VTX3D HD7870 Black Review (Tahiti LE)

Rating: 9.5.

Today we have something special up for review, the latest VTX3D HD7870 Black which is based on a ‘new revision' of the popular HD7870 graphics card. Selected partners will be releasing new versions of the HD7870 (Tahiti ‘LE') with more horsepower under the hood. This isn't just a simple clock boost however …..

Just how good is the new HD7870 design, based on the Tahiti core previously associated with the HD7950 and HD7970?

This card is so new that we haven't even been briefed yet by AMD so we have no resource material to fall back on. We were informed by a source that card was initially called the 7930, designed for exclusive release into the Russian markets. It made sense for some AMD partners to release it into the general market, especially to target the mid range and remain competitive against Nvidia.

The latest version of GPUz at time of press (0.6.6) won't read the hardware correctly either. This card is not based on the Pitcairn XT core, but a ‘cut down' version of the more expensive Tahiti core. This HD7870 ‘Tahiti LE' version we know is built from 4313M Transistors (like the 7900 series) and has an upgraded 1,536 shader count. The HD7950 has 1,792 shaders and the earlier HD7870 has 1,280 shaders. In this regard the new HD7870 edition slots firmly half way between the standard HD7870 and HD7950.

There are also now 24 SIMD units, up from 20 on HD7870 and less than the HD7950 (which has 28). The ROP count has not changed from 32, although there are now 96 texture units, up from 80 on the HD7870 but still less than the 112 count on the HD7950.

The core is clocked at 975mhz and the 2GB of GDDR5 memory is clocked at 1,500mhz (6Gbps effective) connected via a 256bit memory interface.

These changes should have a significant positive impact on overall performance, but we will find that out shortly. First let us take a look at the card.

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