AMD Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition Pro Reviews

We have two brand new video cards from AMD and feel very differently about each. We had a positive experience with the Radeon HD 7870 and walked away impressed and satisfied at the performance delivered. The Radeon HD 7870 is able to perform faster than a Radeon HD 6970, something we did not expect. We enjoyed a high level of gameplay experience either at 1080p or 2560x1600. The Radeon HD 7870 is very much a practical 2560x1600 gaming video card. It is an upgrade if you are a GTX 570, HD 6950, or lower owner. We think this video card is priced right to compete, and we look forward to custom video cards. The Radeon HD 7850 on the other hand seems underpowered to us. Considering it is $249 and that you can currently buy GTX 560 Ti's for $40 cheaper, the value of the Radeon HD 7850 just isn't there yet. While it is technically faster than a GTX 560 Ti, it isn't enough to change the gameplay experience. We feel either the price should be lowered, or the performance enhanced. We look forward to custom video cards, which may be the saving grace of the Radeon HD 7850. Based on these facts, we feel the Radeon HD 7870 has earned our [H]ardOCP Editor's Choice Silver award, it is a very good video card that we are impressed with. The Radeon HD 7850? We'll wait for custom video cards to see how add-in-board partners can improve on performance at this price point because the reference 7850 is lack luster at best.

Our advice would be to definitely consider these cards if you're upgrading from GPUs that are at least two, preferably three, years old: they are amongst the best cards for their price points, based on our analysis of speed, price and power. Any Radeon HD 6950 or GeForce GTX 570 user, however, will view them as a sideways move more than an advancement. As for which one we'd pick out of the Radeon HD 7870 or HD 7850 as the better GPU, the low power-draw of the cheaper Pitcairn processor lends itself to smaller cards suitable for a wider range of chassis. It gets our vote, just. Knowing the cards shan't be available for a couple of weeks there's plenty of time to make up your minds, dear readers.

Starting with the Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition, AMD is effectively in the clear for the time being. At roughly 9% faster than the GTX 570 there’s little reason to get the GTX 570 even with the 7870’s price premium; it’s that much faster, cooler, and quieter. With the launch of Pitcairn and the 7870 in particular, GF110 has effectively been removed from competition after a nearly year and a half run. As for the Radeon HD 7850, things are not so clearly in AMD’s favor. From a power perspective it's by far the fastest 150W card you can buy, and that alone will earn AMD some major OEM wins along with some fans in the SFF PC space. Otherwise from a price perspective it’s certainly the best $250 card you can buy, but then that’s the catch: it’s a $250 card. With GTX 560 Ti prices starting to drop below $200 after rebate, the 7850 is nearly $50 more expensive than the GTX 560 Ti. At the same time its performance is only ahead of the GTX 560 Ti by about 9% on average, and in the process it loses to the GTX 560 Ti at a couple of games, most importantly Battlefield 3 by about 8%. AMD has a power consumption lead to go along with that performance lead, but without retail cards to test it’s not clear whether that translates into any kind of noise improvements over the GTX 560 Ti. In the long run the 7850 is going to be the better buy – in particular because of its additional RAM in the face of increasingly VRAM-hungry games – but $199 for a GTX 560 Ti is going to be hard to pass up while it lasts.

A fine performer, but it looks like it may be a bit more expensive than we’d hoped

The Radeon HD 7870 and 7850 offer impressive performance, extremely low power usage, and attractive estimated prices (at least in North America; we're sorry, Europeans) compared to cards offering similar performance. They run coolly and quietly, making them easy to live with, too. That covers the most important questions gamers ask when they hear about new graphics cards. From almost every angle, consider us impressed. Sure, we could complain yet again about the lack of VCE support several months after AMD announce the feature, but that doesn’t affect these cards’ ability to play games.

With the HD 7800-series cards heading to market in mid-March 2012, AMD has likely released the majority of its 7000-series cards without a recent response from Nvidia. The last Nvidia 500-series card we saw was the GTX 550 Ti, in late March of 2011. Rumors swirl, however, that Nvidia will begin revealing its own next-generation lineup later this spring. That alone may give many a wary gamer reason to wait, hoping that AMD’s rival may offer up better performance in this price range, or that the emergence of new, competing cards may drive down the price of AMD’s latest offerings. If you have a graphics card that’s getting you by for the moment, it’s hard to argue against taking a “wait-and-see” attitude, especially given that the new AMD cards, to our eyes at least, don’t offer any killer, must-have new features (unless you count their low power draw when idle). But if you need a new card now in the $300-to-$400 price range, it’s hard to argue against the HD 7870’s performance. In our testing, it's faster in most cases than the similarly priced GeForce GTX 570, and in some cases it outpaces the nearly-$500 GTX 580. That's a good price/performance balance—at least until the ground shifts beneath its PCI Express slot.

The AMD Radeon HD 7800 series helps fill the void in the $250 to $350 price range and are great gaming graphics cards for those running 1920x1080 monitors and like to crank up the image quality!

The Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition is a powerful and feature-rich addition to AMD's line of enthusiast video cards, but its price may be a bit of a problem.

There is a whole lot to like about the HD 7870 2GB. Phenomenally low power consumption for a high-end card, low temperatures, and a reasonable if not colossal in speed over the previous generation’s HD 6970 2GB make it very attractive. Needless to say, it comprehensively out-classes Nvidia’s current competitor, the GTX 570 1.3GB, in every way and even rubs a lot of the shine off of the HD 7950 3GB thanks to its overclocking prowess and similar performance in more than a couple of our benchmarks. Sadly though, you’re not able to run out and buy an HD 7870 2GB, at least not yet. Stock won’t arrive into retailers until March 19th 2012, with AMD choosing to lift the NDA today due to the inevitable leaks that would have occurred during GDC and CEBIT over the next two weeks. While that’s a fair reason for what amounts to a paper launch, it poses the problem that we’re rather uncertain on the issue of pricing. AMD claim the card will arrive at around $349 in the USA. Converting to pounds and then adding VAT and the usual EU premium, we estimate that the HD 7870 2GB will go on sale for around £275 (inc VAT). At that price, the HD 7870 certainly makes Nvidia’s GTX 570 1.3GB look a poor proposition, but, as with the HD 7770 1GB, it suffers from AMD replacing last generation’s cards with new models that perform roughly the same or slightly better, for more money.

Overall I'm very happy with what the new cards bring to the table. Gaming performance is sufficient for all titles; power consumption is at record low levels, like on the other HD 7000 Series cards; all essential non-gaming features are included and the cards overclock like champs. Actually the HD 7870 claimed a new record spot for maximum GPU clock in a TechPowerUp VGA review with 1205 MHz. This enables willing users to get some free extra performance from their card, basically bumping it up to the next faster card according to our testing. Noise levels were a bit dissapointing. It seems AMD has favoured low temperatures over reduced noise levels too much, which resulted in noise levels that are higher than what I expect from a brand-new card that is packed with power consumption reduction features. Price-wise, we've almost gotten used to AMD charging first-to-market premiums for their HD 7000 Series. In my opinion, the HD 7870 is $30 too expensive, and the HD 7850 would do much better if it were $10 cheaper. In terms of increasing budget, the following cards are great choices. At the lower end of the price range sits NVIDIA's $210 GTX 560 Ti, which offers best in-class performance per Dollar. My next more expensive choice would be HD 7850 at $250, possibly get a custom overclocked version. With $300 to spend the choice gets a bit difficult as there is no real "star" product at this price point. Maybe a used GTX 570 or the GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores. Once we reach $330, GTX 570 becomes a rock-solid choice, unless you are willing to dish out $20 more for AMD's Radeon HD 7870 which does offer much better power consumption than the NVIDIA card. So there you have it, right now there's a good choice at almost every price point, and we haven't seen what NVIDIA's Kepler GK104 can do!

The Radeon HD 7870 isn’t a bad value either as it matches the GeForce GTX 570 for price while delivering on average 18% more performance at 1920x1200 and consuming less power. Still the Radeon HD 7850 looks to be the best value choice here and perhaps the best value we've seen so far in a Radeon HD 7000 series graphics card. AMD expects cards to become available in volume after March 19th.

The Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition has performance comparable to the GeForce GTX 570. In our tests, both video cards achieved the same performance level on all the games we ran, except on FarCry 2, where the GeForce GTX 570 beat the Radeon HD 7870 by between 10% and 17 percent. The only other significant performance difference between the two cards on games was on Aliens vs. Predator at 2560x1600, with the Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition being 18% faster than the GeForce GTX 570. At 1920x1200, however, both video cards achieved the same performance level. The Radeon HD 7870 is up to 12% faster than its predecessor, the Radeon HD 6970, except for FarCry 2 and on Aliens vs. Predator at 1920x1200, where the older video card was 5% faster. This is good news. If you were thinking about buying a Radeon HD 6970, you can now buy the Radeon HD 7870 for the same price and get extra performance. When using the video card to run regular programs (in our case, Media Espresso), however, the Radeon HD 7870 was 24% faster than the GeForce GTX 570 and 41% faster than the Radeon HD 6970, proving that the new GCN architecture is really optimized for programs that can use the graphics processor to speed up processing. Both the Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition and the GeForce GTX 570 are good options on the USD 350 range, but since the GeForce GTX 570 was released a while ago, its price has already dropped below USD 350. It will take a while for the Radeon 7870 to follow.

At stock speeds it's fairly dull, with a little light tweaking however you can turn it into a serious hot hatchback with the horsepower to match.

Where the Radeon HD 7900 cards were impressive from a pure performance stand point and the Radeon HD 7700 cards brought new features and performance per watt to the sub $200 market, the HD 7800 cards are really the ones we think warrant the most attention from gamers. For $250, the Radeon HD 7850 offers a significantly better gaming experience than the GTX 560 Ti from NVIDIA while offering enough overclocking headroom to reach towards the GTX 570. The Radeon HD 7870 is able to handle the GTX 570 in a decent fashion though it doens't stand apart from its direct competitor like the 7850 does.

If you are in the market for a sub-$400 GPU or are looking to step up from a HD 5800-series product, the HD 7870 2GB is the card you'll want to pick up. It has all the makings of a success story: great performance, a relatively affordable price, low power consumption, quiet operation and plenty of overclocking headroom. With that being said, AMD may become a victim of their own success since they’ve almost made it impossible to recommend the $450 HD 7950 3GB unless there's an absolute need for the extra memory bandwidth it brings to the table.

Almost as quick as the HD 7950 and significantly cheaper - a great card for the serious enthusiast