PowerColor's HD 7870 PCS+ Vortex II is one of the highest clocked HD 7870 cards out there. Thanks to the massive overclock out of the box, it has an 8% performance advantage over the HD 7870 reference design. This puts the card on the same performance level as the stock HD 7950. With that much power, it's a good choice for maximum-detailed full-HD gaming.
The increased clocks result in a higher gaming power-draw, which was to be expected even though the increase is a bit higher than the delivered performance. This results in worse, but still reasonable, performance per Watt. Idle power consumption is excellent. PowerColor seems to have done some nice optimizations here. Unfortunately, they messed up the multi-monitor and Blu-ray voltage profiles. The card runs full 3D voltage even if idle voltages would be sufficient, which results in extra power draw for that particular scenario.
Fan noise of the card is super low, making it the quietest HD 7870 we tested so far. Low noise is a much needed HD 7870 improvement as there are some very quiet GTX 660 Ti designs available that might be more interesting for the low-noise crowd. The Vortex II feature, which lets you adjust the fans' distance from the card, barely makes any difference. 1°C less for a tiny bit more noise are nothing to write home about.
Price-wise, PowerColor is asking $320, which is hefty if you consider that the cheapest HD 7870 is available for around $250 and a HD 7950 costs $300. I'm sure PowerColor has just not adjusted their pricing to the latest price drops by AMD. I would happily give it an editor's choice award if the card retailed somewhere in the $280 range, but, for now, it's just Recommended.
So I just checked Newegg again (Sep 21st), and the price of the card is down to $290, which makes it much more competitive. I also updated the performance per Dollar charts, which now show the card beating the GTX 660 Ti in that metric. I'm sure we'll see future price drops soon to get closer to the magic $280 mark I wanted.