the next best custom card in
our shootout. It generally performed well and, despite its lower factory clock
speeds, can be overclocked to achieve similar results to the rest of our
contenders.
Sapphire
Radeon HD 7870 OC
ASUS Radeon HD 7870 DirectCU II TOP
While ASUS’ HD 7870 was a strong performer,
its %539 price tag makes it the most expensive model in this shootout, and we
felt that at %50 more than the reference card, its performance gains didn’t
really justify the extra cost.
ASUS
Radeon HD 7870 DirectCU II TOP
MSI Radeon HD 7870 Hawk
We liked the solid aluminum build of MSI’s
Hawk model, and at $519, it also provides reasonable, but not outstanding,
value. It also scored well in our overclocking test, but was let down by
lackluster temperature and power consumption ratings.
MSI
Radeon HD 7870 Hawk
HIS Radeon HD 7870 IceQ Turbo
HIS was another solid performer, but again,
its asking price hurt its overall rating. At $530, it didn’t outperform the
other cards by enough to warrant spending the extra money. We also thought that
its cooler system was quite bulky, which could potentially cause problems with
smaller cases and general handling.
HIS
Radeon HD 7870 IceQ Turbo
