Two weeks ago AMD officially unveiled the Radeon HD 7800 series. Composed of the Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition and Radeon HD 7850, AMD broke from their earlier protocol with the 7700 and 7900 series and unveiled the cards ahead of their actual launch in order to beat CeBIT and GDC. The result was a pair of impressive – if expensive – cards that cemented AMD’s control of the high-end video card market. Unfortunately because of this early unveiling you couldn’t buy one at the time.

Those two weeks have now come and gone, and the 7800 series has finally been released for sale. Because AMD’s partners have largely passed on AMD’s reference design for the 7870 series we wanted to take a look at what the actual retail cards would be like; with almost everyone using a custom cooler and many partners using factory overclocks, there’s a great deal of variation between cards. To that end HIS and PowerColor have sent over their top 7870 cards, the HIS 7870 IceQ Turbo and the PowerColor PCS+ HD7870. How do these retail cards stack up compared to our reference 7870, and what kind of impact do their factory overclocks bring? Let’s find out.

PowerColor PCS+ HD7870

Starting first with the PowerColor card, we have the PCS+ HD7870. The PCS+ HD7870 is PowerColor’s high end 7870, and the only semi-custom card the company is making. As indicated by the PCS+ moniker, this 7870 is a factory overclocked card using a custom cooling solution. PowerColor has clocked the card at 1100MHz core and 4.9GHz memory, which is a 100MHz (10%) core overclock and a far less significant 100MHz (2%) memory overclock over the reference 7870. In large part due to the fact that AMD’s Pitcairn GPU overclocks so well on stock voltage, PowerColor isn’t doing any kind of voltage adjustment here, so the PCS+ operates at the same 1.219v as a reference 7870.

In terms of construction the PCS+ is a semi-custom card, meaning PowerColor is using their own cooler in conjunction with AMD’s PCB. PowerColor’s cooler of choice for the PCS+ HD7870 is a new design for the company, and is effectively a minor variation on the open air coolers we commonly see on sub-200W cards such as the 7870. For the PCS+ heat dissipation is provided by an aluminum heatsink that runs nearly the entire length of the card, which in turn is attached to the GPU through the use of an aluminum baseplate and 3 aluminum heatpipes that provide contact with the GPU.

Meanwhile airflow over the heatsink is provided by a 92mm fan near the center of the card, which is a bit bigger of a fan than the 80mm fans we typically see on open air coolers. The cooler itself is no larger than the card, which means the card’s length is the same as the 7870 PCB at 9.5”.

Looking elsewhere, along the top of the card we find a black metal stiffener, which in the absence of the reference 7870’s full shroud provides structural stability to the card. We still aren’t seeing stiffeners being used regularly enough on these kinds of open air cards, so we’re glad to see PowerColor is going about this the right way. Finally at the front of the card we can see that PowerColor is using the stacked DVI option that the AMD PCB provides, which brings the total number of ports to 5: 2 miniDP, 1 HDMI, 1 DL-DVI, and 1 SL-DVI. The use of the stacked DVI option means that the card only has a half-slot vent, so like most open air coolers most of the hot air the card produces is going to be recirculated inside of the case.

Rounding out the package is the typical video card fare. PowerColor packs in a driver CD and quick start guide, along with a CrossFire bridge, a DVI to VGA dongle, and a miniDP to DP dongle.

Finally, PowerColor has set the MSRP on the PCS+ HD7870 at $370, a $20 premium over regular 7870s and rather typical for a factory overclocked card. The included warranty is PowerColor’s standard 2 year warranty.

HIS 7870 IceQ Turbo

Our second card of the day is HIS’s 7870 IceQ Turbo. Like PowerColor’s card this is a semi-custom factory overclocked card, with HIS shipping the card at 1100MHz core and 4.8GHz memory, a 100MHz (10%) core overclock but without any kind of memory overclock. As with PowerColor’s card, the IceQ Turbo ships at 1.219v, the reference voltage for the 7870.

As with all other 7870 cards launching today, all of AMD’s partners including HIS are using AMD’s PCB, making the IceQ Turbo a semi-custom card combining the AMD PCB with a custom cooler. HIS of course is well known for their unusual coolers and the IceQ cooler is no exception. This is the same IceQ cooler that HIS uses on their existing 7950 IceQ products, and is itself an evolution of the IceQ cooler from their 6900 series cards.

Like those coolers, the IceQ on the 7870 is what’s best described as an open air blower – a radial fan at the end of the card pushes air towards the front of the card, however the shroud isn’t sealed as with a typical blower. Instead the shroud is sealed as normal at the rear and open near the front of the card, allowing some hot air to recirculate while the rest of the air is pushed out. Furthermore the fan is raised as opposed to being flush with the PCB, allowing HIS to use a larger fan and also allowing them to pull in air from both above and below the fan. This in turn makes the card a de facto triple wide card, as the card becomes wider than two slots near the back of the card where the fan is located.

The airflow from this unique blower is in turn channeled over a more typical aluminum heatsink that runs along roughly half of the card. The heatsink in turn is connected to a copper baseplate through the use of 4 copper heatpipes. As the IceQ’s half-blower design doesn’t provide any airflow over the RAM, a secondary aluminum baseplate that is connected to 2 of the heatpipes runs around the GPU, under which the RAM is connected through the use of thermal pads, thereby providing cooling for the RAM. Airflow for the electronic components elsewhere on the card is provided by a combination of airflow going into the blower at the rear, and airflow coming out of the shroud at the front.

As the IceQ cooler is mounted like an open air cooler, the cooler does not provide any structural support for the card. In place of that is a stiffener running along the top of the card, similar to what we saw on the PowerColor card and a necessary component given the amount of flex the gap between the cooler and the PCB would allow. Buyers will want to take note that because the IceQ Turbo is using AMD’s reference PCB, the PCIe power sockets are still at the top rear of the card, so plugging and unplugging the card can be tricky due to a lack of finger space. On that note because this is the same IceQ cooler as on the 7950, it’s oversized relative to the 7870 and overhangs it some as a result. Besides making this a triple wide card, this cooler also makes the total length of the card around 11.25” long, so make sure you have plenty of space as this is a larger card than even the reference 7970. Finally, display connectivity is the same as with the reference 7870, with HIS offering 2 miniDP, 1 HDMI, and 1 DL-DVI port, and opting not to use the stacked DVI option so that a full size vent is present.

Wrapping up our look at the cooler, it’s bears a quick mention that HIS is also promoting the IceQ cooler as a superior cooler for CrossFire operation. The fact that it’s a triple wide cooler has a lot to do with this – give any card 3 slots of clearance versus 2 slots and it’ll do better – but HIS is convinced that the raised design of the fan (which essentially guarantees a certain amount of space for sucking in air) makes it especially potent for CrossFire. Being a triple wide card makes this a niche market – not many boards have PCIe x16 slots spaced exactly that far apart (ours included) – but on paper the potential is clearly there, particularly if for whatever reason you can’t use 4 slot spacing.

Rounding out the package, HIS includes a driver disc and quick start guide, a CrossFire bridge, a DVI to VGA dongle, and has been common with high-end HIS cards for some time now, their self-titled weight lifter. The weight lifter is a simple plastic jack that is designed to stick to the motherboard and provide support for the far end of the video card. While we’ve seen some troublingly heavy video cards in the past, the 7870 IceQ Turbo is not among them, and unless you’re chucking your computer like a pumpkin the PCIe slot and bracket should provide ample support even with the long cooler. So the weight lifter is largely a gimmick in this case.

HIS also includes the latest version of their iTurbo software, which is an above average overclocking suite. There’s nothing you haven’t seen here before – it appears to be built on the same platform as Sapphire’s Trixx – but it’s an easy to use overclocking utility that does the job; seasoned overclockers however may find the lack of logging an issue. Custom fan profiles are supported, and while overvolting is listed as supported, Sapphire’s software doesn’t actually know how to control the VRM circuitry on a 7870 yet.

One interesting feature is that HIS provides an automatic overclocking function that’s also named iTurbo. Unfortunately it’s a straightforward 1% core and memory overclock, which is unlikely to introduce any stability problems but also has a nearly imperceptible impact on the card’s performance. You’d best be served by ignoring the iTurbo function and dialing in settings by hand.

Finally, HIS will be setting the MSRP on the 7870 IceQ Turbo at $389, $40 above regular 7870s and making it one of the most expensive 7870s on the market. Meanwhile the warranty on the card is HIS’s standard 2 year warranty.

Crysis, Metro, DiRT 3, Shogun 2, & Batman

As both the PCS+ HD7870 and the IceQ Turbo 7870 ship with an identical core overclock and similar memory clocks, the performance of the two will be nearly identical. The PCS+ has an edge (however slim) in all situations, but as we’ll see there’s very little separating the two cards when it comes to performance.

Overall the factory overclocks on the PCS+ HD7870 and IceQ Turbo 7870 net about a 5% to 7% increase in game performance compared to the stock 7870. The lack of a significant memory overclock on either card appears to be holding back performance some, keeping game performance gains from reaching parity with the core overclocks.

Interestingly, because of the same frontend & ROP reasons we saw the 7870 do so well relative to the 7950 in our initial review, these factory overclocked cards do one better. Both cards overtake the 7950 at times, such as under DiRT 3 and Total War. More interestingly perhaps is that with the 7870 already nipping at the GTX 580’s heels in these games, the overclocked cards also regularly surpass the GTX 580 in 3 out of the 5 games so far.

Portal 2, Battlefield 3, Starcraft II, Skyrim, & CivV

The story with the back half of our game catalog is much the same, with both the PCS+ HD7870 and IceQ Turbo 7870 performing 5-7% better than the stock 7870. In terms of absolute performance this is enough to push the average framerate above 60fps in both Portal 2 and Battlefield 3 at 1920, giving the 7870 series the jump needed to clear these hurdles.

Both cards are doing particularly well in the back half compared to the 7950; they reach parity with the larger Southern Islands card at 1920 in every game except Starcraft II. In fact the overclocked 7870s even take a surprising 10% lead over the 7950 in CivV, possibly due to the vastly higher clocked frontend (1.1GHz vs. 800MHz).

Power, Temperature, & Noise

Up next, we wrap up our look at a new video card’s stock performance with a look at the physical performance attributes: power consumption, temperatures, and noise. Thanks to TSMC’s 28nm process the 7800 series is already setting a new bar for the amount of performance they offer under 200W. How can these factory overclocks and custom coolers capitalize on that? Let’s find out.

Since both the PCS+ HD7870 and IceQ Turbo 7870 are semi-custom designs using AMD’s PCB, the impact they can have on idle power usage is minimal, but not non-existent. Our tests register a 2W difference, which may be due to the different fans these designs use, or perhaps a consequence of the slightly lower idle temperatures they hit.

Load power consumption ended up being more wild than we expected. At 331W under Metro and 277W under OCCT, the PCS+ HD7870 performs how we’d expect an overclocked 7870 to perform. That is to say that power usage has increased slightly, but since there’s no increase in core voltage the difference is 20W or less at the wall, confirming the fact that these factory overclocks have little impact on power consumption and are largely free.

But then we have the IceQ Turbo 7870, which barely registers above the reference 7870. Why the difference? It comes down to two things; one of course is chip-to-chip variability, but there’s also the matter of the relationship between leakage and temperatures. As we’ll see when we get to our temperature testing, the IceQ Turbo is so effective at cooling that it stays nearly 10C under the other 7870s, which reduces the power consumption of the GPU.

There are no big surprises under idle temperatures, but open air coolers once again lead the pack. With both cards having idle temperatures below 30C, neither card is getting a whole lot warmer than the room temperature.

It’s once we get to load temperatures that we really get an interesting situation on our hands. The PCS+ HD7870 ends up being up to a few degrees warmer than the reference 7870, thanks to the recirculation of hot air due to the open air cooler, and the use of a stacked DVI design that further limits external venting. As we’ll see this is a temperature/noise tradeoff, and not a bad one to make given AMD’s aggressive cooling on the 7000 series, but the result is that the PCS+ 7870 is warmer.

Then we have the IceQ Turbo 7870. The IceQ is effectively a triple wide card and it has the cooling performance to go with it. At 61C under Metro and 63C under OCCT it’s cooler than any modern reference card, even the GTX 460. 63C under OCCT for a 190W card is especially impressive and not very easy to accomplish. The IceQ is one cool card, literally. But does it have the noise to match its cool demeanor?

Idle noise levels are consistent. Both cards are ever so marginally quieter than the reference 7870 at idle.

When it comes to load noise, both cards show their superiority over the reference 7870. The PCS+ HD7870 makes the temperature/noise tradeoff we mentioned earlier, and as a result it’s anywhere between 1.5dB and 3.7dB quieter than the reference 7870, keeping the card at a cozy noise level below 50dB. This isn’t the domain of silent cards, but you can do very well for fairly little noise.

The IceQ Turbo 7870 ends up being a surprise. Numerous times before we’ve seen loud & cool cards, but it’s rare to come across a quiet and cool card. In spite of the large blower on the card and the temperatures we’ve seen, the IceQ Turbo does well for itself, ending up quieter than the reference 7870 in both tests. It can’t reach the PCS+ HD7870 here, but it still manages to stay below 50dB, which makes it’s sub-65C temperatures we saw earlier all the more impressive.

All things considered both cards do well for themselves in our power/temp/noise testing, which is what we’d expect for open air coolers (and hybrids) going up against AMD’s reference 7870 and its complete blower design. There is an obvious tradeoff that should not be ignored here – both cards are circulating much more hot air inside of the case, making an airy case a wise partner for these cards, but if you have the right case you can beat the blower. Otherwise in a stuffy case both cards would be ill advised given just how much of that 190W can find its way back inside the case.

Overclocking: Power, Temp, & Noise

Of course no review of the Radeon HD 7000 series would be complete without a look at overclocking. In all of our testing AMD’s Southern Islands GPUs have proven to be impressive overclockers, including the reference 7870. In our 7870 review we hit 1150MHz on the core and 5.4GHz for the RAM, which made for a rather hefty overclock.

Our retail cards in turn one up the reference 7870. For core overclocking we hit 1200MHz on both cards, which is a 100MHz (9%) overclock over their factory overclocks, for a total of a rather incredible 200MHz (20%) overclock compared to a 7870’s stock clock. Given the overclockability we’ve seen for the Pitcairn GPU it’s unlikely that HIS, PowerColor, and other partners are having to do too much work for their factory overclocked cards, but we believe there’s at least some simple binning going on here, which would explain the better overclocks we’re seeing on these retail cards.

Interestingly this is all without overvolting of any kind. There still aren’t any tools capable of voltage control on the AMD reference PCB, so the limit is what you can get at reference voltages. If Pitcairn responds well to overvolting though, things could get very interesting in the future.

Memory overclocking wasn’t quite as eventful however, largely due to the fact that all of our 7870s use the same PCB and the same memory chips. Beyond 5.4GHz performance starts to plateau due to error correction. This is still a 500MHz (10%) memory overclock for the PCS+ HD7870 and a 600MHz (12%) memory overclock over the IceQ Turbo 7870 and stock 7870, but at this point GPU overclocking is eclipsing memory overclocking.

So what does a core clock of 1200MHz and a memory clock of 5.4GHz get you? In short, a lot of performance. But first, a look at power, temp, and noise.

The power costs of this overclock are rather consistent for both cards. Under Metro these overclocks drive up power consumption by about 20W at the wall. Meanwhile under OCCT with PowerTune set at +20% (228W), power consumption jumps up by roughly 30W, which is more in line with the shift in PowerTune limits to prevent throttling than it is from the overclock itself. All things considered these aren’t massive increases in power consumption, but on top of the factory overclock it adds up. The PCS+ HD7870 in particular is 42W over the reference 7870 in Metro, which goes to show that while overclocking without a voltage increase doesn’t drive up power consumption as quickly, it can certainly have an impact.

With the increase in power consumption comes the requisite increase in temperatures. At 79C under OCCT the PCS+ HD7870 is still well within our comfort zone, and this is the pathological case. Under Metro the increase is but a fraction, with temperatures going up by only a single degree.

Meanwhile the IceQ Turbo 7870 continues to flaunt its unusual cooler here. Under Metro it reaches a still relatively chilly 62C, and even OCCT can only get the card up to 66C, which is practically unheard of for a 190W card. Once HIS gets voltage controls working, voltage tweakers may very well end up having a field day here as there’s a good 15C+ of thermal headroom to play with on the GPU. Assuming of course that the VRM circuitry on the AMD reference PCB can hold up to further abuse.

Finally, when it comes to noise the fact that temperatures don’t significantly rise under Metro means that there’s a minimal shift in load noise here. Our double overclocked cards are still quieter than the reference 7870, which in the case of the IceQ Turbo is thanks in large part to its low temperatures requiring no further work from the fan. Meanwhile the PCS+ gives up most of its noise advantage here. OCCT on the other hand finally sees every card jump up above 50dB, with both cards tying or beating the reference 7870 by a fraction of a decibel.

Ultimately the second overclock does have an impact on power consumption, but particularly when paying attention to gameplay as opposed to the pathological OCCT, the cost is very cheap. Unless you’re on a specific power budget or need to stay below the equivalent of 50dB on our charts, there’s still a fair bit of headroom to play with on these retail 7870s.

Overclocking: Gaming Performance

Since both of our retail cards reached the same overclock, for the purpose of our graphs we’re simply listing the same number for both cards. In turn both cards are listed so that anyone flipping through the graphs without reading the accompanying text can still see both cards.

With our overclocks in hand, the core clock difference between these overclocked cards and the 7950 starts to get ridiculous. At 1200MHz for the 7870s, this is a massive 50% core clock advantage on the 7950; the overclocked 7870s have 50% more frontend and ROP performance compared to AMD’s next card up at stock, furthering the gap caused by this effect.

The end result is that more often than not, the overclocked 7870s can meet or beat the stock 7950. Even the 7970’s lead is uncomfortably narrow at times, such as in Battlefield 3 at 1920. Ultimately if you liked the 7950’s stock performance it’s possible to get something similar for upwards of $80 less if you don’t mind some overclocking, and chance is on your side.

Final Words

Being in the business of producing video cards is often not an easy feat, as a GPU manufacturer’s partners only have limited control over the resulting product. At the end of the day most of the performance of a GPU is dictated by its design and fabrication, so partners need to find ways to differentiate themselves not only from each other, but to meaningfully differentiate themselves from the reference products.

This is why AMD’s partners are so happy with the 7000 series. The overclocking headroom in Cape Verde, Pitcairn, and even Tahiti translates into room for them to play with factory overclocks, allowing them to create cards that are meaningfully different from the reference cards in performance. So long as partners can sell all of their GPUs, both high clocking and not, then factory overclocked models are a textbook upsale that lets them grab some more profit in what’s otherwise a cutthroat business. Coupled with a chance to further differentiate themselves based on coolers, and the 7000 has given partners a chance to stand out in a way they couldn’t on the 6000 series.

As far as today’s cards are concerned, both HIS and PowerColor stand out in different ways. PowerColor’s PCS+ HD7870 is a rather straightforward upsell: for $20 (6%) more PowerColor will sell you a 7870 card that gets 5-7% more performance than a stock 7870. And because of their custom open air cooler, it can do this while being a bit quieter than AMD’s reference design. As has been the case with factory overclocked cards in the past this is really an individual decision – based on our limited data, it looks like most 7870s should be able to hit PowerColor’s factory overclocks – but if you just want a bit more guaranteed performance for a bit more money, PowerColor is happy to sell it to you. If nothing else the performance gain is large enough to justify considering it in the first place.

HIS on the other hand makes things a bit more interesting, and a lot less clear. For their IceQ Turbo 7870 their upsell is $40 (11%) for roughly the same 5-7% performance improvement, and if all you care about is stock performance then it’s not a good deal. The real differentiating factor is the IceQ cooler; it’s simply leaps and bounds ahead of any other 7870 we’ve seen so far, though it gets there by using an extra slot in width. If for some reason you need its impressively effective cooling – say for overvolting in the future – then it’s a great candidate. Otherwise without with the prospect of overvolting it’s effectively limited by the AMD PCB and what Pitcairn can do on stock voltage, in which case its temperature advantage likely won’t translate into any material benefit. But then this is the advantage of the GPU partner system for consumers – a company like HIS can go out and create an overcooled card, even if it's for just a niche market.