VTX3D HD 7870 Black Edition 2 GB

W1zzard · Jan 15, 2013

The VTX3D HD 7870 Black is based on AMD's recent Tahiti LE GPU. It comes with 1536 shaders and very decent clock speeds. As a result, the card is 8% faster than the HD 7870 and almost as fast as the HD 7950 that costs significantly more.

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Casecutter · Jan 15, 2013

We had to go over the identical card as the Club 3D HD 7870 JokerCard that was done a little more than a month back? I'd like to see the Sapphire more just the cool and fan they use... :ohwell:

dj-electric · Jan 15, 2013

Holy hot damn of overclocking batman!

[Ion] · Jan 15, 2013

Looks like the exact same physical design as my HD7870 PCS+
Based on those overclocking results, I'm going to try pushing my card higher than its current 1050MHz

cdawall · Jan 15, 2013

Is there a us version of these Tahiti LE cards?

3870x2 · Jan 15, 2013

[Ion] said:
Looks like the exact same physical design as my HD7870 PCS+
Based on those overclocking results, I'm going to try pushing my card higher than its current 1050MHz

Im running my 7950 at 1180. Tahiti should reach 1100 with no issues.

W1zzard · Jan 15, 2013

cdawall said:
Is there a us version of these Tahiti LE cards?

powercolor myst?

cdawall · Jan 15, 2013

W1zzard said:
powercolor myst?

Yup that one is floating around for the same price as the normal 7870. Just not many who sell it.

Sherlock · Jan 15, 2013

I am sorry if this have been mentioned in another reviews already. But why are the Nividia cards in these reviews still on 306.23 WHQL drivers? Shouldn't they be run on the latest WHQL(310.90) for fair comparison against 12.11 beta?

ErthWen · Jan 15, 2013

W1zzard said:
In the Setup page:

NVIDIA: 306.23 WHQL
ATI: Catalyst 12.8 WHQL
ATI HD 7000: Catalyst 12.11 Beta

Are you serious?

Are you running "comparative" tests of nvidia/AMD cards WITH this flagrant issue?

Yes, ISSUE. Yo can´t run the AMD cards with the last beta drivers (HD7000), and run the tests with the nvidia cards with a very OLDDDDDDDD WHQL drivers.

Now, this is the last WHQL driver of nvidia: 310.90.

But, between it and the 306.23 are:

310.70 (December, 2012).
.
.
Many beta drivers.
.
.
306.97 (October, 2012).
.
.
Many beta drivers.
.
.
306.23 (SEPTEMBER, 2012).

How do you make a review (January 2013, 4 months ago) with this very old driver for the nvidia cards?

Holy shit!! This is a very unfair condition for a test&review.

W1zzard · Jan 15, 2013

i'm waiting for new ati whql drivers to rebench

edit: you know what .. fuck you guys .. 2 users banned. please don't come back if you have nothing else to say other than "wut? why old driverz?"

edit edit: bans reversed and created new infraction "Driver Troll"

kingkongtol · Jan 16, 2013

interesting, higher overclocked frequency but slower overclocked performance when compare with club3d
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Club_3D/HD_7870_jokerCard_Tahiti_LE/31.html

Delta6326 · Jan 16, 2013

Great review W1zz love your work. You might as well just buy this if you where going to get a 7950. For me I would rather buy the 660 TI it's smaller, less power hungry and same speed.

W1zzard · Jan 16, 2013

kingkongtol said:
interesting, higher overclocked frequency but slower overclocked performance when compare with club3d
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Club_3D/HD_7870_jokerCard_Tahiti_LE/31.html

i tested this 3 times and it is consistent. could be related to amd's boost technology

Delta6326 said:
Great review W1zz love your work. You might as well just buy this if you where going to get a 7950. For me I would rather buy the 660 TI it's smaller, less power hungry and same speed.

completely agree

Nankuk · Jan 16, 2013

Nice. I have one since a month now. Feeling lucky since i saw bunch of people who got this card who's not working at all. Well just a bit scared because i had 4 or 5 time the blue asus bios logo with weird colors. But having no prob in game.

It was a pain to install driver because the 12.11 was not working. had to pass by the cd then switch to new beta. Well 13.1 are out today.

Just a bit disgusted when i saw sapphire confirming they are doing one with 2 fan just a few days after i ordered mine. Could not wait more, i switched from a cross 4770 and already waited when i saw the tahiti release.

Socram13 · Jan 16, 2013

Nice review W1zzard!
Tahiti LE HD 7870 may have an appealing price, but like was told, Power consumption values are tremendous high when compared to the direct competitor, GTX 660 Ti or even HD 7950.
I´m curious to see Power consumption comparison when highly overclocked above 1200MHz.
If they called it HD 7930, would be more logical, but in the other hand, XX30 cards have always been victims of criticism along the history, aka, Lame Edition.

Yellow&Nerdy? · Jan 16, 2013

Great review as always!
This card offers pretty good bang for the buck. Does anyone know if the Club3D, VTX3D and PowerColor variants have the same PCB and cooler?

W1zzard · Jan 16, 2013

Yellow&Nerdy? said:
Great review as always!
This card offers pretty good bang for the buck. Does anyone know if the Club3D, VTX3D and PowerColor variants have the same PCB and cooler?

club3d and vtx are 100% identical expect for sticker/print on the cooler. they even use the same bios

Casecutter · Jan 16, 2013

Delta6326 said:
Great review W1zz love your work. You might as well just buy this if you where going to get a 7950. For me I would rather buy the 660 TI it's smaller, less power hungry and same speed.

W1zzard said:
completely agree

Ah, Egg has the Myst is $240 -AR$20 shipping $3, while most GTX660Ti that are AIB customs (nicer than reference), but not the Über OC’s will range around $260-280 with rebates more often of $20.

While I appreciate the merits for size and power... are such things worth the 15% adder? I mean a reference GTX660Ti is 10” vs. the Myst 10.5” big whoop. While hard to compare a GTX660Ti reference card for it’s OC’n as I don’t remember many reviews for that design or many that did much in overclocking.

Perhaps the best GTX650Ti deal is the MSI N660TI-2GD5/OC, a comparable single fan cooler (utilizes just 2 H-P vs. Myst 3 H-P’s) that is $270 –AR$20 w/FS. Can’t find any reviews for this humble model so can’t say how it might OC, while it’s almost an inch shorter at 9.64”.

If I'm dropping $270 then I'm going for the Sapphire 7950 3Gb 384-bit with Booost clock (100352-2L) for $10 more and not mess with a 192-Bit 2Gb card. With it's dual fan and five H-P cooler it pretty well established for OC'n.

DarkOCean · Jan 17, 2013

Dj-ElectriC said:
Holy hot damn of overclocking batman!

Pretty much useless if 27% core oc and 12% mem oc = only 5,5% improvement.

eidairaman1 · Jan 17, 2013

DarkOCean said:
Pretty much useless if 27% core oc and 12% mem oc = only 5,5% improvement.

single game they tested with that, too many variables

DarkOCean · Jan 17, 2013

eidairaman1 said:
single game they tested with that, too many variables

Still, very strange oc behaviour also

W1zzard said:
i tested this 3 times and it is consistent. could be related to amd's boost technology

[Ion] · Jan 17, 2013

It's possible that the power target kept throttling it back---for that reason, I have my PT at +20% on both cards.

Zen_ · Jan 17, 2013

I just got the Powercolor version of this card and have been really happy with it so far, although I admit to being swayed by less thorough reviews (of the Powercolor card) on other sites that did not cover the horrible dual monitor power consumption. That may have changed my decision.

las · Jan 18, 2013

OC seems great, but the scaling is really bad in BF3? This is a pretty GPU intensive game, so it should scale well with OC? Is this because of the gimped memory bandwidth compared to the real Tahiti cards?

Anyway.

Can someone tell me what this card limits is in AMD Overdrive? aka OC in AMD Control Center

I would really like to know, since i won't be using 3rd party OC software.

Also. The Voltage is locked right? On Tahiti-LE cards.. I read that in some review.. But some ppl say its not locked?!

Thanks!

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VTX3D HD 7870 Black Edition 2 GB

W1zzard

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where the hell are my stars

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where the hell are my stars

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