Last week we reviewed the overclocked XFX HD7870 Black Edition graphics card, and today we look at the Sapphire HD7870 Overclock Edition. This card features a custom cooler, with twin fans and overclocked out of the box settings to appeal to the enthusiast audience.
Sapphire discrete video cards have scored well on Kitguru in recent months, and with good reason. Their coolers are the best on the market, even outperforming solutions from XFX. The combination of low noise levels and excellent cooling proficiency ensure class leading performance.
Product | AMD HD7970 | AMD HD7950 | Sapphire HD7870 Overclock Edition |
AMD HD7850 |
Core Clock speed | 925mhz | 800mhz | 1000mhz (1,050mhz) | 860mhz |
Transistors | 4.31 billion | 4.31 billion | 2.8 billion | 2.8 billion |
Stream Processors | 2,048 | 1,792 | 1,280 | 1,024 |
Compute Performance | 3.79 TFLOPS | 2.87 TFLOPS | 2.56 TFLOPS | 1.76 TFLOPS |
Texture Units | 128 | 112 | 80 | 64 |
Texture Fillrate | 118.4 GT/s | 89.6 GT/s | 80 GT/s | 55.0 GT/s |
ROPs | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 |
Pixel Fillrate | 29.6 GP/s | 25.6 GP/s | 32.0 GP/s | 27.52 GP/s |
Z/Stencil | 128 | 128 | 128 | 128 |
Memory Type | 3GB GDDR5 | 3GB GDDR5 | 2GB GDDR5 | 2GB GDDR5 |
Memory Clock | 1,375mhz | 1,250mhz | 1,200mhz (1,250mhz) | 1,200mhz |
Memory Data Rate | 5.5 GBps | 5.0 Gbps | 4.8 Gbps (5.0Gbps) | 4.8 Gbps |
Memory Bandwidth | 264 GB/s | 240 GB/s | 153.6 GB/s | 153.6 GB/s |
Sapphire have opted for the same modest overclock as XFX – that being 50mhz on the core, from 1,200mhz to 1,250mhz. The GDDR5 memory also receives a 50mhz clock increase to 1,250mhz (5.0Gbps effective). The Gigabyte HD7870 Overclock Edition that we reviewed a short while ago received a 100mhz overclock to 1,100mhz on the core, but didn’t have a memory boost at all.