The Twin Frozr III is perhaps the best GPU cooler out there at present. Add this to AMD bang-per-buck HD7870 GPU and we may have a pocket rocket on our hands…
Product on Review: R7870 Twin Frozr 2GD5/OC
Manufacturer and Sponsor: MSI
Street Price: £279.95
The Twin Frozr cooler has been around for a while now in one form or another. It has proved very popular amongst enthusiasts due to the robust aluminium design and because it is one of the quietest on the market today. Most importantly, the Twin Frozr cooler is one of if not the most efficient at dissipating heat from the graphics core. This in turn means that higher overclocks can be attained through voltage and clockspeeds unattainable with lesser cooling designs. We should know, we use one in our motherboard test rig! MSI then, it seem have created something every overclock dreams of. A cooling design is only as good as the hardware it is meant to cool though and on this occasion, MSI have chosen the AMD HD7870, a GPU that is not exactly blisteringly hot to begin with.
The HD7870, while being a good card has failed to ignite the imagination and perhaps more importantly, raid the bank accounts of the enthusiast market because it is simply too expensive. Recent price cuts by both AMD and NVIDIA have only served to highlight this, making the HD7870 a difficult card to recommend for while it has the performance, it is a little too close the high end offerings in terms of price. How MSI expect to move the HD7870 Twin Frozr equipped graphics card in significant numbers at an inevitable price hike therefore remains to be seen. If the card is as good as previous Twin Forzr cards, [if it can overclock past it’s already factory overclocked state, being that it is an Overclocked Edition and if it can hold it’s own against the big boys then MSI might just have a card that works out to be a bargain. However, with just 2GB GDDR5 and the lessor Pitcairn XT GPU compared to the Tahiti and Kepler equipped offerings, it would be easy to dismiss this card as a sheep in wolfs cloth.How wrong you would be to do so…
About MSI (In their own words)
MSI is proud of its more than 20 years experience in designing and manufacturing high performance IT products. The product lines of MSI are mainboards, graphic cards, notebooks, consumer electronics, barebones, networking and server products, and fully integrated add-on peripherals. With its ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 qualified facilities, MSI products provide the best performance, reliability and value-increasing productivity.
We distribute our products through offices located in The Netherlands, Germany, Italy, France, United Kingdom, Spain, Turkey, Czech Republic, Poland, Serbia, Ukraine, Russia, United States, Canada, Mexico, Latin America, Brazil, Taiwan, Japan, China, Korea, India and Australia. MSI markets its products to distributors, computer system manufacturers, and system integrators. For more information about the company go to Specification
-1050MHz Engine Clock
-2GB GDDR5 Memory
-1200MHz Memory Clock (4.8 Gbps GDDR5)
-92 GTexels/s
-153.6GB/s memory bandwidth (maximum)
-GCN Architecture
-20 Compute Units (1280 Stream Processors)
-80 Texture Units
-128 Z/Stencil ROP Units
-32 Color ROP Units
-Dual Geometry Engines
-Dual Asynchronous Compute Engines (ACE)
-256-bit GDDR5 memory interface
-PCI Express 3.0 x16 bus interface
-DirectX® 11.1-capable graphics
-OpenGL 4.2 support
-Partially Resident Textures (PRT)
-Ultra-high resolution texture streaming technology
-Image quality enhancement technology
-Up to 24x multi-sample and super-sample anti-aliasing
-Adaptive anti-aliasing
-Morphological Anti-Aliasing (MLAA)
-Enhanced Quality Anti-Aliasing (EQAA)
-DirectX® 9/10/11 Supersample Anti-Aliasing (SSAA)
-Requires AMD Catalyst™ 12.2 or later
-16x angle independent anisotropic texture filtering
-AMD Eyefinity multi-display technology2
-Up to 6 displays supported
-Independent resolutions, refresh rates, color controls, and video overlays
-Display grouping
-Combine multiple displays to behave like a single large display
-Discrete Digital Multi-Point Audio (DDMA)
-AMD App Acceleration3
-Supports OpenCL™ 1.2, DirectCompute 11 & Microsoft C++ AMP
-Double Precision Floating Point
-AMD HD Media Accelerator
-Unified Video Decoder (UVD)
-H.264
-VC-1
-MPEG-2 (SD & HD)
-MVC (Blu-ray 3D)
-MPEG-4 Part 2 (DivX/Xvid)
-Adobe Flash
-DXVA 1.0 & 2.0 support
-WMV HD
-Video Codec Engine (VCE)
-Multi-stream hardware H.264 encoder
-Full-fixed mode: 1080p @ 60 FPS encoding
-Hybrid mode: Stream Processor-assisted encoding
-Enhanced Video Quality features
-Advanced post-processing and scaling
-Deblocking
-Denoising
-Automatic deinterlacing
-Mosquito noise reduction
-Edge enhancement
-3:2 pulldown detection
-Advanced video color correction
-Brighter whites processing (Blue Stretch)
-Independent video gamma control
-Flesh tone correction
-Color vibrance control
-Dynamic contrast
-Dynamic video range control
-AMD HD3D technology5
-Stereoscopic 3D display/glasses support
-Blu-ray 3D support
-Stereoscopic 3D gaming
-3rd party Stereoscopic 3D middleware software support
-AMD CrossFire™ multi-GPU technology6
-Supports dual-GPU performance scaling
-Cutting-edge integrated display support
-DisplayPort 1.2
-Max resolution: 4096×2160 per display
-Multi-Stream Transport
-21.6 Gbps bandwidth
-High bit-rate audio
-Quad HD/4k video support
-1080p60 Stereoscopic 3D
-HDMI® (With 4k, 3D, 3GHz, Deep Color and x.v.Color™)
-Max resolution: 4096×2160
-1600p60 Stereoscopic 3D
-Quad HD/4k video support
-Dual-link DVI with HDCP
-Max resolution: 2560×1600
-VGA
-Max resolution: 2048×1536
-Integrated HD audio controller
-Output protected high bit rate 7.1 channel surround sound over HDMI with no additional cables required
-Supports AC-3, AAC, Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio formats
-AMD PowerPlay™ power management technology4
-Automatic power management with low power idle states
-AMD PowerTune technology4
-Intelligent TDP management technology
-Dynamic clockspeed/performance enhancement for games
-AMD ZeroCore Power technology4
-Ultra-low idle power when the connected display is in power saving mode
-Efficient low power mode for desktop work
-Secondary GPUs in an AMD CrossFire™ technology configuration power down when unneeded
-AMD Catalyst™ graphics and HD video configuration software
-Software support for Windows 7 and Windows Vista
-AMD Catalyst™ Control Center – AMD Catalyst™ software application and user interface for setup, configuration, and accessing features of AMD Radeon products.
-Unified Graphics display driver – AMD Catalyst™ software enabling other PC programs and devices to use advanced graphics, video, and features of AMD Radeon™ products.
While the HD79XX series and HD78XX series of GPU’s have different core names, the two cores are very, very similar in design. Similar to the way NVIDIA graphics card compute, the new AMD GCN archetecture has tiny ‘cores within a core’ – stream processors with each processor working on an instruction set until that work has been completed. This is the make up of AMD’s GCN (Graphics Core Next) archetecture which is based on the same 28nm process as the Tahiti cores. There are 20 of these compute units on-board the HD7870 core equalling 1280 stream processors, 160 more than the HD6870 but quite a lot less than the 1536 the HD6970 possessed. Comparing the the HD7870 against the previous gen though is pointless thanks to the new GCN archetecture as even the mighty HD7950 had few more at 1752 and comparing the HD7950 against the HD6970 is like chalk and cheese.
Using the new Pitcairn core, the HD7870 comprises of 20 Graphics Core Next Compute Units (1280 stream processors) which is slightly trimmed down from the higher end 7900 series which has 32 CU’s. With 32 ROPs and a 256-bit GDDR5 memory interface (equalling 153.6 GB/s of memory bandwidth), the specifications are twice that of the HD7770 GPU we reviewed earlier. The card also features a 9th generation tessellator which equates to the HD7870 being 425% faster than the HD6970 so programmes that require tessellation should so a big improvement over last generation GPU’s.
AMD suggests that the HD7870’s performance is expected to sit between NVIDIA’s GTX580 and GTX570 cards which makes sense as this where the GPU’s price point lies. As you can see from the slide above, the HD7870 has many advantages over its smaller sister card, the HD7850, namely the extra clockspeed and 16 TU’s which enhances the remainder of the specifications by a fair margin. Both cards have the same 2GB of GDDR5 and 256-bit memory interface.
Let’s take a look at the features of today’s review sample…
Most importantly, it is the world’s first 28nm GPU architecture, which enables AMD to fit up to 4.3 billion transistors-the most basic building blocks of a GPU-into approximately the same space once needed to fit 2.6 billion. Increasing transistor density by greater than 60% is more than just a feat of engineering-it’s responsible for the world’s most powerful and advanced GPU.1
Designed to push not only the boundaries of DirectX® 11 gaming, the GCN Architecture is also AMD’s first design specifically engineered for general computing. Equipped with up to 32 compute units (2048 stream processors), each containing a scalar coprocessor, AMD’s 28nm GPUs are more than capable of handling workloads-and programming languages-traditionally exclusive to the processor. Coupled with the dramatic rise of GPU-aware programming languages like C++ AMP and OpenCL™, the GCN Architecture is truly the right architecture for the right time.
Performance
In simple terms, increasing the number of transistors in a GPU has a big impact on the potential performance of a graphics card-but transistors alone are not enough. It takes a truly great design, like the GCN Architecture, to effectively utilize that potential for real-world performance.
Below you will find just a few examples of how this truly next-generation architecture delivers on one very simple design goal: enable the world’s most powerful graphics cards.1
Starting with GPU utilization, AMD has taken great strides to ensure that the GCN Architecture is capable of efficiently using its hardware resources. This seems like such a simple idea, but designing a GPU to frequently approach its peak theoretical performance is a challenge the GCN Architecture tackles with ease.
The GCN Architecture is designed for improved utilization, which ensures that the GPU is making optimal use of its resources for maximum performance.
DirectX® 11 tessellation has also seen incredible improvement from previous AMD Radeon™ products. On the left in the image below, a chart plots the AMD Radeon™ HD 7970’s performance across 32 levels of tessellation, and the results are stunning: a 350% boost at the highest factors.2 And on the right, the GCN Architecture’s ability to effectively utilize its potential again shines through: highly-tessellated games are decisively faster by an average of 79%!
The GCN Architecture also benefits from dramatically improved tessellation performance. Games featuring this DirectX® 11 technology are considerably faster than they were on the previous generation of AMD Radeon™ products.
Every gamer knows that the GPU’s clockspeed also has a big impact on the performance of a graphics card, and the GCN Architecture keeps that in mind.
But what many don’t know is that every graphics card is designed to draw only a certain amount of power from your PC’s power supply. This is called the Thermal Design Profile, or TDP, and it’s critical that the GPU architecture is capable of making the most of every watt. The GCN Architecture can do that thanks to a technology called AMD PowerTune technology.
AMD PowerTune is an intelligent system that performs real-time analysis of the games and applications that utilize a GPU. Examples of such software might include Battlefield 3 or Furmark. In the event that an application is not making the most of the power available to the GPU, AMD PowerTune can improve that application’s performance by raising the GPU’s clockspeed by up to 30%! Best of all, this technology is completely automatic and is designed specifically to improve gaming performance.
Available on all 28nm AMD Radeon™ products, AMD PowerTune is designed to enable significantly higher clockspeeds in your favorite games-automatically!
Image Quality
But performance is not enough for today’s demanding gamers. Image quality, or the clarity and accuracy of textures and effects, is equally important. The GCN Architecture is equipped with three key technologies that dramatically raise the bar in this regard.
Partially Resident Textures (PRT)
Even in the latest titles, gamers may have noticed that games often re-use or repeat textures, particularly on the ground or in background scenery such as mountains or trees. This is because increasing the physical size or number of textures in a game can have a negative impact on the performance of a GPU. PRT is a radical new technology that hopes to break this cycle.
PRT can utilize absolutely enormous texture files, up to 32 terabytes large, with minimal performance impact. PRT accomplishes this by streaming small bits of these massive textures into the GPU as needed, giving compatible games a virtually endless supply of unique texture data it can apply to the game world. The GCN Architecture in 28nm AMD Radeon™ products is the first GPU design to feature a hardware implementation of this technology.
Partially Resident Textures (PRT) enables future games to utilize ultra-high resolution textures with the same performance as today’s small and often repetitive textures.
Improved Anisotropic Filtering (AF)
Available on every modern GPU, anisotropic filtering is a technique that assists the GPU in making sure textures in your favorite games remain razor sharp, even at a distance. Most games now offer the ability to enable this feature, and the AMD Catalyst™ driver suite has long provided players with the option to force enable anisotropic filtering for all of their games.
Where every GPU design differs, however, is in the way the anisotropic filtering is actually executed. The GCN Architecture has been specifically optimized to produce superior results when AF is enabled.
Improved anisotropic filtering in products like the AMD Radeon™ HD 7900 Series ensure gamers get sharper, better textures when this technology is enabled.
Improved DirectX® 11 Tessellation
As DirectX® 11 titles become more mature, game developers are naturally pushing the envelope of realism by utilizing a greater degree of special rendering effects. One such effect is tessellation, which can dynamically generate additional detail in a scene on the fly.
A wireframe scene of a rally car in DiRT 3 driving through water. On the left, notice there are no ripples. On the right, after tessellation, there is new and dynamic detail in the game.
As with anisotropic filtering, tessellation is not new to GPUs, but the manner in which tessellation is executed can have a large impact on the gaming experience. Because of this, the GCN Architecture has again been optimized to deliver up to 4x the performance of the AMD Radeon™ HD 6000 Series in heavily-tessellated games.
The outer package is identical to other Twin Frozr offerings from both AMD and NVIDIA with the only difference being the metallic flake lettering describing the product contained within. The rear of the box describes both the features of the product and the minimum requirments.
Rather than just have a sleeve, the packaging has a flip up window which allows the user to see the actual card through a plastic window. Surrounding this window and adorning the lid are the many features of the MSI HD7870 Twin Frozr.
Removing the outer sleeve, we are greeting with a plain cardboard box complete with plastic lid which serves to protect the package contents. The card is held fast in a foam bracket which is sturdy enough to withstand even the clumsiest of couriers. Beneath this foam brace is a hidden compartment which contains the accessories.
The accessories of the MSI HD7870 are nothing resounding yet the list is complete enough to ensure that the card can be installed without issue. The list comprises of the following items: Crossfire bridge, Driver CD, USer guide, product catalogue, 2x twin Molex-6pin PCIe power plugs and a DisplayPort to miniDisplayPort dongle.
The now very familiar Twin Frozr cooler sits atop of a heatpipe equipped aluminium and nickel plated copper heatsink. The colour scheme of the design hasn’t changed much in the three incarnations, something I would perhaps like to see in future revisions as it is starting to look a little tired, especially after seeing both last years GTX580 Lightening and this year HD7970 Lightening, both of which make use of a revised Twin Frozr Design that look infinitely more appealing.
One area where I find it hard to give MSI praise is the choice of silk screening colour they use for their PCB’s. Brown has to be the most unappealing colour they could have chosen next to the puke yellow and olive green used in the 1990’s. That said, if you are building a PC with a retro feel, this card will feel right at home! Come on MSI, is it really that hard to make the transition to black?
From the side, you would be very hard pushed to distinguish this MSI Twin Frozr card from any other as other than the MSI branding there are no other markings to help identify the GPU type or even brand.
Display options come courtesy of a single DVI-I port along with twin 1.2 mini-DisplayPorts and a single HDMI 1.4a port which is also capable of transmitting HD audio. Up to 4 screens can be used in an EyeFinity 2.0 setup with the HD7870.
The MSI HD7870 Twin Frozr OC requires twin 6pin PCIe ports (75W each) and recommend a PSU with a 500W capacity. While MSI also include 2x Molex adapters for this purpose a quality PSU should always be used, especially when overclocking.
Like all 78XX cards, the HD7870 has a single crossfire tab meaning it can be paired up to anyother card from the 7800 family of GPU’s.
The fan of the Twin Frozr III design is bi-angled to increase airflow by up to 20%. MSI claim that the Twin Frozr cooler can decrease temps by 15c and noise by 9dB when compared to the reference cooler – something we will be examining later in the review.
The MSI card has 5 heatpipes, 2x8mm and 3x6mm which are nickel plated copper. These stretch out from the baseplate and carry heat away from the core to effectively use the whole of the heatsink and not just the centre.
The contact from core to baseplate was very good with a near perfect application of paste. The quality of paste was very good; not to dry, not to wet which should ensure a crevice filling, long lasting thermal interface.
The Twin Frozr makes use of an aluminium mid-plate which serves to increase the surface area being passively cooled. The mid-plate covers the memory modules and VRM area, ensuring not only the core receives cooling but the whole of the cards components.
With all of the heatsink removed we get to see the card in all its naked glory. As with the HD7850 we review recently, the VRM is located towards the I/O area of the card which is in contrast to the norm. The GPU core is surrounded by 8×256 memory modules which are made by HYNIX.
Pink and brown may not be the most attractive combination but if you can see past the gaudy colour scheme you will see that the Twin Frozr uses quality power circuitry. Solid capacitors and ferrite core chokes are the order of the day along with a CHiL 8225 voltage controller allowing voltage fine tuning – an asset to anyone wishing to overclock the GPU past its 1050MHz factory overclock.
The 8x256MB of HYNIX memory has a product descriptor of H5GQ2H24MFR-T2C and is rated to run at 5000MHz effective speed so should leave some room for overclocking further as it is currently clocked to 4800MHz.
Finally we see the Pitcairn XT core. This sliver of silicon is built at TSMC using the new 28nm process and holds 2.8billion transistors inside. How much these can come together and deliver the performance we all crave though remains to be seen…
Some of the components for our test bench were kindly donated by CORSAIR who provided the majority of components without whom we would not have been able to bring you this review so a big thanks to them.
Graphics cards on test:
GIGABYTE HD7850 OC WindForce x2
ZOTAC GTX680 2GB GDDR5
AMD HD7870 2GB GDDR5
Zotac GTX580 AMP2! 3GB GDDR5
XFX R7970 Black Edition 3GB GDDR5
XFX R7770 Black Edition ‘S’ 1GB GDDR5
AMD HD7750 1GB GDDR5
AMD HD7770 1GB GDDR5
HIS HD7970 3GB GDDR5
XFX DD Radeon R7950 3072MB GDDR5
PowerColor PCS+ Radeon HD7950 3072MB GDDR5
AMD Radeon HD7950 3072MB GDDR5
AMD Radeon HD7970 3072MB GDDR5
ZOTAC GTX570 AMP! 1280MB GDDR5
NVIDIA GTX570 1280MB GDDR5
MSI GTX560Ti-448 Twin Frozr III 1280MB GDDR5
MSI GTX560Ti-384 Twin Frozr III 2GB GDDR5
AMD HD6990 4GB GDDR5
For this review we will be using the very latest CAT 12.4 drivers.
Motherboard: MSI X79 Big Bang X-Power II
CPU: Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition @ 4.5GHz
RAM – 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair Vengeance (Red) DDR3 @ 1866MHz 9-10-9-27
Power Supply – ANTEC High Current Pro 1200W
Hard Drive – Kingston HyperX 240GB
Cooler – Corsair H100
Benchmarks
We have also updated our range of benchmarks to include the following games which will give the graphics cards a challenge and sort the wheat from the chaff. Each benchmark will be run at both stock and maximum overclock settings and utilise 1920×1080 and 2560×1600 resolutions along with AA at various levels (application dependent):
Let’s see how today’s cards performed…
All of the new AMD cards bit it Tahiti or Cape Verde have overclocked very well indeed so we expect similar results from the Pitcairn XT core found on the MSI HD 7870 Twin Frozr III OC. For our overclocking exploits we will be using MSI’s own Afterburner tool which is very easy to use and offers a variety of settings by which to get the best overclock from your hardware.
Perhaps I was being a little hopeful as in the past we have managed to max out the Afterburner slider on the core once the voltage was increased. Sadly, this was not the case with the MSI HD 7870 Twin Frozr III OC as we only managed a further 100MHz on the core (1150Mhz) and 117MHz on the memory making 1357MHz(5428MHz effective). This is by no means a poor result but as you will see below, with temperatures so good I was hoping for a little more headroom.
Power Consumption
To test for power consumption we do not use anything to technical, just a wall meter which measures the total system power draw minus the monitor.
At reference speeds with no voltage adjustment, the card system drew around the 180w mark when idle and 325W at full tilt. Results were very similar to the overclocked settings which included a slight nudge in voltages. The power consumption figures are relative to the reference design so while not poor, they do not improve upon the reference figures.
Temperature & Acoustics
To test temperatures we measured idle temperatures after booting windows, letting all applications finish loading and ran a few benchmarks. Once the benchmarks were complete we left the card to reach a cooling plateau where we then took the idle temperatures. For the load tests, we ran Furmark for 20 minutes, taking the absolute maximum temperature attained.
Temperatures is where the Twin Frozr comes into it’s own. Despite the extra voltage and overclock, the cooler managed to hold the card below 60c which is an astonishing achievement. Not only that but it did so relatively quietly. The cooler is not as quiet as the GIGABYTE WindForce design due to the low profile fans used. This is exemplified when the fans were set manually above 50% which raised the noise significantly. That said, during practice, the fan speed rarely got to this level and it is certainly quieter than the reference design.
Let’s move on to our suite of benchmarks…
Average and minimum frames per second were measured using Fraps during the parking lot scene on Operation Sword Breaker. High and Ultra presets were loaded at both resolutions.
To test the cards we used the Crysis 2 benchmark courtesy of Adrenaline with both the 1.9 patch, DX11 update and Hi-res texture pack. Settings were manually placed to Ultra, DX11 and tessellation enabled with the Central Park map being run 3 times per resolution benchmark test.
Testing was done using Framebuffer’s Crysis Warhead benchmarking tool. The tests were configured to DirectX 10 at Enthusiast levels. Each test on the Ambush map was looped three times from which the average FPS was recorded.
The results below were obtained from the builtin benchmark utility from the game. All the settings were set to
Average and minimum frames per second were measured using Fraps during the drop down passage to Riverwood. V-sync was disabled to allow fluctuating (higher the 60) FPS for these runs. It is however recommended that v-sync is left enabled during normal gameplay due to the games dynamics.
The in-game benchmarking tool was used to test performance. All the display settings were set to the maximum available and DirectX 11 was applied. The average FPS was recorded at the end.
The bundled benchmarking tool was used on Metro 2033, configuring the settings to High and making use of DirectX 11. The frontline scene was looped 3 times for each configuration. The average FPS was recorded at the end.
Way back at the beginning of this review I said that the MSI HD 7870 Twin Frozr III could be mistaken for being a sheep in wolfs clothing. While it isn’t exactly the raging, crazed, blood thirsty animal we hoped for, it can hardly be described as a sheep. It’s fast. It’s quiet (for the most part). It’s cool. The three ingredients that usually make for a graphics card gold award winner here at Vortez. The caveat remains though in that it is not much cheaper than a HD7950 which is based on the more powerful Tahiti pro processor and has an extra GB of GDDR5 to play with. So for £20 more you could have a faster card – on paper at least.
Because the MSI HD7870 we reviewed today arrives as an ‘OC edition’ it has an extra 50MHz on top of the reference 1000MHz afforded by AMD. This however is a conservative clockspeed as we managed to pull a further 100MHz from the core and 117MHz on the memory. These clockspeeds consistently placed the overall performance of the MSI HD 7870 Twin Frozr III past that of a reference HD7950 which is no mean feat. The problem the HD7870 has of course is that the HD7950 will also overclock very well, turning the tables once again. It could be argued that not every MSI HD7870 will overclock to these speeds. What can be guaranteed is that you will strugle find any other cooler that can offer better cooling performance. It is worth mentioning that with the fan manually raised past the 50% mark it does get a little ‘whiney’ but thanks to the cooling properties a slight adjustment to the fan profile should ensure the noise never raises above that of a mouse breaking wind at 40 paces!
So we have come full circle. The MSI HD7870 is a powerful card, of that we cannot argue. It cut through our benchmarks with ease and can certainly hold it’s head high with regard to the flagship cards. It’s quiet, one of the quietest cards we have tested and it is also one of the coolest. When you consider that the card, with a slight overclock can surpass the perfmance of the GTX580 then it may seem like steal. The issue remains however that at £20 shy of £300 it is still an expensive proposition to make when for £20 more you could have a HD7900 series card and in this sector of the market, bang per buck means everything. So in this respect, the MSI HD 7870 Twin Frozr III OC Edition is crippled somewhat. It is too expensive for a mid-range card, not quite powerful enough for a high end GPU.
Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net. Thanks to MSI for providing today’s review sample.
We distribute our products through offices located in The Netherlands, Germany, Italy, France, United Kingdom, Spain, Turkey, Czech Republic, Poland, Serbia, Ukraine, Russia, United States, Canada, Mexico, Latin America, Brazil, Taiwan, Japan, China, Korea, India and Australia. MSI markets its products to distributors, computer system manufacturers, and system integrators. For more information about the company go to Specification
-1050MHz Engine Clock
-2GB GDDR5 Memory
-1200MHz Memory Clock (4.8 Gbps GDDR5)
-92 GTexels/s
-153.6GB/s memory bandwidth (maximum)
-GCN Architecture
-20 Compute Units (1280 Stream Processors)
-80 Texture Units
-128 Z/Stencil ROP Units
-32 Color ROP Units
-Dual Geometry Engines
-Dual Asynchronous Compute Engines (ACE)
-256-bit GDDR5 memory interface
-PCI Express 3.0 x16 bus interface
-DirectX® 11.1-capable graphics
-OpenGL 4.2 support
-Partially Resident Textures (PRT)
-Ultra-high resolution texture streaming technology
-Image quality enhancement technology
-Up to 24x multi-sample and super-sample anti-aliasing
-Adaptive anti-aliasing
-Morphological Anti-Aliasing (MLAA)
-Enhanced Quality Anti-Aliasing (EQAA)
-DirectX® 9/10/11 Supersample Anti-Aliasing (SSAA)
-Requires AMD Catalyst™ 12.2 or later
-16x angle independent anisotropic texture filtering
-AMD Eyefinity multi-display technology2
-Up to 6 displays supported
-Independent resolutions, refresh rates, color controls, and video overlays
-Display grouping
-Combine multiple displays to behave like a single large display
-Discrete Digital Multi-Point Audio (DDMA)
-AMD App Acceleration3
-Supports OpenCL™ 1.2, DirectCompute 11 & Microsoft C++ AMP
-Double Precision Floating Point
-AMD HD Media Accelerator
-Unified Video Decoder (UVD)
-H.264
-VC-1
-MPEG-2 (SD & HD)
-MVC (Blu-ray 3D)
-MPEG-4 Part 2 (DivX/Xvid)
-Adobe Flash
-DXVA 1.0 & 2.0 support
-WMV HD
-Video Codec Engine (VCE)
-Multi-stream hardware H.264 encoder
-Full-fixed mode: 1080p @ 60 FPS encoding
-Hybrid mode: Stream Processor-assisted encoding
-Enhanced Video Quality features
-Advanced post-processing and scaling
-Deblocking
-Denoising
-Automatic deinterlacing
-Mosquito noise reduction
-Edge enhancement
-3:2 pulldown detection
-Advanced video color correction
-Brighter whites processing (Blue Stretch)
-Independent video gamma control
-Flesh tone correction
-Color vibrance control
-Dynamic contrast
-Dynamic video range control
-AMD HD3D technology5
-Stereoscopic 3D display/glasses support
-Blu-ray 3D support
-Stereoscopic 3D gaming
-3rd party Stereoscopic 3D middleware software support
-AMD CrossFire™ multi-GPU technology6
-Supports dual-GPU performance scaling
-Cutting-edge integrated display support
-DisplayPort 1.2
-Max resolution: 4096×2160 per display
-Multi-Stream Transport
-21.6 Gbps bandwidth
-High bit-rate audio
-Quad HD/4k video support
-1080p60 Stereoscopic 3D
-HDMI® (With 4k, 3D, 3GHz, Deep Color and x.v.Color™)
-Max resolution: 4096×2160
-1600p60 Stereoscopic 3D
-Quad HD/4k video support
-Dual-link DVI with HDCP
-Max resolution: 2560×1600
-VGA
-Max resolution: 2048×1536
-Integrated HD audio controller
-Output protected high bit rate 7.1 channel surround sound over HDMI with no additional cables required
-Supports AC-3, AAC, Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio formats
-AMD PowerPlay™ power management technology4
-Automatic power management with low power idle states
-AMD PowerTune technology4
-Intelligent TDP management technology
-Dynamic clockspeed/performance enhancement for games
-AMD ZeroCore Power technology4
-Ultra-low idle power when the connected display is in power saving mode
-Efficient low power mode for desktop work
-Secondary GPUs in an AMD CrossFire™ technology configuration power down when unneeded
-AMD Catalyst™ graphics and HD video configuration software
-Software support for Windows 7 and Windows Vista
-AMD Catalyst™ Control Center – AMD Catalyst™ software application and user interface for setup, configuration, and accessing features of AMD Radeon products.
-Unified Graphics display driver – AMD Catalyst™ software enabling other PC programs and devices to use advanced graphics, video, and features of AMD Radeon™ products.
While the HD79XX series and HD78XX series of GPU’s have different core names, the two cores are very, very similar in design. Similar to the way NVIDIA graphics card compute, the new AMD GCN archetecture has tiny ‘cores within a core’ – stream processors with each processor working on an instruction set until that work has been completed. This is the make up of AMD’s GCN (Graphics Core Next) archetecture which is based on the same 28nm process as the Tahiti cores. There are 20 of these compute units on-board the HD7870 core equalling 1280 stream processors, 160 more than the HD6870 but quite a lot less than the 1536 the HD6970 possessed. Comparing the the HD7870 against the previous gen though is pointless thanks to the new GCN archetecture as even the mighty HD7950 had few more at 1752 and comparing the HD7950 against the HD6970 is like chalk and cheese.
Using the new Pitcairn core, the HD7870 comprises of 20 Graphics Core Next Compute Units (1280 stream processors) which is slightly trimmed down from the higher end 7900 series which has 32 CU’s. With 32 ROPs and a 256-bit GDDR5 memory interface (equalling 153.6 GB/s of memory bandwidth), the specifications are twice that of the HD7770 GPU we reviewed earlier. The card also features a 9th generation tessellator which equates to the HD7870 being 425% faster than the HD6970 so programmes that require tessellation should so a big improvement over last generation GPU’s.
AMD suggests that the HD7870’s performance is expected to sit between NVIDIA’s GTX580 and GTX570 cards which makes sense as this where the GPU’s price point lies. As you can see from the slide above, the HD7870 has many advantages over its smaller sister card, the HD7850, namely the extra clockspeed and 16 TU’s which enhances the remainder of the specifications by a fair margin. Both cards have the same 2GB of GDDR5 and 256-bit memory interface.
Let’s take a look at the features of today’s review sample…
Features
Afterburner
Afterburner co-development by MSI and Rivatuner, MSI releases the ultimate graphics card utility “Afterburner”. This utility enables all MSI graphics cards users to boost performance and to monitor all kinds of critical information in real-time. Afterburner is a completely free utility which is compatible with almost all MSI graphics cards.
MSI Solid Capacitor Graphic Cards
MSI Solid Capacitor Graphic Card MSI Graphics Card products utilities high quality solid capacitor. For the gamers and high-end users, this feature not only means that product has better quality components within, but also provide much stronger support while users want to engage in hard-core tuning.
Live Update 5
MSI Live Update 5 is a single utility software that automatically checks BIOS, driver and utility updates and installs for you , which can save your time for searching and lower the risk while updating.
HDMI + DVI Output
HDMI + DVI Output HDMI and DVI are the most comprehensive used interfaces for high definition video display. MSI adopts two interfaces to provide a complete output solution for users to enjoy the latest HD video such as blu-ray movie.
DirectX 11
The first fully Microsoft DirectX® 11-compatible GPUs in their class, the ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 Series are designed to deliver unbelievable HD gaming performance for the latest games and DirectX® 11 applications so you can dominate the competition.
HDMI convertible output
Dual-link DVI convertible output supports Video/Audio signal integration through DVI to HDMI interface, which drivers resolution of a digital display up to 1920×1200 or higher.
Blu-ray and HD DVD Support
Both support the latest specifications of Blu-ray and HD DVD(High Definition DVD). It comes with the latest GPU and DDRIII superior processing performance in which users can easily enjoy the high-definition video of 1920×1080(1080p/i).
HDMI Support
MSI graphics cards offer the HDMI functionality to provide access to premium digital content. HDMI enables gaming enthusiasts to seamlessly connect to their LCD monitor to bring the ultimate multimedia experience. (Only 1 single HDMI cable is required while streaming audio/video data to flat-panel display devices, such as Plasma/LCD TVs, or projector.)
Meet RoHS regulations
MSI products are the first to be in conformity of the EU’s RoHS(Restriction of Hazardous Substances) regulations, reducing heavy metals and toxic materials in the products. This is an effort made for the Earth, and essentially for a clean future.
HDCP Support
The HDCP provides a robust, cost-effective and transparent method for transmitting and receiving digital entertainment similar to DVI/HDMI-compliant digital displays. HDCP encrypts the date transmitted between the DVI/HDMI connector on the graphics adapter and the display.
Afterburner co-development by MSI and Rivatuner, MSI releases the ultimate graphics card utility “Afterburner”. This utility enables all MSI graphics cards users to boost performance and to monitor all kinds of critical information in real-time. Afterburner is a completely free utility which is compatible with almost all MSI graphics cards.
MSI Solid Capacitor Graphic Cards
MSI Solid Capacitor Graphic Card MSI Graphics Card products utilities high quality solid capacitor. For the gamers and high-end users, this feature not only means that product has better quality components within, but also provide much stronger support while users want to engage in hard-core tuning.
Live Update 5
MSI Live Update 5 is a single utility software that automatically checks BIOS, driver and utility updates and installs for you , which can save your time for searching and lower the risk while updating.
HDMI + DVI Output
HDMI + DVI Output HDMI and DVI are the most comprehensive used interfaces for high definition video display. MSI adopts two interfaces to provide a complete output solution for users to enjoy the latest HD video such as blu-ray movie.
DirectX 11
The first fully Microsoft DirectX® 11-compatible GPUs in their class, the ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 Series are designed to deliver unbelievable HD gaming performance for the latest games and DirectX® 11 applications so you can dominate the competition.
HDMI convertible output
Dual-link DVI convertible output supports Video/Audio signal integration through DVI to HDMI interface, which drivers resolution of a digital display up to 1920×1200 or higher.
Blu-ray and HD DVD Support
Both support the latest specifications of Blu-ray and HD DVD(High Definition DVD). It comes with the latest GPU and DDRIII superior processing performance in which users can easily enjoy the high-definition video of 1920×1080(1080p/i).
HDMI Support
MSI graphics cards offer the HDMI functionality to provide access to premium digital content. HDMI enables gaming enthusiasts to seamlessly connect to their LCD monitor to bring the ultimate multimedia experience. (Only 1 single HDMI cable is required while streaming audio/video data to flat-panel display devices, such as Plasma/LCD TVs, or projector.)
Meet RoHS regulations
MSI products are the first to be in conformity of the EU’s RoHS(Restriction of Hazardous Substances) regulations, reducing heavy metals and toxic materials in the products. This is an effort made for the Earth, and essentially for a clean future.
HDCP Support
The HDCP provides a robust, cost-effective and transparent method for transmitting and receiving digital entertainment similar to DVI/HDMI-compliant digital displays. HDCP encrypts the date transmitted between the DVI/HDMI connector on the graphics adapter and the display.
GCN Architecture
Available on select, high-performance AMD Radeon™ HD 7000 Series graphics products, the Graphics Core Next (GCN) Architecture is a radically new approach to the design of a consumer GPU.Most importantly, it is the world’s first 28nm GPU architecture, which enables AMD to fit up to 4.3 billion transistors-the most basic building blocks of a GPU-into approximately the same space once needed to fit 2.6 billion. Increasing transistor density by greater than 60% is more than just a feat of engineering-it’s responsible for the world’s most powerful and advanced GPU.1
Designed to push not only the boundaries of DirectX® 11 gaming, the GCN Architecture is also AMD’s first design specifically engineered for general computing. Equipped with up to 32 compute units (2048 stream processors), each containing a scalar coprocessor, AMD’s 28nm GPUs are more than capable of handling workloads-and programming languages-traditionally exclusive to the processor. Coupled with the dramatic rise of GPU-aware programming languages like C++ AMP and OpenCL™, the GCN Architecture is truly the right architecture for the right time.
Performance
In simple terms, increasing the number of transistors in a GPU has a big impact on the potential performance of a graphics card-but transistors alone are not enough. It takes a truly great design, like the GCN Architecture, to effectively utilize that potential for real-world performance.
Below you will find just a few examples of how this truly next-generation architecture delivers on one very simple design goal: enable the world’s most powerful graphics cards.1
Starting with GPU utilization, AMD has taken great strides to ensure that the GCN Architecture is capable of efficiently using its hardware resources. This seems like such a simple idea, but designing a GPU to frequently approach its peak theoretical performance is a challenge the GCN Architecture tackles with ease.
The GCN Architecture is designed for improved utilization, which ensures that the GPU is making optimal use of its resources for maximum performance.
DirectX® 11 tessellation has also seen incredible improvement from previous AMD Radeon™ products. On the left in the image below, a chart plots the AMD Radeon™ HD 7970’s performance across 32 levels of tessellation, and the results are stunning: a 350% boost at the highest factors.2 And on the right, the GCN Architecture’s ability to effectively utilize its potential again shines through: highly-tessellated games are decisively faster by an average of 79%!
The GCN Architecture also benefits from dramatically improved tessellation performance. Games featuring this DirectX® 11 technology are considerably faster than they were on the previous generation of AMD Radeon™ products.
Every gamer knows that the GPU’s clockspeed also has a big impact on the performance of a graphics card, and the GCN Architecture keeps that in mind.
But what many don’t know is that every graphics card is designed to draw only a certain amount of power from your PC’s power supply. This is called the Thermal Design Profile, or TDP, and it’s critical that the GPU architecture is capable of making the most of every watt. The GCN Architecture can do that thanks to a technology called AMD PowerTune technology.
AMD PowerTune is an intelligent system that performs real-time analysis of the games and applications that utilize a GPU. Examples of such software might include Battlefield 3 or Furmark. In the event that an application is not making the most of the power available to the GPU, AMD PowerTune can improve that application’s performance by raising the GPU’s clockspeed by up to 30%! Best of all, this technology is completely automatic and is designed specifically to improve gaming performance.
Available on all 28nm AMD Radeon™ products, AMD PowerTune is designed to enable significantly higher clockspeeds in your favorite games-automatically!
Image Quality
But performance is not enough for today’s demanding gamers. Image quality, or the clarity and accuracy of textures and effects, is equally important. The GCN Architecture is equipped with three key technologies that dramatically raise the bar in this regard.
Partially Resident Textures (PRT)
Even in the latest titles, gamers may have noticed that games often re-use or repeat textures, particularly on the ground or in background scenery such as mountains or trees. This is because increasing the physical size or number of textures in a game can have a negative impact on the performance of a GPU. PRT is a radical new technology that hopes to break this cycle.
PRT can utilize absolutely enormous texture files, up to 32 terabytes large, with minimal performance impact. PRT accomplishes this by streaming small bits of these massive textures into the GPU as needed, giving compatible games a virtually endless supply of unique texture data it can apply to the game world. The GCN Architecture in 28nm AMD Radeon™ products is the first GPU design to feature a hardware implementation of this technology.
Partially Resident Textures (PRT) enables future games to utilize ultra-high resolution textures with the same performance as today’s small and often repetitive textures.
Improved Anisotropic Filtering (AF)
Available on every modern GPU, anisotropic filtering is a technique that assists the GPU in making sure textures in your favorite games remain razor sharp, even at a distance. Most games now offer the ability to enable this feature, and the AMD Catalyst™ driver suite has long provided players with the option to force enable anisotropic filtering for all of their games.
Where every GPU design differs, however, is in the way the anisotropic filtering is actually executed. The GCN Architecture has been specifically optimized to produce superior results when AF is enabled.
Improved anisotropic filtering in products like the AMD Radeon™ HD 7900 Series ensure gamers get sharper, better textures when this technology is enabled.
Improved DirectX® 11 Tessellation
As DirectX® 11 titles become more mature, game developers are naturally pushing the envelope of realism by utilizing a greater degree of special rendering effects. One such effect is tessellation, which can dynamically generate additional detail in a scene on the fly.
A wireframe scene of a rally car in DiRT 3 driving through water. On the left, notice there are no ripples. On the right, after tessellation, there is new and dynamic detail in the game.
As with anisotropic filtering, tessellation is not new to GPUs, but the manner in which tessellation is executed can have a large impact on the gaming experience. Because of this, the GCN Architecture has again been optimized to deliver up to 4x the performance of the AMD Radeon™ HD 6000 Series in heavily-tessellated games.
AMD ZeroCore Power
When a discrete GPU is in a static screen state it works to minimize idle power by enabling a host of active power saving functions including (but not limited to); clock gating, power gating, memory compression, and a host of other features. However, GPUs with AMD’s exclusive ZeroCore Power technology can take energy savings to entirely new heights by completely powering down the core GPU while the rest of the system remains active.
Nearly all PCs can be configured to turn off their displays after a long period of inactivity. This is known as the long idle state; where the screen is blanked but the rest of the system remains in an active and working power state (ACPI G0/S0). As soon as the system goes into long idle state and applications are not actively changing the screen contents, the GPU enters the ZeroCore power state. In the ZeroCore power state, the GPU core (including the 3D engine / compute units, multimedia and audio engines, displays, memory interfaces, etc.) is completely powered down.
However, one cannot simply remove the GPU and its associated device context completely; particularly when it is the only GPU in the system as is the case in many enthusiast platforms. The operating system and SBIOS must still be aware that a GPU is still present in the system. For this reason, the ZeroCore Power state maintains a very small bus control block to ensure that GPU context is still visible to the operating system and SBIOS. The ZeroCore power state also manages the power sequencing of the GPU to ensure that the power up/down mechanism is self-contained and independent of the rest of the system.
The enablement of the ZeroCore Power feature is controlled by the driver. The driver monitors the display contents and allows the GPU to enter the ZeroCore Power in the condition that the GPU enters long idle and subsequent work requests are no longer being submitted to the engine. If any applications update the screen contents, ZeroCore Power technology can periodically wake the GPU to update the framebuffer contents and put the GPU back into the ZeroCore Power state. Furthermore, applications such as Windows 7 desktop gadgets are architected to minimize activity and save power in the long idle state. These applications are active during screen-on mode to display dynamic content such as weather, RSS feeds, stock symbols, system status, etc. but also have the intelligence to suspend any updates and activity when the system enters long idle. These applications will not wake the GPU from the ZeroCore Power state in long idle.
AMD ZeroCore Power technology delivers tremendous energy savings. Many PCs remain in the long idle state for a variety of use cases that are highly relevant to everyday consumers, enthusiasts and professionals. In ZeroCore Power mode, users can still enjoy non-graphics activities such as file serving/streaming, motherboard audio and music, and remote access while the GPU core is essentially powered off.
ZeroCore Power technology also scales with AMD CrossFire™ technology. With an AMD CrossFire platform, all non-primary GPUs are in the ZeroCore Power state when not in use. For AMD CrossFire workloads, the driver will engage the non-primary GPUs to deliver full performance on-demand. The primary GPU can also enter the ZeroCore Power state during long idle as well. This delivers scalable benefits for the enthusiast. First, it effectively removes the power increase for users of AMD CrossFire under idle and light (single GPU) workloads. Second, it removes the noise penalty multiGPU users have always had to endure since the GPU fans are off in ZeroCore Power mode.
Nearly all PCs can be configured to turn off their displays after a long period of inactivity. This is known as the long idle state; where the screen is blanked but the rest of the system remains in an active and working power state (ACPI G0/S0). As soon as the system goes into long idle state and applications are not actively changing the screen contents, the GPU enters the ZeroCore power state. In the ZeroCore power state, the GPU core (including the 3D engine / compute units, multimedia and audio engines, displays, memory interfaces, etc.) is completely powered down.
However, one cannot simply remove the GPU and its associated device context completely; particularly when it is the only GPU in the system as is the case in many enthusiast platforms. The operating system and SBIOS must still be aware that a GPU is still present in the system. For this reason, the ZeroCore Power state maintains a very small bus control block to ensure that GPU context is still visible to the operating system and SBIOS. The ZeroCore power state also manages the power sequencing of the GPU to ensure that the power up/down mechanism is self-contained and independent of the rest of the system.
The enablement of the ZeroCore Power feature is controlled by the driver. The driver monitors the display contents and allows the GPU to enter the ZeroCore Power in the condition that the GPU enters long idle and subsequent work requests are no longer being submitted to the engine. If any applications update the screen contents, ZeroCore Power technology can periodically wake the GPU to update the framebuffer contents and put the GPU back into the ZeroCore Power state. Furthermore, applications such as Windows 7 desktop gadgets are architected to minimize activity and save power in the long idle state. These applications are active during screen-on mode to display dynamic content such as weather, RSS feeds, stock symbols, system status, etc. but also have the intelligence to suspend any updates and activity when the system enters long idle. These applications will not wake the GPU from the ZeroCore Power state in long idle.
AMD ZeroCore Power technology delivers tremendous energy savings. Many PCs remain in the long idle state for a variety of use cases that are highly relevant to everyday consumers, enthusiasts and professionals. In ZeroCore Power mode, users can still enjoy non-graphics activities such as file serving/streaming, motherboard audio and music, and remote access while the GPU core is essentially powered off.
ZeroCore Power technology also scales with AMD CrossFire™ technology. With an AMD CrossFire platform, all non-primary GPUs are in the ZeroCore Power state when not in use. For AMD CrossFire workloads, the driver will engage the non-primary GPUs to deliver full performance on-demand. The primary GPU can also enter the ZeroCore Power state during long idle as well. This delivers scalable benefits for the enthusiast. First, it effectively removes the power increase for users of AMD CrossFire under idle and light (single GPU) workloads. Second, it removes the noise penalty multiGPU users have always had to endure since the GPU fans are off in ZeroCore Power mode.
Packaging & Accessories
Outer Packaging
The outer package is identical to other Twin Frozr offerings from both AMD and NVIDIA with the only difference being the metallic flake lettering describing the product contained within. The rear of the box describes both the features of the product and the minimum requirments.
Flip Lid
Rather than just have a sleeve, the packaging has a flip up window which allows the user to see the actual card through a plastic window. Surrounding this window and adorning the lid are the many features of the MSI HD7870 Twin Frozr.
Inner box
Removing the outer sleeve, we are greeting with a plain cardboard box complete with plastic lid which serves to protect the package contents. The card is held fast in a foam bracket which is sturdy enough to withstand even the clumsiest of couriers. Beneath this foam brace is a hidden compartment which contains the accessories.
Accessories
The accessories of the MSI HD7870 are nothing resounding yet the list is complete enough to ensure that the card can be installed without issue. The list comprises of the following items: Crossfire bridge, Driver CD, USer guide, product catalogue, 2x twin Molex-6pin PCIe power plugs and a DisplayPort to miniDisplayPort dongle.
First Look
MSI HD7870 Twin Frozr OC
The now very familiar Twin Frozr cooler sits atop of a heatpipe equipped aluminium and nickel plated copper heatsink. The colour scheme of the design hasn’t changed much in the three incarnations, something I would perhaps like to see in future revisions as it is starting to look a little tired, especially after seeing both last years GTX580 Lightening and this year HD7970 Lightening, both of which make use of a revised Twin Frozr Design that look infinitely more appealing.
Card Bottom
One area where I find it hard to give MSI praise is the choice of silk screening colour they use for their PCB’s. Brown has to be the most unappealing colour they could have chosen next to the puke yellow and olive green used in the 1990’s. That said, if you are building a PC with a retro feel, this card will feel right at home! Come on MSI, is it really that hard to make the transition to black?
Card Profile
From the side, you would be very hard pushed to distinguish this MSI Twin Frozr card from any other as other than the MSI branding there are no other markings to help identify the GPU type or even brand.
I/O Backplate
Display options come courtesy of a single DVI-I port along with twin 1.2 mini-DisplayPorts and a single HDMI 1.4a port which is also capable of transmitting HD audio. Up to 4 screens can be used in an EyeFinity 2.0 setup with the HD7870.
PCIe Power Ports
The MSI HD7870 Twin Frozr OC requires twin 6pin PCIe ports (75W each) and recommend a PSU with a 500W capacity. While MSI also include 2x Molex adapters for this purpose a quality PSU should always be used, especially when overclocking.
Crossfire Configuration
Like all 78XX cards, the HD7870 has a single crossfire tab meaning it can be paired up to anyother card from the 7800 family of GPU’s.
Cooling Fan
The fan of the Twin Frozr III design is bi-angled to increase airflow by up to 20%. MSI claim that the Twin Frozr cooler can decrease temps by 15c and noise by 9dB when compared to the reference cooler – something we will be examining later in the review.
Closer Look
Heatsink
The MSI card has 5 heatpipes, 2x8mm and 3x6mm which are nickel plated copper. These stretch out from the baseplate and carry heat away from the core to effectively use the whole of the heatsink and not just the centre.
Baseplate
The contact from core to baseplate was very good with a near perfect application of paste. The quality of paste was very good; not to dry, not to wet which should ensure a crevice filling, long lasting thermal interface.
Midplate
The Twin Frozr makes use of an aluminium mid-plate which serves to increase the surface area being passively cooled. The mid-plate covers the memory modules and VRM area, ensuring not only the core receives cooling but the whole of the cards components.
HD7870 Naked
With all of the heatsink removed we get to see the card in all its naked glory. As with the HD7850 we review recently, the VRM is located towards the I/O area of the card which is in contrast to the norm. The GPU core is surrounded by 8×256 memory modules which are made by HYNIX.
Voltage Regulation
Pink and brown may not be the most attractive combination but if you can see past the gaudy colour scheme you will see that the Twin Frozr uses quality power circuitry. Solid capacitors and ferrite core chokes are the order of the day along with a CHiL 8225 voltage controller allowing voltage fine tuning – an asset to anyone wishing to overclock the GPU past its 1050MHz factory overclock.
Hynix Memory
The 8x256MB of HYNIX memory has a product descriptor of H5GQ2H24MFR-T2C and is rated to run at 5000MHz effective speed so should leave some room for overclocking further as it is currently clocked to 4800MHz.
Pitcairn XT
Finally we see the Pitcairn XT core. This sliver of silicon is built at TSMC using the new 28nm process and holds 2.8billion transistors inside. How much these can come together and deliver the performance we all crave though remains to be seen…
Test Setup
With the latest Intel chipset release we decided to update our ageing X58 setup to the new X79 chipset. Not only that but we will be using the flagship Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition processor clocked to 4.5GHz to ensure we have no CPU bottlenecks. With 16GB of ram on board there should be minimal paging so the benchmarks we run today will hopefully give a true reflection of the graphics card’s performance.Some of the components for our test bench were kindly donated by CORSAIR who provided the majority of components without whom we would not have been able to bring you this review so a big thanks to them.
Graphics cards on test:
MSI HD 7870 Twin Frozr III OC
GIGABYTE HD7850 OC WindForce x2
ZOTAC GTX680 2GB GDDR5
AMD HD7870 2GB GDDR5
Zotac GTX580 AMP2! 3GB GDDR5
XFX R7970 Black Edition 3GB GDDR5
XFX R7770 Black Edition ‘S’ 1GB GDDR5
AMD HD7750 1GB GDDR5
AMD HD7770 1GB GDDR5
HIS HD7970 3GB GDDR5
XFX DD Radeon R7950 3072MB GDDR5
PowerColor PCS+ Radeon HD7950 3072MB GDDR5
AMD Radeon HD7950 3072MB GDDR5
AMD Radeon HD7970 3072MB GDDR5
ZOTAC GTX570 AMP! 1280MB GDDR5
NVIDIA GTX570 1280MB GDDR5
MSI GTX560Ti-448 Twin Frozr III 1280MB GDDR5
MSI GTX560Ti-384 Twin Frozr III 2GB GDDR5
AMD HD6990 4GB GDDR5
For this review we will be using the very latest CAT 12.4 drivers.
Motherboard: MSI X79 Big Bang X-Power II
CPU: Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition @ 4.5GHz
RAM – 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair Vengeance (Red) DDR3 @ 1866MHz 9-10-9-27
Power Supply – ANTEC High Current Pro 1200W
Hard Drive – Kingston HyperX 240GB
Cooler – Corsair H100
Benchmarks
We have also updated our range of benchmarks to include the following games which will give the graphics cards a challenge and sort the wheat from the chaff. Each benchmark will be run at both stock and maximum overclock settings and utilise 1920×1080 and 2560×1600 resolutions along with AA at various levels (application dependent):
Battlefield 3
Crysis 2
Crysis Warhead
Metro 2033
Batman: Arkham City
Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
DiRT 3
Futuremark 3DMark 2011
Unigine: Heaven 2.5
Crysis 2
Crysis Warhead
Metro 2033
Batman: Arkham City
Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
DiRT 3
Futuremark 3DMark 2011
Unigine: Heaven 2.5
Let’s see how today’s cards performed…
Overclocking, Temperature & Power Consumption
The HD 7870 reference design comes clocked at 1000MHz. MSI have added a further 50MHz to this figure to make a rather conservative 1050MHz in total. Hopefully we will be able to surpass this mark in our overclocking section.All of the new AMD cards bit it Tahiti or Cape Verde have overclocked very well indeed so we expect similar results from the Pitcairn XT core found on the MSI HD 7870 Twin Frozr III OC. For our overclocking exploits we will be using MSI’s own Afterburner tool which is very easy to use and offers a variety of settings by which to get the best overclock from your hardware.
Perhaps I was being a little hopeful as in the past we have managed to max out the Afterburner slider on the core once the voltage was increased. Sadly, this was not the case with the MSI HD 7870 Twin Frozr III OC as we only managed a further 100MHz on the core (1150Mhz) and 117MHz on the memory making 1357MHz(5428MHz effective). This is by no means a poor result but as you will see below, with temperatures so good I was hoping for a little more headroom.
Power Consumption
To test for power consumption we do not use anything to technical, just a wall meter which measures the total system power draw minus the monitor.
At reference speeds with no voltage adjustment, the card system drew around the 180w mark when idle and 325W at full tilt. Results were very similar to the overclocked settings which included a slight nudge in voltages. The power consumption figures are relative to the reference design so while not poor, they do not improve upon the reference figures.
Temperature & Acoustics
To test temperatures we measured idle temperatures after booting windows, letting all applications finish loading and ran a few benchmarks. Once the benchmarks were complete we left the card to reach a cooling plateau where we then took the idle temperatures. For the load tests, we ran Furmark for 20 minutes, taking the absolute maximum temperature attained.
Temperatures is where the Twin Frozr comes into it’s own. Despite the extra voltage and overclock, the cooler managed to hold the card below 60c which is an astonishing achievement. Not only that but it did so relatively quietly. The cooler is not as quiet as the GIGABYTE WindForce design due to the low profile fans used. This is exemplified when the fans were set manually above 50% which raised the noise significantly. That said, during practice, the fan speed rarely got to this level and it is certainly quieter than the reference design.
Let’s move on to our suite of benchmarks…
Battlefield 3
Battlefield 3 leaps ahead of its time with the power of Frostbite™ 2, the next instalment of DICE’s cutting-edge game engine. This state-of-the-art technology is the foundation on which Battlefield 3 is built, delivering enhanced visual quality, a grand sense of scale, massive destruction, dynamic audio and incredibly lifelike character animations. As bullets whiz by, walls crumble, and explosions throw you to the ground, the battlefield feels more alive and interactive than ever before. In Battlefield 3, players step into the role of the elite U.S. Marines where they will experience heart-pounding missions across diverse locations including Paris, Tehran and New York.
Average and minimum frames per second were measured using Fraps during the parking lot scene on Operation Sword Breaker. High and Ultra presets were loaded at both resolutions.
Crysis 2
Crytek took an internet beating from its loyal fans due to the fact that they pandered to the console masses and dumbed down the graphics to DirectX 9. Fortunately, fans of the PC version of Crysis managed to force Cryteks hand and they have since developed a DX11 patch and have also enhanced the textures with added tesselation. It is for this reason that we have decided to include it in our suite of benchmarks.
To test the cards we used the Crysis 2 benchmark courtesy of Adrenaline with both the 1.9 patch, DX11 update and Hi-res texture pack. Settings were manually placed to Ultra, DX11 and tessellation enabled with the Central Park map being run 3 times per resolution benchmark test.
Crysis Warhead
Following the success of Crysis, the stand alone expansion “Warhead” was hotly anticipated to bring more game play, more weapons, improved visuals whilst maintaining better performance, the latter being what gamers wanted most. After all how many people upgraded their rigs just to play this game… In the game, you play as the upbeat Brit Sergeant “Psycho” Sykes, chasing down a Korean nuclear warhead. Throw in some ice shooting aliens and we’re bound to have a great game. It sure delivered.
Testing was done using Framebuffer’s Crysis Warhead benchmarking tool. The tests were configured to DirectX 10 at Enthusiast levels. Each test on the Ambush map was looped three times from which the average FPS was recorded.
Batman: Arkham City
Batman: Arkham City builds upon the intense, atmospheric foundation of Batman: Arkham Asylum, sending players soaring into Arkham City, the new maximum security “home” for all of Gotham City’s thugs, gangsters and insane criminal masterminds. Set inside the heavily fortified walls of a sprawling district in the heart of Gotham City, this highly anticipated sequel introduces a brand-new story that draws together a new all-star cast of classic characters and murderous villains from the Batman universe, as well as a vast range of new and enhanced gameplay features to deliver the ultimate experience as the Dark Knight.
The results below were obtained from the builtin benchmark utility from the game. All the settings were set to
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Skyrim is not a direct successor to the very popular Oblivion. Instead it takes place 200 years after the events of Oblivion. The non-linear playing that made the Elder Scrolls such a popular series does however make a return along with the beautiful scenery the encompasses the world of Skyrim.
Average and minimum frames per second were measured using Fraps during the drop down passage to Riverwood. V-sync was disabled to allow fluctuating (higher the 60) FPS for these runs. It is however recommended that v-sync is left enabled during normal gameplay due to the games dynamics.
DiRT 3
As players race to elevate their global standing, DiRT 3 is back delivering mud, sweat and gears world over: from the intense weather-beaten rally stages of Europe, Africa and the US, to executing performance driving showcases and career challenges where car control is pushed to spectacular limits.
The in-game benchmarking tool was used to test performance. All the display settings were set to the maximum available and DirectX 11 was applied. The average FPS was recorded at the end.
Metro 2033
Based on the novel by the same name, Metro 2033 is a first person shooter with elements of survival horror. As Artyom, you trawl through the mutant infested metro systems of post-apocalyptic Moscow. The game delivers presents a grim ambience that reflects on the overall atmosphere of the underground setting. Metro 2033 uses the setting as a back drop to showcase some of the best visuals of any games out now, making it the ideal benchmark for those looking for the best graphics card.
The bundled benchmarking tool was used on Metro 2033, configuring the settings to High and making use of DirectX 11. The frontline scene was looped 3 times for each configuration. The average FPS was recorded at the end.
Futuremark 3DMark 2011
3DMark 11 is the latest version of the world’s most popular benchmark. Designed to measure your PC’s gaming performance 3DMark 11 makes extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. The benchmark was run in both Performance and Extreme presets.
Unigine: Heaven 2.5
Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine™ engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.
Conclusion
Way back at the beginning of this review I said that the MSI HD 7870 Twin Frozr III could be mistaken for being a sheep in wolfs clothing. While it isn’t exactly the raging, crazed, blood thirsty animal we hoped for, it can hardly be described as a sheep. It’s fast. It’s quiet (for the most part). It’s cool. The three ingredients that usually make for a graphics card gold award winner here at Vortez. The caveat remains though in that it is not much cheaper than a HD7950 which is based on the more powerful Tahiti pro processor and has an extra GB of GDDR5 to play with. So for £20 more you could have a faster card – on paper at least.
Because the MSI HD7870 we reviewed today arrives as an ‘OC edition’ it has an extra 50MHz on top of the reference 1000MHz afforded by AMD. This however is a conservative clockspeed as we managed to pull a further 100MHz from the core and 117MHz on the memory. These clockspeeds consistently placed the overall performance of the MSI HD 7870 Twin Frozr III past that of a reference HD7950 which is no mean feat. The problem the HD7870 has of course is that the HD7950 will also overclock very well, turning the tables once again. It could be argued that not every MSI HD7870 will overclock to these speeds. What can be guaranteed is that you will strugle find any other cooler that can offer better cooling performance. It is worth mentioning that with the fan manually raised past the 50% mark it does get a little ‘whiney’ but thanks to the cooling properties a slight adjustment to the fan profile should ensure the noise never raises above that of a mouse breaking wind at 40 paces!
So we have come full circle. The MSI HD7870 is a powerful card, of that we cannot argue. It cut through our benchmarks with ease and can certainly hold it’s head high with regard to the flagship cards. It’s quiet, one of the quietest cards we have tested and it is also one of the coolest. When you consider that the card, with a slight overclock can surpass the perfmance of the GTX580 then it may seem like steal. The issue remains however that at £20 shy of £300 it is still an expensive proposition to make when for £20 more you could have a HD7900 series card and in this sector of the market, bang per buck means everything. So in this respect, the MSI HD 7870 Twin Frozr III OC Edition is crippled somewhat. It is too expensive for a mid-range card, not quite powerful enough for a high end GPU.
Pros:
– Factory Overclocked
– Quiet
– Cool
– Powerful
Cons:
– Expensive
– Loud when fan past 50%
– Brown PCB
– Cooler aesthetics need a refresh
– Factory Overclocked
– Quiet
– Cool
– Powerful
Cons:
– Expensive
– Loud when fan past 50%
– Brown PCB
– Cooler aesthetics need a refresh
Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net. Thanks to MSI for providing today’s review sample.
