[Hot] Sapphire Radeon 7870 GHz Ed. 2GB - $195 AR

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SubtleOne

Limp Gawd
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Jun 29, 2008
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NewEgg is selling the Sapphire Radeon 7870 for $195 ($210 - $15 MIR) which is the same price as their Black Friday sale. I bought this exact same card from them at the time, and have been very pleased. It is a great card.

I read that some people have had issues with artifacting due to overheating (I am not one), and the solution is to override the maximum fan speed of 65%. I am passing this along for full disclosure deal.

Still, this as good as it gets performance-wise under $200 at the moment, and it is a great overclocker.

NewEgg link
 
Thanks for the link.
But it's a $200 ticket to the russian roulette.
 
Hmm, only 3/5 eggs review, that's not good.

I have a 7770 on my PC and it's pretty good for the games I have. It plays Dirt Showdown like a boss. :cool:
 
I bought the HIS IceQ 7870 2GB for $199 a few months ago, and it runs cool as a cucumber and crushes all the games I play. I highly recommend the 7870, especially the IceQ.
 
beowulf7 said:
Hmm, only 3/5 eggs review, that's not good.

I have a 7770 on my PC and it's pretty good for the games I have. It plays Dirt Showdown like a boss. :cool:
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I hear you. I bought a 7770 for my nephews during a Black Friday sale for $89 and it runs their games fine. Note it was an upgrade from a 9800GT...

I was upgrading from a GTX 460, which was beginning to struggle with a heavily modded Skyrim, and all the fancy switches on (only 2x AA though). This card treats it like it was just an afterthought.
 
I upgraded to this from a 460 as well...hell of a card, runs quite cool and quiet.
 
Ehhh, I never seem to have luck with the Sapphire cards I get.....gonna pass this time :(
 
Wouldn't the 7870XL be a better deal for $40 more? You are basically getting a very highly overclockable 7950 (the XL is 2% slower then a 7950 @ stock clocks) with 2GB of ram instead of 3GB...When you look at the o/c' improvements in Tech Power UP's review, it is a killer card, with some impressive gains...
 
ccityinstaller said:
Wouldn't the 7870XL be a better deal for $40 more? You are basically getting a very highly overclockable 7950 (the XL is 2% slower then a 7950 @ stock clocks) with 2GB of ram instead of 3GB...When you look at the o/c' improvements in Tech Power UP's review, it is a killer card, with some impressive gains...
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There is no question it is a great card. HardOCP's review shows this, however it is not actually a better deal $/FPS, it is roughly proportionate. Both cards are excellent overclockers, and yes the Powercolor is faster, but it is roughly proportionate for the money spent.

You get a 15-20% speed gain for 25% more money. Note that it also has a powerdraw of 335W compared to 270W, which means it is a hungry card (377W when OCed), and of course it is considerably hotter. It is 5 C. hotter than a reference 7870 and was doing 73 C. The Sapphire is a lot cooler than the reference design.

If you need the extra FPS, and have the budget, by all means. My personal budget was set to $100 when I got the Sapphire 7870 (I had sold my GTX 460 for $100) and I was delighted to be able to get it as until then the 7850 had been the best choice that fit my budget. Had this new Poercolor card been out when I got mine, it would still not have been bought as it completely exceeded my budget.

The complaints about the Sapphire in NewEgg are related to a stupid detail in Sapphire's default settings, and not a bad batch of chips. The card itself is actually very cool, but they also set the maximum fan speed to a very low 65%. In some rigs, and in some areas, that can overheat at times. The fix is ridiculously easy though, sinc AMD's drivers allow you to set overclocking controls, including extra voltage(!), and of course to override the maximum fan controls. So all in all, even if you do live in the desert and have no a/c, I still think it is a very safe buy.
 
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Echoing the earlier sentiment because it bears repeating... 200 dollar Russian Roulette folks.
 
requiem99 said:
Echoing the earlier sentiment because it bears repeating... 200 dollar Russian Roulette folks.
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It is a fair comment. I clearly will have nothing bad to say as I have had no issues, but there are clearly a number who have.

I did research the topic though, and all those who had problem and who changed the maximum fan speed to 65% saw their issues resolved. I have not had to do this myself, but can say that the default maximum is indeed set to 50%, which is extremely low.

The ATI driver allows you to change all the settings, from GPU (from the default 1050 up to 1400MHz), Memory, voltage (plus or minus 20%) and fan (up to a full 100% of course).

I don't view it as a high risk issue, but cannot blame those who do.
 
SubtleOne said:
I hear you. I bought a 7770 for my nephews during a Black Friday sale for $89 and it runs their games fine. Note it was an upgrade from a 9800GT...

I was upgrading from a GTX 460, which was beginning to struggle with a heavily modded Skyrim, and all the fancy switches on (only 2x AA though). This card treats it like it was just an afterthought.
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Nice, and I have a feeling it runs cooler and more efficiently than those older NVidia cards. :cool:
 
SubtleOne said:
It is a fair comment. I clearly will have nothing bad to say as I have had no issues, but there are clearly a number who have.

I did research the topic though, and all those who had problem and who changed the maximum fan speed to 65% saw their issues resolved. I have not had to do this myself, but can say that the default maximum is indeed set to 50%, which is extremely low.

The ATI driver allows you to change all the settings, from GPU (from the default 1050 up to 1400MHz), Memory, voltage (plus or minus 20%) and fan (up to a full 100% of course).

I don't view it as a high risk issue, but cannot blame those who do.
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I got my card on Monday, haven't really left my computer since.

The card is awesome, and I wanted to wait 2-3 days before posting to see if I would have the same issue as others have. The problem has never surfaced. The SKU was 11199-19-20G. I think the card is a heck of a value, if you're lucky. it idles at 27-28c and goes to 47-49c during 2 hours of PS2. Downloaded TriXX, set profile to CUSTOM, and was done. The card doesn't falter, but I know a CPU upgrade is in the near future. On a sidenote, the case fans are louder than the GPU fans. :eek:

I wanted to put in a few good words about this card, as several ppl where having bad luck with this model. My old card was a 4850 512mb, and i have never had a problem from that card in 4-5 years of service. The only problem i had was a nagging driver issue, but a fresh install fixed that in a jiffy. The card has been running for 2 days straight now with no issues

Its still running Cool & Quiet :cool:

Thank for the link OP!
 
This card uses a shorter custom PCB.

Reference HD7870 PCB cards measure 10.83" x 4.53" x 1.38"


This HD7870 measures 8.86" x 4.53" x 1.14"


I like the shorter PCB as long as it performs as well as the longer one.
 
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