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Our review sample didn't ship in a retail box, but Gigabyte sent us over official artwork as shown above. They seem to be focusing on a neon style ‘eye' for the front image, which is unusual but surprisingly effective.
Gigabyte include a driver disc, Crossfire connector a quick installation guide, and a power converter cable.
The Gigabyte HD7870 Overclock Edition is built around a blue PCB, and the massive 3 fan cooler is longer than the PCB underneath. The fans look black from a distance, but they semi transparent. The cooler is all made from durable plastic. Our reference card was built around a black PCB.
The card is Crossfire capable in 2 way configurations. If you want 3 or 4 way Crossfire you need to budget for a 79xx series card.
The card is a dual slot design with a full sized DVI and HDMI port and two mini DisplayPort connectors. It is Eyefinity capable. This card can simultaneously output multiple, independent audio streams from the HDMI and mini Displayport connectors at the rear of the card.
The Gigabyte board adheres to the reference AMD specifications, requiring two 6 pin PCI E power connectors.
The cooler is formed around two very thick copper heatpipes which run along the length of the card as shown above, into aluminum fins on either side of the copper base. The board uses 2GB of Hynix GDDR5 memory.
A basic overview of the hardware which we discussed earlier in the review. The Pitcairn GPU is manufactured on 28nm technology and this specific card features 32 ROPS and 2GB of GDDR5 memory which is connected via a 256 bit memory interface. The core clock is increased from 1,000mhz to 1,100mhz and the memory 1,200mhz (4.8Gbps effective). The card has 1,280 shaders.
looks like a great card, three fans, only seen arctic cooling going for a menage et trois 🙂
I dont like the appearance, but it is great, no doubt about it. never bought an MSI or gigabyte GPU before but they seem to be good.
That is a great idea, spinning them slowly but including 3 fans. cant see it for sale yet anywhere.
I like your reviews but question the data based on other reviews posted regarding this card, especially around acoustics. For me, low sound is a big part of a purchase and most of these sophisticated coolers end up louder than the reference design. Guru3D point out that the fans rpm remains constant at idle and load, your review shows a big difference between idle and load indicating an increase in rpm’s. Also Guru3d noted that this version was louder than the reference design and you have indicated that it is quieter. Why the inconsistency?
Hi Greg, I have no idea about other sites reviews. I only test what I am sent. This card is very quiet at all times and barely registered on our meter. It does spin up when loaded although GPUZ won’t record the fan speeds. At all times it was much quieter than the reference design we have here which can spin the single fan quite high under furmark load.
perhaps the bioses/fan implementation were changed, the card I received came straight from the factory without any box or accessories.
Hmm i don’t know which to buy the Gigabyte 7870 or the Sapphire 7870 both are good. Gigabyte is even more better but i can’t choose. My last Sapphire 5750 was pretty good even overclocked & I was happy. Pls help me
Which is cheaper where you live?