Reviews - XFX R7870 Black Edition Overclocked

[HEXUS]

Is third time a charm in our search for the best Radeon HD 7870?

Read more.

[EvanJackPenn]

Hmm, well on KitGuru they said that the Gigabyte was one of the quietest cards they've ever tested ! Were you using different models or something ? is the fan profile changeable ?

[kalniel]

I'm more concerned about the difference in power draws between the AMD sample and the third party vendor (real) models. Looks like Hexus got a low voltage reference card, hence the coolness etc. but the real cards are volted a bit higher.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Many of non-reference cards in general are not only pre-overclocked but some have differently designed PCBs and coolers which might affect efficiency. It is not even the first time that an AMD/ATI reference card has had a better PCB design.

A prime example are the reference HD5850 1GB cards,which used more expensive Volterra PWMs.

The PowerColor,VTX3D and Club3D cards are reference models running at reference clockspeeds and with the reference cooler,so unless one of these are tested it is hard to say whether the review samples are cherry picked or not.

Edit!!

KitGuru supposedly uses card power measurements like TPU:

http://www.kitguru.net/components/gr...ndforce-3x/19/

http://www.kitguru.net/components/gr...ard-review/19/

Their measurements seem to show little variation between models even with the XFX card! According to KitGuru,XFX supplied them with a modified BIOS which helped reduce GPU temperatures by ramping up the fan.

Anyway,Anandtech has listed the voltages for their non-reference models too:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5691/t...r-pcs-hd7870/4

It seems the reference model they received and the two non-reference models they tested all have the same default voltage.

It seems despite this one of the models consumed far more power than the other two,and Anandtech says it might be down to the fact the model is overclocked and runs slightly hotter leading to more leakage.

[MrBozack]

My Gigabyte 7850 is almost inaudible. It's the quietest (air cooled) graphics card I've seen. Perhaps the Hexus' one has a fan defect. Or perhaps it's set to a different cooling profile? My 7850 does have manual fan control in Catalyst CP, EvanJackPenn.

Either way, nice honest review Hexus.