Sapphire HD 7870 GHz Edition Pro Reviews

The reference HD 7870 and the Sapphire OC Edition both top out at the same 1,200MHz overclock, both hitting roughly the same running temperatures. The AMD reference cooler was maybe slightly hotter under full load, but only by 2-3°C. We're actually hitting the overclocking limits of the silicon before we start to reach any thermal limitations, which kinda makes the extra cash you're spending on these sorts of cards a little redundant. Back when the stock coolers were significantly worse than third-party options, cards like this made sense. Now you're not really getting much more for your money, and it's not like that extra miniscule overclock is worth it in terms of avoiding invalidating your warranty either.

Throughout our testing we found that the Sapphire HD 7870 OC Edition video card had better performance in every game compared to the Radeon HD 6970 and the GeForce GTX 570. Not only did it average higher framerates in all of our testing, it also allowed us to enable and play at higher graphics settings. AMD just recently made a series of price drops on several cards in the Radeon HD 7000 series in order to better compete with NVIDIA's Kepler series, and the lower price of the GeForce GTX 680. Prices of Radeon HD 7970's dropped by nearly $100 while the MSRP of a Radeon HD 7950 dropped down to $400, bringing it into the same price range. So where exactly does that leave the Sapphire HD 7870 OC Edition? Newegg is selling this video card for $359.99. This puts it in a weird place pricewise. It is nearly $30 dollars cheaper than a Radeon HD 6970 and about $30 dollars more expensive than a GeForce GTX 570 with better performance than both in every aspect. Performance was better than other video cards in the same price range. We achieved a strong overclock using Sapphires TriXX which resulted in improved performance and made more graphics options available. The Dual-X cooling system kept the operating temperatures low without offending our ears with excess noise, and did all this while being far more power efficient. If you are in the market looking to upgrade to a cooler, more power efficient, 28nm video card with more performance, the Sapphire HD 7870 OC Edition is a product very much worth your consideration.

Since the HD 7870 OE is a semi-custom card - meaning it's using AMD's reference board - there aren't a lot of surprises here. With competent cooling overclocking comes down to the luck of the draw; Sapphire's basic binning process for their OE cards should push the better boards into the OE product line, but even then there's no real guarantee how much higher any of these boards can go.

Sapphire launched its HD 7870 GHz OC Edition graphics card that’s aimed at serious gamers. Gaming at 1920x1080 is something that this card will chew up with ease while 2560x1600 will be playable in most games at highest settings. The HD 7870 card’s performance outweighs that of HD 6970. Since it comes with slightly higher clocks than the reference card, HD 7870 GHz OC Edition will provide slightly better performance as well. The GPU runs at 1050MHz and we’re sure users prefer their cards cool while waging their “wars”. The Dual-extractor technology used by Sapphire is a formula that gives good results. Namely, although the card is overclocked, it still boasts lower temperatures than on the reference card. Furthermore, noise is an alien concept to this card and Sapphire’s HD 7870 GHz OC Edition remains quiet both when idle and when taken to the limit. Sapphire HD 7870 GHz OC Edition goes for €316, which is about €30 steeper than the most affordable HD 7870, which again comes from Sapphire. Quality cooling and a factory overclock clearly show that Sapphire means business and the price difference between the reference card and Sapphire’s HD 7870 GHz OC Edition is a small price to pay for what you ultimately get – a cool and reliable companion.

I was very impressed with how close to the 7950 the HD 7870 performs, however, the price difference between the two cards is so small that the performance we saw makes perfect sense. Sapphire's 7870 that we looked at today will run you about $360, and for that price it offers great performance. The card performed, for the most part, just under the GTX 580, which is priced considerably higher. Not only that, but with the 28nm architecture the Sapphire HD 7870 runs extremely cool. The card also draws a very small amount of power as well, which is perfect for the energy efficient gamer! The Sapphire HD 7870 offered extremely playable performance in every single one of our game benchmarks at the 1920x1080 resolution. That being said, if you are planning to use three 24" or bigger monitors in Eyefinity mode, you may want to consider picking up a more powerful card. While the Sapphire HD 7870 is perfectly capable of powering an Eyefinity setup, it did struggle with the games and settings we threw at it. As far as overclocking goes though, the card exceeded my expectations. Since the stock clock of the GPU already exceeded the 1GHz mark I really wasn't expecting a whole lot of headroom, however, I was easily able to get another 200MHz out of it! That extra 200MHz offered up a nice little performance increase, which I'm sure would be welcomed by anyone.

Sapphire has put together a really nice variation of the AMD Radeon HD 7870 video card thanks to improvements in all the key areas. On the cooling side of things we can see that we manage to have a card that not only runs slightly cooler thanks to the cooler choice, but it also manages to run a little quieter. As for the performance, thanks to a slight out of the box overclock, you can see we're able to get an overall slight boost in performance which helps it also come out ahead when compared to the reference card. Along with all that it's great to see that these added extras come at the cost of only $359.99, a price tag that is only $10 higher than the average price of the HD 7870. What makes the whole card even more attractive is that it doesn't have a whole lot of competition at the moment.

This card was a pleasure to work with. It handled all of our benchmarks without a problem and managed to do so while remaining completely silent. Sapphire really has developed quite an impressive cooling solution for these cards and it should also be able to take a little more of an overclock above what they've given it. Graphics cards are the real heart of a gaming system and these cards really do provide the performance that most users will be looking for. Right out of the box this card delivers amazing performance that is certain to give nVidia a run for their money. This is a great card for the red team to come out with and Sapphire has done a great job at making it even better than the reference version. There really aren't any games that this card won't be able to handle as long as you aren't expecting ridiculous frame rates. Playable frame rates at high resolutions are exactly what this card is able to provide. We know that it's just a matter of time before nVidia comes with their own answer to this card, but until then this is the new champ in terms of price versus performance. For this reason we have no problem giving this card our Editor's Choice Award here at Motherboards.Org.