Gigabyte HD7870 Overclock Review (Windforce 3X)

When AMD released their reference Pitcairn HD7850 and HD7870 early March, I was really impressed with the range. The price point for the HD7870 is around the £270-£280 inc vat mark, meaning it will target a wide audience of enthusiast gamers who don't want to fork out the extra money for the HD7950 or HD7970. Both of these cards are really expensive … around £355 for the HD7950 and £470 for the HD7970.

Gigabyte's HD7870 Overclock Edition is a memorable graphics card, particularly for the incredibly low noise emissions. The engineers deliberately opted for a triple fan cooler so they could spin each of the fans as slowly as possible, and the design really does deliver the goods.

When gaming in a moderately warm room, the card hovered just under 50c which is 17c better than the reference cooler.

It may seem like overkill, but for a media center with a primary focus on gaming, this Gigabyte card would make an excellent first choice. The overclocked core clock allows this HD7870 to perform at a level close to the more expensive HD7950 in the majority of games.

Pricing in the United Kingdom has yet to be confirmed, but we would expect this card to demand a small premium over the reference card. Gigabyte need to keep the price below £299 inc vat however, or it will be getting periously close to the least expensive HD7950's. OCUK for instance have an offer right now for the HIS HD7950 at £335.99.

If you can find this card for under £270 inc vat, then we reckon you should snap one up, immediately.

Pros:

• Excellent performance.
• Almost silent.
• cooler maintains a <50c threshold when gaming.
• additional headroom for manual overclocking.

Cons:

• The semi translucent black plastic might not appeal to some.

Kitguru says: An almost silent high performance gaming card which runs at under 50c, when gaming. Its an attractive combination.

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