Tahiti LE, Tested: PowerColor's HD7870 PCS+ Myst Edition

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Well after the announcement that the next gen chips are delayed it looks like this is the sweet spot for price/performance until they come out. I won't feel too guilty picking one of these up one now and maybe even just CF another one with it in a year or so if I don't get a next gen card.
 
A very nice card. AMD must be having great expectations from it that is why the named it Powercolor. Atleast they know how to do marketing.
 
[citation][nom]danwat1234[/nom]So, which Myst games does it come with?[/citation]

Bioshock Infinite & Tomb Raider - Both games release March 2013.

This card is worth it without the limited deal, you could also go for B-INF/Crysis 3 combo if you desired as well. I must admit having two $59.99 USD PREORDERS was an unexpected pleasant bonus. :)

Dat sweet Lara-Croft Pixel @z* o in 1920x1080P MmmNN. HERE I COME O_O
Creepy.OV x9000+ xD


Kudos Newegg. ;D
 
[citation][nom]hero1[/nom]I agree with you on this one. Someone need to give these guys a call and tell them how it is. What a load of bs on their naming scheme. I would absolutely call this 7950 SS or LE![/citation]

I prefer 7930 because there are several considerable differences from the 7950 and simply adding letter suffixes seems to only add to the confusion IMO.
 
[citation][nom]edlivian[/nom]so with OC this card is faster that GTX 670, im pulling the trigger on the sapphire version for $245 after rebate.[/citation]

Well, the 670 can also overclock pretty well too, so it'd be more accurate to just say what Tom's did here: On stock voltage, they easily got their PowerColor 7870 Myst Edition to creep past a stock, reference-clocked 670 in this article's 1080p average gaming performance chart. At stock voltage, it won't meet, let alone beat, an overclocked 670 overall, granted the price difference could easily allow this 7870 XT to win in value. Whether or not the 7870 XT's unlocked/unlockable voltage will usually allow models with good cooling to then catch well overclocked 670s in performance is an experiment worth considering :)
 
[citation][nom]youssef 2010[/nom]Good card, great review.But, what's the smart buy award? I've never heard of it before[/citation]

I think Tom's started it a few weeks ago, but I might be mistaken. It's basically what it's name implies AFAIK, IE that it is awarded to good quality components that have prices that allow for good value.
 
[citation][nom]Rigitdog[/nom]I'm also under the impression you get the boxed versions.[/citation]

Nope, you get Steam codes for both games and an Origin code for Crysis 3 when you fill in AMD's online Never Settle form.
 
this card puts both the "real" 7870 and the 660ti to shame in terms of price : performance ratio. i want to know however, are these really just partially defective 7950's? that will kinda suck coz it'll seem that they are just selling throwaway chips.
 
[citation][nom]nokiddingboss[/nom]this card puts both the "real" 7870 and the 660ti to shame in terms of price : performance ratio. i want to know however, are these really just partially defective 7950's? that will kinda suck coz it'll seem that they are just selling throwaway chips.[/citation]

Instead of wasting the chips, they gave us a great deal on a card that performs about as well as the 7950 800MHz at the price of the 7870. They're probably just partially defective 7950s, but the 7950 is just a partially defective 7970, the 7850 is just a partially defective 7870, the 660 Ti is just a partially defective 670, the 670 is just a partially defective 680, and the list goes on.
 
Three pastors in the south were having lunch in a diner. One said, you know, , since summer started I’ve been having trouble with bats in my loft and attic at church . I’ve tried everything----noise, spray, cats----nothing seems to scare them away. Another said, Yes, me too. I’ve got hundreds living in my belfry and in the attic. I’ve been had the place fumigated, and they still won’t go away. The third said, I baptized all mine, and made them members of the church...haven’t seen one back since!
 
Started opening and installing a Powercolor 7870XT last night at 2:30 am ... which is usually not a good time to do it. Anyways -- this board is flimsy as hell! It has to sit horizontally in my tower, and the power end [2X6] sags like the dickens. No cables or adapters to speak of. Poorly written, skimpy instructions in Chinglish. The slot seems misaligned from the mobo, and I had to really jam this in.

So, if you think you're getting the best deal, $90 off a 3GB 7950, you're also getting a lot less. TANSTAAFL and all that. This system ought to work fine, but I'm glad it's not my primary computer. I'd put it more in the Harbor Freight category of goods: OK for a throwaway.

 
This card is only better than a 660 Ti IF you use a lot of anti-aliasing. Hell the 7870LE is better than the 670ftw IF you use a crap load of anti-aliasing. But really, who has to use so much AA? 2x-4x is plenty enough almost 100% of the time and to me I can tell no difference between using 2x-4x and 16x. I'm a hell of a lot more concerned with video quality and texture quality than cranking up AA. And this is where the 660 Ti and 670 shine is when you have Ultra detail settings with 2x or 4x AA. It's obvious that the radeon cards do well with AA because of there 256bit and higher memory subsystems. The 670 does have 256bit memory so I'm not so sure why it doesn't do as well with AA. But the 660 Ti only has 192 bit. To me I much more rather have a 660 Ti with 1344 cores and a 192 bit memory than a 660Ti with only 1100 cores with 256bit memory. So I'm glad they cut the chip down that way.
 
[citation][nom]ericjohn004[/nom]This card is only better than a 660 Ti IF you use a lot of anti-aliasing. Hell the 7870LE is better than the 670ftw IF you use a crap load of anti-aliasing. But really, who has to use so much AA? 2x-4x is plenty enough almost 100% of the time and to me I can tell no difference between using 2x-4x and 16x. I'm a hell of a lot more concerned with video quality and texture quality than cranking up AA. And this is where the 660 Ti and 670 shine is when you have Ultra detail settings with 2x or 4x AA. It's obvious that the radeon cards do well with AA because of there 256bit and higher memory subsystems. The 670 does have 256bit memory so I'm not so sure why it doesn't do as well with AA. But the 660 Ti only has 192 bit. To me I much more rather have a 660 Ti with 1344 cores and a 192 bit memory than a 660Ti with only 1100 cores with 256bit memory. So I'm glad they cut the chip down that way.[/citation]

Lol, high texture quality and such is just as reliant on memory bandwidth as higher levels of MSAA and CSAA, if not even more reliant on it. That fact makes most of what you said contradictory.

The 670 does poorly with MSAA compared to AMD because it has a GPU that's at least as fast as Tahiti (probably faster) that is hamstringed by a memory interface that is weaker than Tahiti's. It still handles MSAA pretty well unlike the 660 Ti, but that it doesn't handle it as well as AMD's cards with much more memory bandwidth at similar performance levels shouldn't be surprising at all.

I'd rather have an 1152 (1100 is impossible with 192 core SMX units whereas 1152 is possible and is done on an OEM-only Kepler card) core GTX 660 Ti with a 256 bit memory interface because that would perform more like the 670 and 680 than the current 660 Ti does. It'd perform better because the GPU is so held back by the memory performance that it's huge GPU advantage over the GTX 660 amounts to a much more minor real-world performance difference. This is the same issue as with the 670 versus the 680. The 670's much weaker GPU doesn't stop the 670 from performing almost exactly like the 680 because the 680's faster GPU is so held back by the memory bandwidth that it can't stretch past the 670.

However, having a 660 Ti that performs almost exactly like the 670 that performs almost exactly like the 680 would put Nvidia in a poor position, so that they cut down the memory interface instead of the GPU makes perfect sense. It was probably the only non-drastic way to get the GK104 to perform much worse than the 680!

A similar example is the GTX 650 versus the GTX 650 Ti. The GTX 650 Ti's 768 core GPU is so held back by it's 128 bit memory interface that it can't even break 50% faster than the GTX 650, a card with lower-clocked memory and a GPU with half as many of the same cores and a lower GPU frequency. A 576 core model with the full 192 bit interface of GK106 would beat the current 650 Ti and be much more consistently between the GTX 650 and the GTX 660.
 
So I went and looked up the v2e all over the place, and I cannot find it anywhere aside from NewEgg. On PowerColor's site they have one that looks identical to the v2e but it does not say v2e at the end. However, it is also clocked like a regular pitcairn core, with a little overclock. So I obviously like the better price of the "v2e" but I am doubting the authenticity of the specs NewEgg have stated.
 


Tom's said that Newegg has the right specs for it in their latest Best Gaming Graphics Cards for the Money article, so I'm inclined to believe it. There is also a V2E with Pitcairn and yet another different cooler, but it's a different card and even Newegg lists it differently.
 
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