Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 OC review

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Product Showcase

 

Product Showcase

So, pictures then. Below, you can see the Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 OC edition, a 2GB card. Included with all cards will be a manual and a demo and driver CD, power converters and monitor connector converters to get your multi-monitor freak on.

Gigabyte R7870 OC

As usual we see nice dark/blue looking cards from Gigabyte. The close to 3 Billion transistor 28nm Pitcairn based core is tied to a nice 2GB memory -- which is plenty enough for midrange products.

The reference 7870 cards are clocked at a 1000 MHz core frequency and the GDDR5 memory runs at 4.8 Gbps (effective data rate as GDDR5 has a quad data-rate, so effectively that quadruples that number) the memory bus is 256-bit. The GBT 7870 OC cards are however clocked 100 MHz faster at 1100 MHz. The memory clock remains reference though.

Gigabyte R7870 OC

Here we can see the backside, the cards will fit pretty much any chassis. The card's PCB actually follows reference design for 99% as far as we could see. Gigabyte makes and bakes these themselves though as AMD's board partners are free to use their own PCBs and designs.

Gigabyte R7870 OC

Connectivity wise the output connectors will vary per brand. But on the reference 7800 cards we see four connectors supporting all high-resolution monitors. We get two display port connectors (mini), HDMI and a DVI connector.

Gigabyte R7870 OC

The WindForce cooler does an excellent job, even pre-overclocked at 1100 MHz the temps during gaming remain UNDER 50 degrees C.

The board's overall power consumption from idle to load is excellent really. Expect an idle wattage of roughly 10 Watts and, when the monitor goes into power save mode, the card throttles down even lower towards 3 Watts. The TDP for the 7850 we measured at roughly 130 Watts for this card tested today.

Gigabyte R7870 OC

 The 7870 utilizes two 6-pin power connectors, a 550W PSU would be sufficient. The cooler applied to the reference models work fantastic, remains silent and properly cools the GPU down. We'll show you that on the next few pages though.

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