Sapphire HD 7870 OC Edition Video Card Review @ [H]

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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Sapphire HD 7870 OC Edition Video Card Review - With a factory overclock providing increased performance the Sapphire HD 7870 OC Edition looks to be a competitive buy for those on a budget. We will be using Battlefield 3 Multiplayer as well as a few other games to see how well this video card performs against a Radeon HD 6970 and GeForce GTX 570.
 
Is price what kept this card from getting the gold award? Thats pretty impresive overclocking and performance. Another good review. BF3 MP had the highest power usage accross the board, pretty damn intense.
 
hammerforged said:
Is price what kept this card from getting the gold award? Thats pretty impresive overclocking and performance. Another good review. BF3 MP had the highest power usage accross the board, pretty damn intense.
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The cheapest 7950 on newegg is $369. The cheapest ones that are (in my opinion) a decent brand, are $399. Personally, I think it's just not worth getting when you look at the other options around it.
 
ZacharyS said:
The cheapest 7950 on newegg is $369. The cheapest ones that are (in my opinion) a decent brand, are $399. Personally, I think it's just not worth getting when you look at the other options around it.
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Agreed. I'm really interested in seeing how 7950 prices end up once the 670s launch.
 
yeah with the 7900 series price drops i expect the 7800 price drops are to far away.. nice review.. that overclock is damn nice as well.
 
That is a damn impressive overclock/OC performance.

However, if you got one that didn't OC much beyond the stock factory OC, I don't see this being worth it over a 570 for ~$250.

EDIT: In the review you say the 570 is $330. It's more like $270-300 after rebates, and only the most expensive ones are up near $330. Seems kind of misleading.
 
Not factoring in rebates is not misleading. Factoring in rebates in a review is misleading. It is up to the consumer to find the best deal themselves..not the reviewer's job.
 
the HD 7870 will be a good buy when its at USD 279 - 299. Currently at USD 359 its not a good buy given that custom HD 7950 OC editions are available for 40 bucks more and ref HD 7950 for 20 bucks more.
 
raghu78 said:
the HD 7870 will be a good buy when its at USD 279 - 299. Currently at USD 359 its not a good buy given that custom HD 7950 OC editions are available for 40 bucks more and ref HD 7950 for 20 bucks more.
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Well said.
 
Keep in mind the Sapphire RMA process requires you to pay shipping both ways.
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Not in my case (and many others). You pay shipping to them as every company does, but you don't have to pay return shipping.
 
good read, thnx guyz, these cards seem excellent for 1080p - the price, reflective of 7970, peeps don't like it but will still pay...this is 2012, we are lucky in a way these 2 companies continue to churn out shiny new GPU beasts when the market leans toward consolitis continuing it's infection. Not long ago, when things were humming, we had incrementals with both ATI and Gfarce....5 series was a bust for NV - wack goes ATI !! 9800 pro was a monster card, around 2x performance over previous joycard - then NV doubled that with 8800GTX, followed by 280GTX(nearly doubled performance), then ATI 5870(also nearly 2x performance over previous king) while NV then gave us GTX480 which was late, too hot and too rushed:)rolleyes::rolleyes: only had 2 odd years to work on it?)
Now we are back to incrementals with both companies..AMD and NV know we don't really play Skyrim @ 4K, so we will be settling for efficiency and power saving as the buzz for a while to come...all that said, it makes these cards about the perfect choice for most..knock about 50 - 70 $$$ off and it would be perfect..;););)
 
N3M3515 said:
Excellent review.

This card is a f*cking rip off at $369, it should be at $269.
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If you compare the numbers, OC 7870 is nearly as fast a gtx680 in BF3, batman. It's a heck of a lot faster than gtx580, and its using 150W.

If you want $269, grab a 7850 and OC it to 1.2ghz and it be all the above while using 130W...
 
I just wanted to say that running a 7850 at the same 1200 clock speed as the 7870, the difference between them is about 7%. That translayes into maybe a 2FPS difference in most cases. The 250 dollar price makes it a much more attractive option.
 
Bahanime said:
If you compare the numbers, OC 7870 is nearly as fast a gtx680 in BF3, batman. It's a heck of a lot faster than gtx580, and its using 150W.

If you want $269, grab a 7850 and OC it to 1.2ghz and it be all the above while using 130W...
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Yeah no reason to buy a overpriced 7870. 7850 will do the same with trixx/Asus tool for $100 less. Then the 7950 is only $20 more with A LOT more headroom than 7870 considering it starts at 800Mhz and will do A LOT better at the end of the OCed day.

This pricing had to keep it from getting the Gold Award. Because other than that it's a fantastic card.
 
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