7850's got a lot of clock hype, so what about the 70s?

[Defy Belief]

Hi guys, So, i've been refunded the £200 I paid for my 6970 a while back due to it crashing on me.

So I have £200 free to spend on a new GPU.

Now I remember how much everyone loves the 7850s for their amazing clock ability, are the 7870s just as impressive? I notice Gigabyte etc use the windforce cooler so i'd imagine that's a step closer to a better clock.

Is it worth the extra say £30-£40 for the 7870 and then clock the hell out of that? Or do they not clock so well, I can't find to much information of the two overclocked for a comparison.

I'm thinking possibly £150 for a 7850, clock it and a sound card, but if the performance would be decent for a £200 clocked 7870 i'd get that.

Any user opinions would be great.

 

[RJC]

With the 7870 being so close to the 7950 in terms of price (£30 ~ difference) most people opt for the 7950 cards.

Link showing a rough performance difference:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/550?vs=548

 

[Defy Belief]

That's the problem.

It's a £30-£40 difference between all 3 cards dependent on the cooler.

Personally i'm abit of a Gigabyte favourite, the 7950 to 7870 gap is around £60 for that right now. And for the sake of 3 frames on BF3 i'm not overly fussed on that, whereas the 7870 over the 7850 is more like 10 or so frames for a £40 difference, decisions!

 

[opethdisciple]

That's the problem.

It's a £30-£40 difference between all 3 cards dependent on the cooler.

Personally i'm abit of a Gigabyte favourite, the 7950 to 7870 gap is around £60 for that right now.

I reckon its a marketing tactice.

You keep thinking ok, I'l spend the extra £30 and suddenly you end up buying a 7970 at £300.

 

[Defy Belief]

I reckon its a marketing tactice.

You keep thinking ok, I'l spend the extra £30 and suddenly you end up buying a 7970 at £300.

It is, 100%, and it works.

I literally cannot go over the £200 i've been refunded though so this case it wont win.

 

[Rusty0611]

7870 is not a bad card at all. Infact it performs really well. However it just sits in a bit of a nothing place.

The price over the 7850 (when clocked highly) makes it more worthwhile to just get a reference 7950 or even a custom cooled one depending on deals for almost the same price.

 

[Defy Belief]

7870 is not a bad card at all. Infact it performs really well. However it just sits in a bit of a nothing place.

The price over the 7850 (when clocked highly) makes it more worthwhile to just get a reference 7950 or even a custom cooled one depending on deals for almost the same price.

So in short then do 7870s not clock as far as their younger brother? I cant get a 7950 for 200 so just abit out, stats show 7870 at stock beats my previous 6970.

6970 was a shocking clocker aswell.

 

[wazza300]

Go with the cheapest 7850 with aftermarket cooler,the msi tf3 is a decent price,I have that card and you can clock it to 7870 levels by maxing ccc overdrive sliders,without even touching voltages

 

[555BUK]

7850's and 7870's overclock to pretty much the same GPU and VRAM speeds. The 7850 has 20% fewer shaders, but everything else is identical. Within most games, the performance difference is only 5-10% when both cards are clocked to the same speed. The 7870 is only really worth buying above the 7850 if you do not intend to overclock. For overclockers, the 7850 is better value and frankly more fun because of it's massive oc headroom. Overclocking a 860MHz card to ~1200MHz just feels better than overclocking from 1000MHz to ~1200MHz.

 

[Rusty0611]

So in short then do 7870s not clock as far as their younger brother? I cant get a 7950 for 200 so just abit out, stats show 7870 at stock beats my previous 6970.

6970 was a shocking clocker aswell.

7850's and 7870's overclock to pretty much the same GPU and VRAM speeds. The 7850 has 20% fewer shaders, but everything else is identical. Within most games, the performance difference is only 5-10% when both cards are clocked to the same speed. The 7870 is only really worth buying above the 7850 if you do not intend to overclock. For overclockers, the 7850 is better value and frankly more fun because of it's massive oc headroom.

+1

I'm not speaking from experience though - just from what I've read. 555BUK is though .

 

[Defy Belief]

Cheers for the info, so it looks like i'm better off saving the bit of quid, will prob get a soundcard/new mouse with that.

Thinking either the MSI power edition or another Gigabyte, power edition is pretty nice looking and the 2 fan GB cooler looks a little nasty, may be time to try an MSI card.

 

[humbug]

Being a Gigabyte 7870 owner i would say the difference is not that much (altho its a little more than most people think)

To be clear...
The 7870 has 25% more cores, depending on what games your talking about its as little as 5% and as much as 20% (clock for clock)

There is another thing to consider, AMD are starting set themselves apart from nvidia with there own features, (a bit like nvidia Physix) graphics effects unique to AMD are starting to appear in AMD sponsored games such as dynamic lighting effects and direct compute rendered AA, like wise with apps such as Adobe CS6 and a bunch of video encoding software apps are also codded to use direct compute.

All of this is based on OpenCL, which on the 7870 is also about 20% more powerful than the 7850.

I went for the 7870 because its already clocked at 1000Mhz, or 1100Mhz for the Gigabyte, has a higher voltage range and a more beefy PCB.

Overclocking is a lottery, you stand more chance of hitting over 1200Mhz on the core with the 7870, which mine does, up to 1270Mhz stress tested: pass. (not that i use those as 24/7 clocks)

Is that worth that extra money? that's down to individuals, to me it is.

 

[Defy Belief]

Being a Gigabyte 7870 owner i would say the difference is not that much (altho its a little more than most people think)

To be clear...
The 7870 has 25% more cores, depending on what games your talking about its as little as 5% and as much as 20% (clock for clock)

There is another thing to consider, AMD are starting set themselves apart from nvidia with there own features, (a bit like nvidia Physix) graphics effects unique to AMD are starting to appear in AMD sponsored games such as dynamic lighting effects and direct compute rendered AA, like wise with apps such as Adobe CS6 and a bunch of video encoding software apps are also codded to use direct compute.

All of this is based on OpenCL, which on the 7870 is also about 20% more powerful than the 7850.

I went for the 7870 because its already clocked at 1000Mhz, or 1100Mhz for the Gigabyte, has a higher voltage range and a more beefy PCB.

Overclocking is a lottery, you stand more chance of hitting over 1200Mhz on the core with the 7870, which mine does, up to 1270Mhz stress tested: pass. (not that i use those as 24/7 clocks)

Is that worth that extra money? that's down to individuals, to me it is.

Thanks for the input.

To me, i'm not hugely bothered by that I don't think, hell, i've been gaming the last 3 weeks on an 8800GT on lowest settings and the only reason i'm not keeping it is because it sounds like a Chinook is in my case.

So I think the 7850 with a little clock will suit my needs for a couple of years as i'm not so bothered about achieving ultra settings all the time anymore, as long as it's smooth, it's just a bottomless pit trying to achieve it all the time.

So the other £40 or so will probably go on a sound card with a headphone amp, or toward a mech keyboard, decisions.

 

[HeX]

If you're going for a 7850 from MSI, I'd suggest getting a TF3 and not the Power Ed.

From various threads it seems the TF3 have better OC chance than the Power Ed.

Of course its all luck of the draw, but I've seen a lot more people posting about their poor OC'ing Power Ed, and a lot more people posting about their great clocks on the TF3.

Just food for thought.