PowerColor PCS+ HD7870 GHz Edition Pro Reviews

The good thing about custom-cooled partner cards is that they tend to offer three key improvements; they're typically faster, cooler and quieter than the original reference design. We've become so accustomed to seeing this threefold improvement that it's a bit of a surprise to find that neither Gigabyte nor PowerColor have quite managed to tick all three boxes. Sure, both cards are quicker than reference as a result of their out-the-box overclock, but we have mixed feelings beyond that. Gigabyte's HD 7870 OC is able to keep stupendously cool under load thanks to the high-end WindForce cooler, but the outstanding cooling performance comes at the expense of size and noise - the card is elongated and noticeably more vocal than AMD's reference design, and for some users that will represent a step in the wrong direction. PowerColor's HD 7870 PCS+, meanwhile, is the polar opposite - the single-fan cooler is fractionally quieter than reference, but as a consequence, we found under-load temperatures to be on average 10 per cent higher than AMD's standard card.

Both HIS and PowerColor stand out in different ways. PowerColor’s PCS+ HD7870 is a rather straightforward upsell: for $20 (6%) more PowerColor will sell you a 7870 card that gets 5-7% more performance than a stock 7870. And because of their custom open air cooler, it can do this while being a bit quieter than AMD’s reference design. As has been the case with factory overclocked cards in the past this is really an individual decision – based on our limited data, it looks like most 7870s should be able to hit PowerColor’s factory overclocks – but if you just want a bit more guaranteed performance for a bit more money, PowerColor is happy to sell it to you. If nothing else the performance gain is large enough to justify considering it in the first place. HIS on the other hand makes things a bit more interesting, and a lot less clear. For their IceQ Turbo 7870 their upsell is $40 (11%) for roughly the same 5-7% performance improvement, and if all you care about is stock performance then it’s not a good deal. The real differentiating factor is the IceQ cooler; it’s simply leaps and bounds ahead of any other 7870 we’ve seen so far, though it gets there by using an extra slot in width. If for some reason you need its impressively effective cooling – say for overvolting in the future – then it’s a great candidate. Otherwise without with the prospect of overvolting it’s effectively limited by the AMD PCB and what Pitcairn can do on stock voltage, in which case its temperature advantage likely won’t translate into any material benefit. But then this is the advantage of the GPU partner system for consumers – a company like HIS can go out and create an overcooled card, even if it's for just a niche market.