AMD HD7870 and HD7850 Graphics Card Review

Another reference sample from AMD, so no bundle or cool accessories to mention. We will hopefully get a look at some partner cards in the coming weeks.

The cooler is identical to the HD7850 model mentioned on the previous pages. This time the sticker highlights the 1GHZ core clock speed. The same black PCB is used.

The AMD HD7870 is Crossfire capable in a 2 way configuration only. AMD want gamers to move up to the HD79xx series to get 3 way or quad Crossfire support.

The power draw of the HD7870 is clearly higher, as it requires not one, but two 6 pin PCI E power connectors for stable operation.

The card is a dual slot design with a full sized DVI and HDMI port, and two mini Display Port 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 AMD cooler is enclosed within the plastic shroud and is based around a copper heatsink which attaches directly to the GPU core.

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 set at 1000mhz and the memory 1,200mhz (4.8Gbps effective). The card has 1,280 shaders with a texture fillrate of 80 GTexel/s.

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