Sapphire HD7870 FleX Edition Review

We have reviewed all of the Sapphire FleX graphics cards to date, and today we are looking at the new HD7870 FleX Edition, slotting in just below the HD7970 Dual-X FleX Edition, which we reviewed at the beginning of June. The HD7870 FleX ships with a modest factory overclock, dual fans and custom 'FleX' display technology only available with Sapphire discrete solutions. This year Sapphire have produced a wide range of 7000 series cards sporting dual fan coolers, with a primary focus on lowering noise levels. Thanks to the use of high quality fans and clever non aggressive fan profiles these have been an ideal choice for many enthusiast users. Product Sapphire HD7870 FleX Edition AMD HD7950 AMD HD7870 AMD HD7850 Core Clock speed 1050mhz 800mhz 1000mhz 860mhz Transistors 2.8B 4.31B 2.8B 2.8B Stream Processors 1,280 1,792 1,280 1,024 Compute Performance 2.56 TFLOPS 2.87 TFLOPS 2.56 TFLOPS 1.76 TFLOPS Texture Units 80 112 80 64 Texture Fillrate 80 GT/s 89.6 GT/s 80 GT/s 55.0 GT/s ROPs 32 32 32 32 Pixel Fillrate 32.0 GP/s 25.6 GP/s 32.0 GP/s 27.52 GP/s Z/Stencil 128 128 128 128 Memory Type 2GB GDDR5 3GB GDDR5 2GB GDDR5 2GB GDDR5 Memory Clock 1,250mhz 1,250mhz 1,200mhz 1,200mhz Memory Data Rate 5.0 Gbps 5.0 Gbps 4.8 Gbps 4.8 Gbps Memory Bandwidth 153.6 GB/s 240 GB/s 153.6 GB/s 153.6 GB/s The Sapphire HD7980 Flex Edition receives both a core clock and memory increase. The core speed has been enhanced by 50mhz, from 1,000mhz to 1,050 mhz. The memory speed has been boosted by 50mhz from 1,200mhz (4.8 Gbps effective) to 1,250mhz (5Gbps effective). Sapphire's big bosomed 3D rendered army lass makes another appearance on the box, this time kitted out with wonder bra and SMG. A deadly combination. The bundle includes several video and power converter cables, a Crossfire connector, software disc and literature on the full range of Sapphire products. The Sapphire HD7870 FleX looks very similar to the HD7950 Flex. The ominous black cooler resides on a blue PCB with thick copper heatpipes clearly visible from various angles. There are however some subtle changes. Firstly the product sticker is along the top edge of the black plastic cooler. There is also no 'Dual X' sticker on this card, even though the fans appear identical. Unlike the HD7950 FleX, this card is only Crossfire capable in a 2 way configuration. This is one of the 'bonuses' of buying a HD79xx series video card. The Sapphire HD7870 FleX Edition demands power from two 6 pin PCI Power connections, identical to the more expensive HD7950 model. This is a dual slot design with two DVI connectors and a single full sized HDMI and DisplayPort. It is Eyefinity capable and can power up to 6 displays. This solution can simultaneously output multiple, independent audio streams from the HDMI and mini Displayport connectors at the rear of the card. The GPU can support 3GHz HDMI with frame packing support for Stereo 3D. This FleX Edition card has a cooling plate positioned across the VRM's and memory modules. The cooler is not identical to the model we found on the HD7950 FleX, which had five thick copper heatpipes. The HD7870 FleX has four thick copper heatpipes which run into two separate racks of aluminum fins on either side of the core. As before, the engineering quality is first rate, with the two fans merging into a single header. Above, a CPUZ overview of the hardware. The Pitcairn core is built around the 28nm engineering process, with a core clock increase to 1,050mhz. The 2GB of GDDR5 memory is connected via a 256 bit memory interface. The card is equipped with 32 ROPs and 1,280 Unified shaders, down from 1,792 on the Sapphire HD7950 FleX Edition. On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. You can right click and ‘save as’ to your computer to view later. To test today we are using our long standing Core i7 970 system, which is overclocked. We have a variety of hardware benchmarked on this system this year which will make for an interesting market comparison. Main Test System: Processor: Core i7 970 @ 4.6ghz Graphics: Sapphire HD7870 FleX Edition Cooling: Coolit Vantage Motherboard: MSI X58A-GD65 Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10 GT Power Supply: Corsair AX1200 Memory: 6GB ADATA @ 2133mhz 9-10-9-32 Storage: Kingston SSDNow V+ 512GB Gen 2 SSD (Storage) / Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB (OS boot) Comparison Cards: Sapphire HD7950 Dual-X FleX Edition Review (OC) KFA2 Geforce GTX680 EX OC Asus Geforce GTX670 Direct CU II TOP GTX680 MSI R7970 Lightning Edition HD7970 MSI R7950 Twin Frozr III 3GD5/OC HD7950 HD7870 HD7850 HD6990 (880 core) HD6970 HD6950 HD6870 Sapphire HD7770 Vapor X Overclock Edition XFX HD7770 Black Edition S CFx HD7770 CFx HD7770 Sapphire HD7750 Ultimate Edition HD6790 HD6770 HD6670 GTX590 SLi GTX590 GTX580 SLi GTX580 GTX570 Monitors: Dell U3011 and 3x Dell U2410 Software: Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit Unigine Heaven Benchmark 3DMark Vantage 3DMark 11 Fraps Professional Steam Client FurMark Games: Alien V Predator Tom Clancy HAWX 2 Resident Evil 5 Far Cry 2 F1 2011 Total War: Shogun 2 Battlefield 3 Elder Scrolls V: SkyRim Dirt Showdown All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page. Some game descriptions are edited from Wikipedia. Most graphics cards based on AMD technology require the third monitor in an Eyefinity set-up to be a DisplayPort monitor, or connected with an active DisplayPort Adapter. The SAPPHIRE FleX family can support three DVI monitors in Eyefinity mode and deliver a true SLS (Single Large Surface) work area without the need for active adapters. The first two monitors are connected to the two DVI ports and the third to an HDMI to DVI cable (supplied) with no extra hardware required. Catalyst Control Center is easy to use and all the settings for an Eyefinity system are clearly marked in the 'AMD Eyefinity Multi Display' panel. The image above shows a 30 inch screen in the central position, and two 24 inch screens on either side, with one rotated into portrait mode. This is how I configure my main work system. The next process is to configure the screens in the way you want them. Above, we are running three 24 inch screens side by side in landscape mode. It is perfectly possible that Catalyst Control Centre may set up your screens 'out of position'. Meaning the central screen could either be on the left or right. There is a simple process to correct this, by simply clicking on the corresponding blue screen. The later versions of Catalyst Control Center add a very useful taskbar option, across all screens or just on the central screen. I use UltraMon, so I tend to ignore this section completely. Custom resolutions can be configured in the last panel in this section of the driver. We would just leave it at the native settings, in this case 5760x1080. The first time, it may be a little daunting to set this up, but it all starts to make sense rather quickly. Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand. Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk. Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable: Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems Multicore CPU support Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles) Powerful C++ API Comprehensive performance profiling system Flexible XML-based data structures We use the following settings: 1920×1080 resolution. Anti Aliasing off. Anisotrophy 4, Tessellation normal. Shaders High. Stereo 3D disabled. API: Direct X 11. The overclocked HD7870 FleX isn't too far behind the reference clocked HD7950 in this test, and it manages to outperform the flagship Nvidia GTX580 from the previous generation. Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings. This Direct X 10 benchmark slots the HD7870 FleX Edition in behind the GTX580 and ahead of the HD7770 1GHZ cards running in Crossfire. 3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads. If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page. Great performance with this Direct X 11 based benchmark. The final score of 6,913 points is just behind the two XFX HD7770 Black Edition cards in Crossfire, at 7,137 points. HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evalute motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection. There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on Bluray. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content so will we. This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis. Read our initial analysis over here Sapphire HD7870 FleX Edition Dial 4 Dial with static pattern 5 Gray Bars 5 Violin 5 Stadium 2:2 5 Stadium 3:2 5 Horizontal Text Scroll 5 Vertical Text Scroll 5 Transition to 3:2 Lock 5 Transition to 2:2 Lock 0 2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video 5 2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video 5 3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed 5 5:5 FPS Animation 5 6:4 12 FPS Animation 5 8:7 8 FPS Animation 5 Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP) 5 Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE) 5 Random Noise: Sailboat 5 Random Noise: Flower 5 Random Noise: Sunrise 5 Random Noise: Harbour Night 5 Scrolling Text 5 Roller Coaster 5 Ferris Wheel 5 Bridge Traffic 5 Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text 5 Roller Coaster 5 Ferris Wheel 5 Bridge Traffic 5 Luminance Frequency Bands 5 Chrominance Frequency Bands 5 Vanishing Text 5 Resolution Enhancement 15 Theme Park 5 Driftwood 5 Ferris Wheel 5 Skin Tones 7 Total 196 A score of 196 points is class leading right now, the ideal solution for high definition media playback on a big screen. F1 2011 is the newest Direct X 11 racing game from industry pioneers CodeMasters. The 2011 Formula One season is the 62nd FIA Formula One season. The original calendar consisted of twenty rounds, including the inaugural running of the Indian Grand Prix before the cancellation of the Bahrain Grand Prix. Pirelli returns to the sport as tyre supplier for all teams, taking over from Bridgestone. Red Bull Racing are the reigning Constructor’s Champions. Red Bull Racing’s Sebastian Vettel is the defending Drivers’ Champion, one of five World Champions appearing on the grid. Good results at these settings, averaging 72 frames per second. F1 2011 is the newest Direct X 11 racing game from industry pioneers CodeMasters. The 2011 Formula One season is the 62nd FIA Formula One season. The original calendar consisted of twenty rounds, including the inaugural running of the Indian Grand Prix before the cancellation of the Bahrain Grand Prix. Pirelli returns to the sport as tyre supplier for all teams, taking over from Bridgestone. Red Bull Racing are the reigning Constructor’s Champions. Red Bull Racing’s Sebastian Vettel is the defending Drivers’ Champion, one of five World Champions appearing on the grid. We configured the game to run across three screens in Eyefinity at 5760 resolution. Strong performance across three screens. We also tested with the ultra setting although performance was borderline, unlike the Sapphire HD7950 FleX which was smoother throughout. The extra 1GB of GDDR5 memory will also aid performance a little. Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today. To test the cards we used a 1080p resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on. We use this with most of our graphics card testing so cards are comparable throughout reviews. A demanding Direct X 11 game which requires a good partnering graphics card to achieve smooth frame rates at these settings. The Sapphire HD7870 FleX Edition manages to just outperform the GTX580, by a single frame per second. Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2 is an arcade-style flight action game developed by Ubisoft Romania and published by Ubisoft. After the events of the first game, the H.A.W.X squadron is sent to Middle East, where a high level of violence is being registered, and the appearance of various insurgents leaders in various hotspots. The team also has to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Russian nuclear weapons. The player will be controlling three groups: one American (Hunter), one British (Munro) and one Russian (Sokov), each with its own pilots and supporting characters. There will also be references to other characters in the Tom Clancy universe. We are testing in full DX11 mode with all settings to maximum. Good performance, falling a little behind the HD7950, but ahead of the GTX570. Resident Evil 5, known in Japan as Biohazard 5, is a survival horror third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the seventh installment in the Resident Evil survival horror series, and was released on March 5, 2009 in Japan and on March 13, 2009 in North America and Europe for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A Windows version of the game was released on September 15, 2009 in North America, September 17 in Japan and September 18 in Europe. Resident Evil 5 revolves around Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar as they investigate a terrorist threat in Kijuju, a fictional town in Africa. Within its first three weeks of release, the game sold over 2 million units worldwide and became the best-selling game of the franchise in the United Kingdom. As of December, 2009, Resident Evil 5 has sold 5.3 million copies worldwide since launch, becoming the best selling Resident Evil game ever made. Positive results, averaging 148 frames per second, same performance levels as the reference clocked HD7950. Far Cry 2 (commonly abbreviated as “FC2 or “fc2″) is an open-ended first-person shooter developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It was released on October 21, 2008 in North America and on October 23, 2008 in Europe and Australia. It was made available on Steam on October 22, 2008. Crytek, the developers of the original game, were not involved in the development of Far Cry 2. Ubisoft has marketed Far Cry 2 as the true sequel to Far Cry, though the sequel has very few noticeable similarities to the original game. Instead, it features completely new characters and setting, as well as a new style of gameplay that allows the player greater freedom to explore different African landscapes such as deserts, jungles, and savannas. The game takes place in a modern-day East African nation in a state of anarchy and civil war. The player takes control of a mercenary on a lengthy journey to locate and assassinate “The Jackal,” a notorious arms dealer. Far Cry 2 is still a popular game and the open world environment can be taxing on even the latest hardware available today. Settings: 1920×1200, D3D10, Disable Artificial Intelligence(No), Full Screen, Anti-Aliasing(8x), VSync(No), Overall Quality(Ultra High), Vegetation(Very High), Shading(Ultra High), Terrain(Ultra High), Geometry(Ultra High), Post FX(High), Texture(Ultra High), Shadow(Ultra High), Ambient(High), Hdr(Yes), Bloom(Yes), Fire(Very High), Physics(Very High), RealTrees(Very High). Good performance, slightly outperforming the AMD HD7770 1GHZ cards in Crossfire. Shogun 2 is set in 16th-century feudal Japan, in the aftermath of the Ōnin War. The country is fractured into rival clans led by local warlords, each fighting for control. The player takes on the role of one of these warlords, with the goal of dominating other factions and claiming his rule over Japan. The standard edition of the game will feature a total of eight factions (plus a ninth faction for the tutorial), each with a unique starting position and different political and military strengths. No problems powering this engine, even at 1080p with high quality settings. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is an action role-playing open world video game developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. Skyrim‘s main story revolves around the player character’s efforts to defeat Alduin, a Dragon god who is prophesized to destroy the world. Set two hundred years after Oblivion, the game takes place in the fictional province of Skyrim, upon the continent of Tamriel, and the planet of Nirn. The open world gameplay of the Elder Scrolls series returns in Skyrim; the player can explore the land at will and ignore or postpone the main quest indefinitely. Skyrim has received universal acclaim from critics, selling more than 3.5 million copies within the first 48 hours of release. A good frame rate, averaging around 50 throughout our test section and equaling Nvidia's previous GTX580 flagship. According to EA, Battlefield 3 garnered 3 million pre-orders by the day of its release. It is unknown at present whether these figures are worldwide or just for the US. The pre-order total makes it “the biggest first-person shooter launch in EA history”, according to the publisher. The engine is beautiful on the PC and very demanding of the partnering hardware. Good performance, falling around 6 frames per second behind the HD7950. According to EA, Battlefield 3 garnered 3 million pre-orders by the day of its release. It is unknown at present whether these figures are worldwide or just for the US. The pre-order total makes it “the biggest first-person shooter launch in EA history”, according to the publisher. The engine is beautiful on the PC and very demanding of the partnering hardware. We configured the game to run on our three 24 inch monitors at 5760×1080. We also dropped the Texture quality from ultra to high. The game is smooth on the HD7870 FleX, although it was noticeably slower than the HD7950 FleX, dropping a few times below the sweet spot at 30 frames per second. Again, the extra 1GB of GDDR5 on the flagship card will help with some of the in game, high resolution textures. Dirt Showdown is the latest title in the franchise from Codemasters, based around the famous Colin McRae racing game series, although it no longer uses his name, since he passed away in 2007. We enabled the game across three 24 inch screens at 5760×1080 resolution, with the settings shown above. The added horsepower of the HD7950 Flex is clear, with a 9 frames per second average advantage. The HD7870 dropped below 30 frames per second a few times, whereas the HD7950 FleX didn't. The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 24c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this. Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic. The Sapphire HD7870 FleX Edition hovers around 62c when under gaming load, with the fans spinning at 2,400 rpm. These results are interesting however, because when placed under Furmark load, the fans don't spin up any further and the temperatures peak at 75c - which is around 3c higher than the reference solution. We will find out on the next page if this is an intentional move from Sapphire to keep noise emissions as low as possible. We have changed our method of measuring noise levels. We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. We are using a heatpipe based passive power supply and an Intel SSD to keep noise levels to a minimum. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests. Ambient noise in the room is around 20-25dBa. We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation. Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635. KitGuru noise guide 10dBA - Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves 20-25dBA – Whisper 30dBA - High Quality Computer fan 40dBA - A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator 50dBA - Normal Conversation 60dBA - Laughter 70dBA - Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer 80dBA - City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal 90dBA - Motorcycle or Lawnmower 100dBA - MP3 player at maximum output 110dBA - Orchestra 120dBA - Front row rock concert/Jet Engine 130dBA - Threshold of Pain 140dBA - Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range) 160dBA - Instant Perforation of eardrum The reference HD7870 can get loud, especially when dealing with synthetic generated Furmark load conditions. Sapphire's HD7870 Flex Edition by comparison when idle is almost silent .... the fans spin between 1,000 rpm and 1,100 rpm. Under load these rise to 2,400 rpm - 2,500 rpm, generating a very low noise level of hum. Another exceptionally quiet high end video card from Sapphire. To test power consumption today we are using a Keithley Integra unit and we measure power consumption from the VGA card inputs, not the system wide drain. We measure results while gaming in Crysis Warhead and record the results. In such an energy aware climate, AMD are making a big deal out of their new ‘ZeroCore Power’ technology. Many solutions today use power gating, clock gating and memory compression to reduce idle power requirements, but ZeroCore power technology can completely power down the core GPU while the rest of the system remains active. The Sapphire card has been tweaked a little, taking a few watts less when under load compared to our early reference card. For overclocking today we are using Sapphire's TriXX software. We managed to push the card to 1,200mhz core from 1,050mhz and from 1,250mhz on the GDDR5 memory to 1,400mhz (5.6GBps effective). This translates to a 14.2% and 12% increase respectively. The healthy overclock translates into around 700 points extra in 3DMark 11, pushing the Sapphire HD7870 FleX to just above the MSI R7950 Twin Frozr III. Sapphire have been releasing fantastic discrete graphics solutions this year, and the HD7870 FleX Edition is surely another winner for the company. The ability to support three DVI monitors in Eyefinity mode and deliver a true Single Large Surface work area without the need for active adapters will prove invaluable for many people. Not only for gamers, but the audience who need multiple, accelerated displays for work oriented tasks, such as 3D rendering, photographic manipulation and video encoding. As we have noticed in recent months Sapphire have opted for a non aggressive fan profile which generates only a modicum of noise, even when loaded with a taxing Direct X 11 game. The fans spin no higher when tasked with the synthetic Furmark stress test either. Sapphire have improved upon AMD's reference solution in all areas and we managed to get the core speed increased from 1,050mhz to 1,200mhz, distributing noticeable gains across the board. There was significant headroom via the GDDR5 memory, hitting a final effective clock speed of 5,600mhz. A single HD7870 FleX card is powerful enough to power many modern games at 5,760x1080. That said it is evidently slower than the flagship Sapphire HD7950 FleX Edition which has more stream processing power, a wider memory interface (384bit v 256bit) and an additional 1GB of GDDR5 memory onboard. At time of publication we have no indication of the pricing, however the Sapphire HD7870 which features 2GB of memory and a dual fan cooler retails for £263.99 inc vat. We would therefore realistically expect a small price premium for the enhanced clock speeds and FleX display technology. Pros: overclocked out of the box. plenty of headroom on our sample. quiet running. FleX technology. optimised power consumption. Cons: Faces no shortage of competition at this price point. Kitguru says: Another class leading, quiet card from Sapphire.

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Sapphire HD7870 FleX Edition Review

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