AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB Review

Conclusion

There is a whole lot to like about the HD 7870 2GB. Phenomenally low power consumption for a high-end card, low temperatures, and a reasonable if not colossal in speed over the previous generation’s HD 6970 2GB make it very attractive. Needless to say, it comprehensively out-classes Nvidia’s current competitor, the GTX 570 1.3GB, in every way and even rubs a lot of the shine off of the HD 7950 3GB thanks to its overclocking prowess and similar performance in more than a couple of our benchmarks.


Sadly though, you’re not able to run out and buy an HD 7870 2GB, at least not yet. Stock won’t arrive into retailers until March 19th 2012, with AMD choosing to lift the NDA today due to the inevitable leaks that would have occurred during GDC and CEBIT over the next two weeks. While that’s a fair reason for what amounts to a paper launch, it poses the problem that we’re rather uncertain on the issue of pricing.

AMD claim the card will arrive at around $349 in the USA. Converting to pounds and then adding VAT and the usual EU premium, we estimate that the HD 7870 2GB will go on sale for around £275 (inc VAT). At that price, the HD 7870 certainly makes Nvidia’s GTX 570 1.3GB look a poor proposition, but, as with the HD 7770 1GB, it suffers from AMD replacing last generation’s cards with new models that perform roughly the same or slightly better, for more money.


While it’s soon to be retired the HD 6970 2GB is available right now for around £250 and considering the generation jump, we’d have liked to have seen the HD 7870 2GB hitting at that sort of price or less rather than the £275+ mark that we think it will. Call us greedy, but there should be some progress in pricing/performance between GPU generations, particularly when performance in many circumstances, hasn't moved that far.

Regardless, with a lot of uncertainty around price and availability for both the HD 7870 2GB and HD 7850 2GB, we’ve decided to hold fire on delivering a definitive score, at least until end-user pricing information becomes clearer. What is obvious however is that the HD 7870 2GB is an extremely capable GPU with a whole lot going for it which, at the right price, could be the best choice graphics card in a long while. Come on AMD, don't let us down.