We were positively surprised by AMD's new Radeon HD 7800 Series in our launch day review. Since then nothing has changed. The MSI HD 7870 TF III uses the same reference design PCB, adds a bigger cooler and increases clock speeds.
Going from 1000 / 1200 MHz (core/memory) on the reference design to 1050 / 1200 MHz helped the card gain about 2% real life performance over the reference card. I have to admit this difference is quite small and will be barely felt in-game. I wonder why MSI chose such a conservative overclock out of the box - we have seen higher, from other manufacturers.
Despite the overclock out of the box, we saw significant additional manual OC potential, up to 1230 MHz, which a good deal higher than the AMD reference design, but again, not the highest we have seen on any HD 7870. Memory overclocking works very well, reaching 1615 MHz, almost standard with today's fast Hynix ICs.
Unlike the ASUS HD 7870 DC II, we see almost no power consumption increase on the MSI HD 7870 TF III, over AMD reference design. It uses very similar power, which is only slightly higher in 3D due to the increased clocks.
What I didn't like was the excessive noise coming from the card, under load. With 45 dbA, it is clearly "noisy". Cards like the recently released GTX 680 are quieter and faster, even the AMD HD 7870 reference design is, and we know that those are usually noisy, so that board partners can market their "low-noise" custom boards. Given the low temperatures of the card, I think it would have been more sensible to go for slightly higher temperatures and lower noise.
Pricing of MSI's card is reasonable, with a $10 price increase over the reference design, for the new cooler and higher clock speeds out of the box. However, ASUS for example, gives users a higher overclock out of the box with the HD 7870 DC II and does not ask any price premium for it. On the other hand, MSI has the excellent Afterburner overclocking utility going for them.