Amd radeon hd 7800 series overclock full size#
Unlike some of the other 7870 cards we’ve seen, Sapphire is not using the optional second DVI port, so a full size vent is present.
Meanwhile at the front Sapphire is using AMD’s standard port configuration for display connectivity: 2 miniDPs, 1 HDMI port, and 1 DL-DVI port. At the tail-end of the card are 2 6-pin PCIe power sockets, which are a bit harder to reach thanks to the oversized cooler, but not altogether difficult. Wrapping up our look at the design of the card, as this is an AMD reference PCB the rest of the card uses the same 7870 design we’ve seen before. It goes without saying that handling the tail-end of the PCB should be avoided. This oversight isn’t likely to result in damage so this isn’t a dealbreaker, but at this point we’ve come to expect better, especially for cards in this price range.
Amd radeon hd 7800 series overclock free#
As a result roughly a third of the card – the tail-end portion of the card farthest from the GPU – doesn’t have any kind of support, leaving the PCB free to flex. In place of a full shroud providing stability there should be a stiffener running along the card, and while Sapphire’s aluminum plate provides some support it’s not nearly long enough. The cooler itself is fine, but like most other dual-fan coolers it’s only secured to the PCB around the GPU, meaning additional support for the PCB is required.
Unfortunately while Sapphire has built a good cooler for the 7870, they’ve done a subpar job on overall build quality. Elsewhere Sapphire uses a small aluminum plate covering part of the PCB to function as a heatsink for the GDDR5 RAM. Embedded in the baseplate are the card’s 4 copper heatpipes, which in turn run to various locations on the heatsink. Meanwhile contact with the GPU is provided through an aluminum baseplate. In exchange the Dual-X on the 7870 is about 10mm taller than the PCB, and 0.5” longer than the 7870 PCB, pushing the card out to 10” long.
As with the larger Dual-X cooler we saw on their 7950, the Dual-X on the 7870 is slightly oversized, allowing for slightly larger fans. The Dual-X is your typical double-wide dual-fan open air cooler, with 2 fans providing copious airflow over an aluminum heatsink running virtually the entire length of the card. This isn’t as aggressive as what we’ve seen PowerColor and HIS do, but then the price premium isn’t nearly at high either.īreaking down the card, Sapphire’s cooler of choice is a slightly smaller version of their Dual-X cooler. Sapphire is shipping the card with a modest boost to both core and memory clocks, shipping at 1050MHz core and 5GHz memory, representing a 50MHz (5%) core overclock and a 200MHz (4%) overclock over the stock 7870. On top of the cooler Sapphire adds one further degree of customization here, as this is an Overclock Edition card, meaning it ships with a factory overclock. Like the other 7870 cards we have reviewed so far, Sapphire’s HD 7870 Overclock Edition is a semi-custom card, meaning Sapphire is using an AMD reference board equipped with their own cooler. Radeon HD 7870 Partner Card Specification Comparison How does Sapphire’s dual-fan entry stand up to the competition? Let’s find out. Last month we saw some of those first designs with PowerColor’s PCS+ HD7870 and HIS’s IceQ 7870 Turbo, and today we’ll be looking at a third: Sapphire’s HD 7870 Overclock Edition, their semi-custom factory overclocked 7870. This is particularly the case for the 7800 series, where prices are high enough for partners to experiment with different coolers and TDPs are low enough to allow more than a handful of approaches. We’re still in the first phase of the Radeon HD 7000 series rollout, with AMD’s partners building semi-custom cards based on AMD’s reference PCB, but even without custom PCBs AMD’s partners have been able to turn out a number of interesting designs. As AMD’s 28nm allocation has improved so has the selection of cards available on the market.
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