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Review: PowerColor Radeon HD 7870 Myst

by Tarinder Sandhu on 26 December 2012, 09:00

Tags: PowerColor (6150.TWO)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qabqnb

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Testing Methodology

PowerColor HD 7870 Myst spec

GPU Comparisons

Graphics Card GPU Clock
(MHz)
Stream
Processors
Shader Clock
(MHz)
Memory Clock
(MHz)
Memory Bus
(bits)
Graphics Driver Approx price
PowerColor Radeon HD 7870 Myst (2,048MB) 925 (975) 1,536 925 (975) 6,000 256 Catalyst 12.11 beta 11 + CAP2 £180
AMD Radeon HD 7870 (2,048MB) 1,000 1,280 1,000 4,800 256 Catalyst 12.11 beta 11 + CAP2 £170
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 OC (2,048MB) 1,033 (1,098) 960 1,033 (1,098) 6,008 192 GeForce 310.70 beta £165

HEXUS High-End Test Bench

Processor Intel Core i7-3770K (3.50GHz, 8MB cache, quad-core)
CPU Cooler Intel reference E97378-001
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H
Memory 8GB Patriot Viper 3 (2x4GB) DDR3 @ 1,600MHz
Power Supply Corsair AX750W
Storage Device Samsung 830 Series 256GB SSD
Optical Drive Generic 24x DVD-RW
Chassis Corsair Graphite Series 600T
Monitor Dell 3007FPW
Operating system Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit, SP1)

HEXUS Christmas Benchmark Suite

3D Benchmarks Mode and Resolutions Quality Settings
3DMark 11 DX11 at 1,280x720 and 1,920x1,080 Performance and Extreme Presets
DiRT Showdown DX11 at 1,920x1,080 and 2,560x1,600 4xMSAA, High Preset
Just Cause 2 DX10 at 1,920x1,080 and 2,560x1,600 8xMSAA, High Preset
Far Cry 3 DX11 at 1,920x1,080 and 2,560x1,600 2xMSAA, High Preset
Call of Duty: Black Ops II DX9 at 1,920x1,080 and 2,560x1,600 4xMSAA, High/Extra Preset
LuxMark 2.0 OpenCL GPUs-only Sala (488,000+ triangles) and Room (2,000,000+ triangles)
General Benchmarks Description
Power Consumption To emulate real-world usage scenarios, we record mains power draw both when idle and while playing Far Cry 3
Temperature To emulate real-world usage scenarios, we record GPU core temperature both when idle and while playing Far Cry 3
Noise A PCE-318 meter is used to record noise levels when idle and while playing Far Cry 3

Notes

We usually have tens of cards in a comparison line-up. However, we tend to overhaul the graphics-card benchmarking suite in the new year, enabling us to experiment a little during the run-up to Christmas. This is why we're comparing the PowerColor card's performance against a bone-stock Radeon HD 7870 and a cheaper Gigabyte GTX 660 OC - both are comfortably under £200.

We're including numbers for high-quality settings at 1,920x1,080 and card-bustin' 2,560x1,600 resolutions. A three-card comparison enables us to use the very latest drivers from both sides - Catalyst 12.11 beta 11 and GeForce 310.70 - and we've added in Call of Duty: Black Ops II and Far Cry 3 for the second time. Each game is FRAPS'd during an intensive gameplay section.

Focussing on three cards also provides the opportunity of giving you more meaningful data. Alongside the usual average FPS graphs we're including per-second framerates for both resolutions. This should give you a better idea of just how each card performs.