Sapphire HD7870 FleX Edition Review

1. Introduction2. Sapphire HD7870 FleX Edition3. Sapphire HD7870 FleX Edition (Super High Res Gallery)4. Testing Methodology5. Setting up Eyefinity6. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark7. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage8. Synthetic: 3DMark 119. Synthetic: HQV Benchmark 2.010. Gaming: F1 2011 (1080p)11. Gaming: F1 2011 (5760x1080)12. Gaming: Alien V Predator (1080p)13. Gaming: Tom Clancy HAWX 2 (1080p)14. Gaming: Resident Evil 5 (1080p)15. Gaming: Far Cry 2 (1080p)16. Gaming: Total War Shogun 2 (720p & 1080p)17. Gaming: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2560x1600)18. Gaming: Battlefield 3 (1080p)19. Gaming: Battlefield 3 (5760x1080)20. Gaming: Dirt Showdown (5760x1080)21. Technical: Thermal Dynamics22. Technical: Acoustics Performance23. Technical: Power Consumption24. Technical: Overclocking25. Closing Thoughts26. View All Pages

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 5,760×1080. 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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