Earlier this month AMD released their Radeon HD 7800 series featuring the HD 7870 and HD 7850 graphics cards. Both were impressive performers that provided a much better performance to price ratio when compared to other Radeon HD 7000 series graphics cards already released.

The Radeon HD 7870 really stood out for us as it was just 8% slower than the much more expensive HD 7950. Then when compared to the GeForce GTX 580 the Radeon HD 7870 was on average just 7% slower, while it was 12% faster than the GeForce GTX 570 and 10% faster than the Radeon HD 6970.

Given that at $349 the Radeon HD 7870 shares the same price tag as the GeForce GTX 570 and Radeon HD 6970, the fact that it was 10% faster or more is a big deal.

For those gamers still flaunting a Radeon HD 5870 graphics card because they skipped the HD 6000 series for something more worthwhile, we now have that something. The Radeon HD 5870 debuted with an MSRP of $380, which makes the much faster Radeon HD 7870 a very attractive prospect at $349.

That said, as the Radeon HD 7870 was a paper launch, finding one hasn’t been easy as they were only meant to officially hit shelves on the 19th of March. As I write this it is March 19th and by coincidence the only Radeon HD 7870 we can find online is in fact the Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 OC (GV-R787OC-2GD) which is retailing for $360. With that said, let’s check out the card in greater detail...

The HD 7870 GPU is fabricated on a 28nm process, making it possible for AMD to squeeze 4313 million transistors into a 352mm2 die.

The GPU core is clocked at 1000MHz, 11% higher than the HD 6870, and the GDDR5 memory operates at 1200MHz (4.8GHz DDR), which is 14% higher than the HD 6870. The HD 7870 is paired with a 256-bit wide memory bus providing a theoretical bandwidth of 153.6GB/s or 14% more memory bandwidth than the HD 6870.

However Gigabyte has overclocked their Radeon HD 7870 from a 1GHz core to 1.1GHz, which is a 10% increase. The GDDR5 memory has been left at 4.8GHz so it will be interesting to see how much impact the core overclock has on performance.

While the HD 6870 typically came loaded with a 1GB frame buffer, the 7870 has been upgraded to 2GB. We've found that when using multi-monitor setups at extreme resolutions, the larger buffer of AMD's cards provide a significant advantage over Nvidia's, which are limited to 1536MB for the most part.

The HD 7870's core configuration also differs from the 6870’s. The new card carries 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs, up 14% from 1120 SPUs and 43% more TAUs from just 56.

Like the Radeon HD 7970 flagship, the HD 7870 adopts the 28nm design process and is also PCI Express 3.0-compatible. The new interface spec doubles its predecessor's bandwidth to 32GB/s. Unfortunately, no current processor or chipset supports this technology, so we'll have to test it down the road.

What makes Gigabyte's iteration unique is its WindForce 3X solution with "Triangle Cool" technology. The cooler employs three 75mm ultra quiet PWM fans connected to a custom shroud. Under these fans is a massive heatsink consisting of three main parts connected by 8mm copper heatpipes.

At the heart of this setup is the biggest block which has a unique RAM heatsink to cool the GDDR5 modules. This heatsink also features Triangle Cool technology, which uses a series of fins and triangular clip modules to better direct airflow over the heatsink.

Gigabyte says its Triangle Cool technology can reduce temperatures by up to 10% over traditional designs, so we're keen to see just how cool this HD 7870 runs.

To feed the card enough juice, AMD includes dual 6-pin PCI Express power connectors. This is the same setup used on the HD 6950, 5870, 6870 as well as the GTX 580 and 570 graphics cards.

Naturally, the HD 7870 supports Crossfire, so it has a pair of connectors to bridge two or more cards. The only other ports are on the I/O panel where you'll find a dual DL-DVI connector, a single HDMI 1.4a port, and two mini-DisplayPort 1.2 sockets.

All HD 7870s support a max resolution of 2560x1600 on up to three monitors. With a multi-stream hub, using the mini-DisplayPort 1.2 sockets, the card can power up to six screens.

Hardware - Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition (3.30GHz) - x4 4GB G.Skill DDR3-1600(CAS 8-8-8-20) - Crucial m4 512GB (SATA 6Gb/s) - AMD Radeon HD 7970 (3072MB) - Gigabyte Radeon HD 7950 (3072MB) - Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 (2048MB) OC - AMD Radeon HD 7870 (2048MB) - AMD Radeon HD 7850 (2048MB) - Gigabyte Radeon HD 6990 (4096MB) - Gigabyte Radeon HD 6970 (2048MB) - VisionTek Radeon HD 6950 (2048MB) - Asus Radeon HD 6870 (1024MB) - HIS Radeon HD 5870 (1024MB) - Gigabyte GeForce GTX 590 (3072MB) - Gigabyte GeForce GTX 580 (1536MB) - Gigabyte GeForce GTX 570 (1280MB) - Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560 Ti (1024MB) - Gigabyte G1.Assassin2 (Intel X79) - OCZ ZX Series (1250w) Software - Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-bit - Nvidia Forceware 295.73 - AMD Catalyst 12.2

When compared to a standard Radeon HD 7870 the Gigabyte OC edition was found to be 7% faster in 3Dmark 11 which isn’t bad given just a 10% overclock has been applied. This meant that the Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 OC was just 3% slower than a Radeon HD 7950.

The Aliens vs. Predator results were not that exciting as the Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 OC was just 1-2fps faster than a standard card depending on resolution. Therefore at 2560x1600 it was still 18% slower than the Radeon HD 7950.

The Battlefield 3 results saw the Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 OC provide 2fps extra when compared to the AMD reference card. This allowed the Gigabyte HD 7870 OC to match the GeForce GTX 580 at 2560x1600 and despite seeing a 6% performance increase we are not sure how many gamers will notice the extra 2fps.

The Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 OC performed well at 1920x1200 delivering 3fps more than the non-overclocked reference card which was a 9% performance boost. This margin was reduced to just 1fps or 4% at 2560x1600.

When testing with Dragon Age II at 2560x1600 the Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 OC delivered 8% more performance as it was 2fps faster than a standard non-overclocked card.

The Deus Ex Human Revolution performance at 2560x1600 was not all that inspiring as the Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 OC provided just 1fps more when compared to the reference card. This was enough to see the Gigabyte HD 7870 OC match the GeForce GTX 580 but that was about it.

With an average of 49fps at 2560x1600 when testing with Dirt 3 the Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 OC was 3fps or 7% faster than the reference card. This made it just 1fps or 2% slower than the GeForce GTX 580 and Radeon HD 7950 graphics cards.

Gigabyte’s Radeon HD 7870 OC graphics card delivered an average of 33fps at 2560x1600 making it just 1fps faster than a standard HD 7870. The margin at 1920x1200 was larger as the overclocked card provided 3fps more performance allowing it to overtake the GeForce GTX 580.

Finally when testing with The Witcher 2 the Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 OC was 1fps faster than the reference card at 2560x1600 and 2fps at 1920x1200.

The Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 OC on the other hand had no problem operating the core at 1270MHz with the memory at 1300MHz (5.2GHz DDR). With that impressive overclock in place let’s see how the Gigabyte HD 7870 OC performs now...

Our overclock allowed for 9% more performance at 1920x1200 which was a 4fps boost. This meant that the custom overclock was 6fps or 14% faster than the AMD reference card.

Again we see a reasonable performance gain from our custom overclock, this time when testing with Battlefield 3. The manual overclock provided 4fps more than the factory overclock, making it 14% faster than the AMD reference card.

When testing with The Witcher 2 we saw a massive 14% performance boost when compared to the factory overclock, which equated to 9fps extra performance. This meant that our custom overclocked Gigabyte HD 7870 OC was 17% faster than the AMD reference card.

Despite being on average 6% faster than a standard Radeon HD 7870 graphics card, the Gigabyte HD 7870 OC consumed just 2% more power when testing in Crysis 2. The fact that this graphics card provided similar results to that of the GeForce GTX 580 in most tests while consuming almost 20% less power, really speaks for the efficiency of the new 28nm AMD graphics cards.

Although Gigabyte is only claiming a 5–10% temperature reduction for their Radeon HD 7870 OC graphics card, we found that it ran 25% cooler when compared to the AMD reference card. Hitting a maximum of 55 degrees in the FurMark stress test was extremely impressive. We should point out that the same WindForce 3X solution is also featured on the Radeon HD 7950 used for comparison.

Previously this kind of performance would cost upwards of $400. The Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 OC was on average just a few percent slower than the GeForce GTX 580, a graphics card that currently costs upwards of $400, after recent price cuts which prior to saw it retailing for roughly $500.

The success of the Radeon HD 7870 has also forced Nvidia to slash pricing of not just its flagship single GPU graphics card but also the second in command, the GTX 570, which has been reduced from $350 to $300, a 14% price cut.

While the now cheaper GeForce GTX 580 and GTX 570 graphics cards do hurt the value of the Radeon HD 7800 and HD 7900 series graphics cards, they still have a key advantage. For one, although the Radeon HD 7870 provides almost the same performance as the GeForce GTX 580 it does consume considerably less power.

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Less power also means less heat and that means not only does the Radeon HD 7870 go easier on your case cooling, but it also gets the job done while making a lot less noise. In fact even when manually overclocked to the max, the Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 OC was no louder over the test systems case cooling.

As for Gigabyte, they have taken the new Radeon HD 7870 and made it even better with their upgraded WindForce 3X cooler and redesigned PCB, both of which appear to provide much greater overclocking headroom. For roughly just $10 more than the MSRP, we feel gamers are getting a real bargain with the GeForce Radeon HD 7870 OC.