XFX FX-787A-CDFC Pro Reviews

The XFX Radeon HD 7870 Black Edition is an excellent performer and and is priced well to boot. The added peace of mind of the XFX lifetime warranty is just icing on the cake!

I am glad to see that XFX is still hanging around and offering unique products to the market. They have very nearly caught up to the competition in terms of design, and they are able to offer their products at competitive prices. The quality certainly seems to have gone up over the past few years, and while the warranty is not nearly as nice as it used to be, it is competitive with the industry as a whole. The bonus of transferring a warranty is a big plus though, and certainly unique among manufacturers.The HD 7800 series of cards is in an interesting place right now. When they were first introduced AMD was very excited by what they were able to bring to the table. At the initial MSRPs of the stock products at $249 for the HD 7850 and $349 for the HD 7870, AMD had a decent lock on price/performance when compared to previous HD 6900 series cards and the competing NVIDIA GTX 500 series. Unfortunately for AMD, NVIDIA has thrown a wrench into the works with the GTX 670 priced at $399. The performance of that card vs. the HD 7870 is very compelling for the extra money. When we start looking at products like the XFX R7870 DD Black Edition for $389, the difference in performance with the GTX 670 is well worth the extra $10 spent. That particular card is a hard sell. The only real thing going for it is availability. The HD 7870 is well represented in retail while the GTX 670 is still sketchy.

We've had three attempts, but we've yet to find a custom Radeon HD 7870 that's fundamentally better than AMD's reference design. A lot of credit has to go to AMD's standard cooler - it finds a sweet spot between minimal noise and low temperatures, and the reference frequencies help deliver strong 1080p performance with best-in-class power consumption. Beating that initial formula is proving to be tricky. The Gigabyte 7870 OC and PowerColor 7870 PCS+ didn't quite manage to do it, and XFX falls short, too. Sure, the card's quicker than reference as a result of the modest out-the-box overclock, and it's fractionally quieter, too, but on the flip side power consumption and temperature go up by 20 per cent and 10 per cent, respectively. Factor in the £300 price tag - £35 more than a reference design - and the picture gets cloudier still. The R7870 Black Edition is a good card, and one that delivers an excellent full-HD gaming experience, but at this price it's tough to recommend over a cheaper reference board.

In the end I have to say that I was very impressed with both XFX cards. However, I was more impressed with how close the XFX Double Dissipation HD 7850 was able to perform to the HD 7870. Considering the XFX Double Dissipation HD 7850 comes in at almost $100 cheaper than the HD 7870, it makes it almost a no brainer. Not only that, but we were easily able to overclock it enough for it to perform faster than a stock HD 7870, which again makes it a no brainer. Both cards gave extremely playable performance through every single one of our benchmarks. They also gave fairly decent performance in our Eyefinity/Surround tests as well. I must say that I was also pleasantly surprised about how well XFX's Ghost coolers work. Even before the dual fans had been spun up to 100% the temperatures were nice and easy to deal with. The cards kept a nice low power consumption as well. The XFX Double Dissipation HD 7870 comes in at $374.99, whereas the XFX Double Dissipation HD 7850 comes in at just $269.99! Considering how close the HD 7850 performs to the GTX 580, which is about $300 more expensive, I would recommend it to anyone looking to pick up a new video card. I would even argue that the HD 7850 is one of the best bang for your buck video cards currently available on the market. Both of the XFX cards overclocked very well too. Again though, if you are thinking of picking up a new video card, go for the HD 7850. It's about $100 less than the HD 7870, and can easily be overclocked to match the performance!