XFX Throws into the Midrange Ring
XFX Shows off their Double D Coolers for the Midrange Market
Who is this XFX? This is a brand that I have not dealt with in a long time. In fact, the last time I had an XFX card was some five years ago, and it was in the form of the GeForce 8800 GTX XXX Edition. This was a pretty awesome card for the time, and it seemed to last forever in terms of performance and features in the new DX 10 world that was 2007/2008. This was a heavily overclocked card, and it would get really loud during gaming sessions. I can honestly say though that this particular card was troublefree and well built.
XFX has not always had a great reputation though, and the company has gone through some very interesting twists and turns over the years. XFX is a subsidiary of Pine Technologies. Initially XFX dealt strictly with NVIDIA based products, but a few years back when the graphics market became really tight, NVIDIA dropped several manufacturers and focused their attention on the bigger partners. Among the victims of this tightening were BFG Technologies and XFX. Unlike BFG, XFX was able to negotiate successfully with AMD to transition their product lineup to Radeon products. Since then XFX has been very aggressive in pursuing unique designs based on these AMD products. While previous generation designs did not step far from the reference products, this latest generation is a big step forward for XFX.
In terms of quality XFX had it rough for a while. Return rates appeared to be much higher than other players in the market, and there were a lot of complaints about customer service. XFX took this to heart and introduced their Double Lifetime warranty. This promised the initial user/buyer a full, lifetime warranty. If that user decided to give or sell the card to another, then they had the option of transferring the lifetime warranty to that other person. This unfortunately came to a screeching halt early this year. XFX discontinued the double lifetime warranty concept, but they did replace it with something that was still “ok” in terms of industry standards. XFX now offers a 2 year limited warranty on their products with an optional 1 year extension. They do still offer the ability to transfer the warranty to another user, so that is a definite plus when we consider that upgrade cycles are sometimes pretty compressed in the graphics market.
Lifting the lid reveals the included pack materials. Again, not entirely impressive, but not bad either.
The HD 7000 series of products from XFX are a massive shift for them in terms of design. While the PCBs all look to be reference products, XFX has taken a keen interest in thermals and have introduced a whole new series of coolers that hope to catch up to the competition. The competition in this case is MSI and Asus. These two companies have done more to push unique cooling solutions than any other. MSI in particular was one that redefined graphics cooling with their “Superpipe” and Twin Frozr products, not to mention pushing the limits of design with their Lightning series of cards. XFX appears halfway there with their cooler designs.
The card is fairly well protected, but not a piece of foam in sight. The card is essentially triple boxed in, so shipping damage would have to be extreme to actually hurt the card.
Today we are looking at a pair of cards from XFX that represent the high end of the HD 7850 and HD 7870 series of cards. These products are both Black Editions of the Double Dissipation class of cooling. These products are overclocked out of the box and they introduce a new set of specifications for the entire card as a whole.
nice review but i wish there
nice review but i wish there were more benchmarks…
What else would you like to
What else would you like to see?
We need to see: Batman Arkham
We need to see: Batman Arkham City, Civilization V, Crysis 2, Metro 2033, Shogun 2, Unigine Heaven and perhaps Diablo 3 :).
isnt it more relevant to
isnt it more relevant to compare these cards to 670 / 680, then the older generation nvidia cards?
it is just that reading this is like reading a review from 4 months ago.
The Lightning R7970 results
The Lightning R7970 results are essentially dead even with a GTX 680.
What I’d like to see are
What I’d like to see are comparisons to the generic versions of these cards. You price the XFX 7850 at 275$ but is it worth the extra 45$ compared to say XFX’s generic 7850 that they sell for 240$ (free shipping)?
You defiantly hit the nail on the head with the 7870 though. As awesome looking and well performing as it is it’s priced too high.
AMD 990FX Platforms not beat
AMD 990FX Platforms not beat SandyBridge in Skyrim and Dirt 3. But My Test Dirt 3 with HD 6950 stock 1680×1050 Beat HD 7850 FPS: 65avg/57min and OC (940/1375) 75avg/64min beat HD 7870 too with 2500K + Z68 Stock!
Def needs Crysis 2, Metro
Def needs Crysis 2, Metro 2033, and UniEngine added. Also show the new 600 series results along with these, still a good review though.
Heh, I tested Metro 2033 and
Heh, I tested Metro 2033 and even graphed out the results. I just forgot to put them in! I’ll add those here shortly.
I’ll try to get a hold of a GTX 680 or 670 here soon so I can have those results available to me.
Great review Josh, thank you.
Great review Josh, thank you.
AMD has dropped the price on
AMD has dropped the price on these cards. The 7870 DD is now only $279 after rebate. That certainly changes the game, doesn’t it?