PowerColor Radeon HD 7870 MYST Edition Review @ [H]

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

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PowerColor Radeon HD 7870 MYST Edition Review - PowerColor has released a new graphics card based on the new AMD "Tahiti" 7870 LE core. We will investigate whether it is a worthy Limited Edition or simply a Lame Edition by comparing it to a Radeon HD 7870 GHz edition and a GTX 660 Ti with comparisons also to an HD 7950. Will this card be a deal, or a dud? You may be surprised.
 
Nice card, but I don't understand the naming. Radeon HD-7890 or 7930 should have been used for the uninformed. I'm really glad to see the prices so low. :)
 
i am in the market for such a card, your review was very helpful. however i really do not think you should have considered any mail in rebates in your final value assessment, as a good deal of us have been burnt at one time or another or at least had to wait months for it to show up. a card should stand on its "at checkout price" MIRB's have become a joke and shouldn't be a deciding factor.
 
brian770 said:
i am in the market for such a card, your review was very helpful. however i really do not think you should have considered any mail in rebates in your final value assessment, as a good deal of us have been burnt at one time or another or at least had to wait months for it to show up. a card should stand on its "at checkout price" MIRB's have become a joke and shouldn't be a deciding factor.
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for some people it is a deciding factor and they have always included mail in rebate prices when comparing cards. there are just as many people that have had no issues with rebates as people that have been burned by them. just the way the games played.
 
Thanks for the review, guys! A great way to start the New Year :) Your review confirms what some other websites' reviews said: that this card offers solid bang-for-buck, especially when overclocked. I was wondering if this card can be watercooled w/7950 or 7970 compatible gear ... also, as I recall, this card can be Crossfired with 7950s/7970s.
 
brian770 said:
i am in the market for such a card, your review was very helpful. however i really do not think you should have considered any mail in rebates in your final value assessment, as a good deal of us have been burnt at one time or another or at least had to wait months for it to show up. a card should stand on its "at checkout price" MIRB's have become a joke and shouldn't be a deciding factor.
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yeah i agree the selling price should be considered. And even if price after rebates was considered the PCS+ MYST HD 7870 Tahiti LE is available at newegg and us ncix for 240 after rebate which should have been mentioned alongwith the HD 7870 and GTX 660 Ti cards whose price after rebate was mentioned

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131484
http://us.ncix.com/products/?sku=78372

also you mention the drivers as 12.11 beta 8. did you mean to tell 12.11 beta 11 because the page you link to has the 12.11 beta 11 drivers.

the Farcry 3 performance figures with SSAO show a huge difference. this is unlike what we see in your farcry 3 performance review with SSAO comparison between HD 7970 Ghz and GTX 680.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/12/17/far_cry_3_video_card_performance_iq_review/7

how is it the AMD cards take a massive hit with SSAO. other reviews too don't show such massive differences.

the sleeping dogs numbers for HD 7870 also look wrong. with normal AA HD 7870 is slower than HD 7870 Tahiti LE and GTX 660 Ti with High AA. here is your fall review numbers.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/11/12/fall_2012_gpu_driver_comparison_roundup/5
 
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I'm confused... I don't see any!
MystCover.png
 
I don't see whats confusing?

There's only 2 fps difference with the HDAO in the graph and the SSAO on the overclocked one. You can't really compare the other ones running at lower AA setting right?

I'm not very surprised at sleeping dogs either, it's supposed to have 256 more stream processors so I guess it makes a difference after all
 
blandead said:
I don't see whats confusing?

There's only 2 fps difference with the HDAO in the graph and the SSAO on the overclocked one. You can't really compare the other ones running at lower AA setting right?

I'm not very surprised at sleeping dogs either, it's supposed to have 256 more stream processors so I guess it makes a difference after all
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i am talking about the SSAO with 2x MSAA performance which shows a huge diff between a PCS+ HD 7870 MYST (41.4 fps) and GTX 660 Ti (59.2 fps) .

you failed to see the fall review of the HD 7870 which i linked that shows the perf at 69.2 fps at identical settings at 1920 x 1080 as in this review. the normal AA is much less demanding than high AA and HD 7870 with normal AA should easily score more than the HD 7870 Tahiti LE at high AA.
 
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so i am guessing 215 after MIR for this card is a pretty good price then huh?
 
This seems like an early release of HD 8870. Would be cool if this could be flashed to 8870 in the near future.
 
This card is showing much lower benchmark scores than HD7950 and looks like the smaller 256 bit is the bottle neck.

HD7950 with the larger 392 bit bus does alot better.
 
SonDa5 said:
This card is showing much lower benchmark scores than HD7950 and looks like the smaller 256 bit is the bottle neck.

HD7950 with the larger 392 bit bus does alot better.
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The 7950 also has more stream processors. From what I've seen with this generation of cards, stream processors and GPU power mean more than memory bandwidth.
 
David_Schroth said:
The 7950 also has more stream processors. From what I've seen with this generation of cards, stream processors and GPU power mean more than memory bandwidth.
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HD7870 tahiti has 1,536 stream processors and HD7870 pitcairn has 1280 stream processors and in competitive benchmarking with high over clocks these two cards come close top scores for benchmarks so to me it appears that even though the higher stream count in the tahiti HD7870 the BUS size does appear to be a bottle neck.

The HD7950 benchmark scores are much more higher even though they only have 1792 stream processors which is about the same difference going from pitcarin to tahiti HD7870.


The stream processors does't seem to make that much of a difference in competitive benchmark scores but the HD7950 with 384 BIT memory interface appears to make a much larger difference in performance.

So far from 28nm generation cards I think this larger BUS size is the main reason AMD HD79X0 cards beat up on smaller bus size (256 bit) NVIDIA 6X0 cards.

I will be surprised if NVIDIA doesn't use a much more powerful 384 bit bus size on the up coming GTX 7X0 cards.
 
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raghu78 said:
1536 stream processors at 975 mhz, 96 texture units, 32 ROPs, 192 GB/s . but its a salvaged tahiti.
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When you say salvaged do you mean it was saved from a scrap pile of unworthy HD79X0 gpus? Or do you mean this was an orphan High Quality Tahiti that needed a home and was chosen for the Tahiti HD7870 version?
 
SonDa5 said:
When you say salvaged do you mean it was saved from a scrap pile of unworthy HD79X0 gpus? Or do you mean this was an orphan High Quality Tahiti that needed a home and was chosen for the Tahiti HD7870 version?
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Probably the former.
 
SonDa5 said:
When you say salvaged do you mean it was saved from a scrap pile of unworthy HD79X0 gpus? Or do you mean this was an orphan High Quality Tahiti that needed a home and was chosen for the Tahiti HD7870 version?
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given that they disabled 128 bit memory controller and 1/4th of the shaders from the tahiti die it means they are chips which could not make the cut as tahiti xt and pro. so yes they have more defects and are a means of improving yields. otherwise amd would have to throw these dies for waste.

but these chips have a high stock voltage of 1.2v - 1.25v and easily overclock to 1200 mhz matching a HD 7970(925 Mhz) for 150 bucks lesser.
 
is it just me or.. or did they discontinue this card already since they now have a tahiti LE EZ edition now? It seems ultra rare now....
 
hesho said:
actually... i heard that the cooler is worse then the MYST...
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New version looks like the same pcb with nickel plated copper pipes on the heat sink. Also different cover on the heat sink.
 
These Tahiti based LE cards are very nice.

I still think these cards are a glimpse of what is ahead for the HD 8850.

The LE cards are way too long. I expect the HD 8850 to be similar to the LE card but with a much shorter PCB.

I think alot of people would go with the LE cards right now if the PCB wasn't so long.
 
Im really liking my 7870 myst:) have it overclocked to 1200 and i can run the new tomb raider on ultra and get low to mid 40's wanna get a second one heading into the summertime and crossfire em should be fun:D
 
Picked up one of these guys, and its running pretty well at 1200.
Has anyone found a way to unlock voltage?
 
Geforcepat said:
Im really liking my 7870 myst:) have it overclocked to 1200 and i can run the new tomb raider on ultra and get low to mid 40's wanna get a second one heading into the summertime and crossfire em should be fun:D
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Hell yeah! In fact I played Tomb Raider mostly on my 7930(the real name for this card) due to it handsomely out performing my GTX670. I did overclock the 7930 to 1150Mhz on the COre and left the memory alone.
 
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