Wrapping Up the MSI R7870 HAWK
The first R5770 Hawk that I reviewed just simply blew me away. It was a great combination of value, performance, and design extras that made it a fantastic card. The R7870 Hawk is the direct descendent of that card, and the pedigree shows. It is all the things that the original was, but a whole lot more. Bigger, faster, louder, and more expensive. I’m not entirely sure these are all positives, but I also think that a user does get quite a bit for the money spent.
The actual board itself is very good. I did have issues with the outputs, but that type of configuration is becoming more and more common for multiple manufacturers. The fan profile was a bit too aggressive and it became quite a bit louder. Not ear piercingly so, though. This was easily fixed by using the Afterburner software, and the card became much more reasonable to the ears.
The biggest problem with this board is the competitive environment that it exists in. It is very much an enthusiast card, and it was designed to be overclocked on LN2 to break some records. For 99.9% of users, LN2 overclocking is not their reality. Water cooling is the next step, but of course to do that a user will have to remove the fans and heatsink, which were one of the big selling points for this design. Yes, a watercooling user will take better advantage of the extra power phases and improved component selection, but removing all that hardware seems something of a waste. The GPU Reactor is again only going to show minimal returns on air cooling.
Right next to it in price is the higher performing MSI R7950. This card is a much better buy, considering that it is only $10 or so more expensive than the Hawk. It does not have all of the bells and whistles, and is based on a reference PCB design. But it will still overclock, and the performance plus extra memory (3 GB vs. 2GB) makes it a better solution for the vast majority of users out there.
The design of the R7870 Hawk is a good one. It does achieve its goals of being a very overclockable, yet cool running card. It is aimed at the extreme enthusiasts who are not afraid to try to break a few records. There is a mystique about the Hawk card and the GPU Reactor, but in terms of actual everyday use, the R7950 is a better overall choice for the average consumer. If we focus on what this card was designed for, it is a fantastic product. Unfortunately for most users, that functionality will largely go unused. If a user is going to go the extreme cooling route though, this is the perfect card for their needs.
In terms of CrossFire performance, I was very impressed. The card scaled well in the variety of applications I tested with. Better yet, AMD must have put some secret sauce in their latest HD 7000 implementation, because I did not notice micro-stutter as I did with the HD 6900 series. I could be wrong, but it seems like AMD has at least smoothed the output enough that it is not instantly noticeable to the trained eye. It does seem like AMD is edging closer and closer to NVIDIA when it comes to multi-GPU implementations.
Great review Josh!
Great review Josh!
Haha@gaming with AMD CPU’s.
Haha@gaming with AMD CPU’s.
…Fool.
Great review, by the
…Fool.
Great review, by the way
I agree, what a waste. I
I agree, what a waste. I find it easier to scale the results down, than trying to imagine what the difference would be if it were an Intel based system.
You sure about that
You sure about that statement…? Have you looked at th next gen games coming out? They all use 6-8 core CPUs… You better buy one before they reach $500…
Thanks for the great review.
Thanks for the great review. Maybe my next Corssfire System 🙂
BTW >>@anonymous “Haha@gaming with AMD CPU’s.”<< ...stupid people writing stupid things!...
I see that the Lightning
I see that the Lightning Edition GTX680 is out now. Is it possible to get a review of that? If so, could some of the benchmarks it’s compared to be the MSI 7970 Lightning Edition that’s Stock O.C’d to 1070MHZ AND a 7970 GHZ Edition (any manufacturer will do). That way we could see how a stock overclocked 680 fairs against this 7970 GHZ card and a normal 7970 o.c’d over a GHZ? What’s your thoughts?
But not to deter, great review, glad to see that AMD is really bringing the heat against nvidia.
I’ll see what Ryan has
I'll see what Ryan has planned for that card!
I would be great to game with
I would be great to game with this esspecially Crossfire with an AMD APU
A current APU really wouldn’t
A current APU really wouldn't push this in CrossFire all that well. While the current A8-3870K overclocked is decent at its max 3.5 GHz speed, it still will not outmuscle the latest Intel Ivy Bridge quad core products. Kaveri might be a very different beast though, but it still only looks to be 2 module/4 core with GPU attached. Perhaps next summer we will finally see an APU with some serious muscle?
APU and serious muscle is an
APU and serious muscle is an oxymoron. AMD makes discrete graphics too, remember?
6600 series MAX for the apu
6600 series MAX for the apu dual graphics ….
6600 series MAX for the apu
6600 series MAX for the apu dual graphics ….
hopefully a six core
hopefully a six core piledriver apu with no gpu, or use the internal gpu for fpu calculations? that would DESTROY intel.
Yea because just last ye…
Yea because just last ye… er, back in 2005, AMD was the better CPU.
It is a great review….but
It is a great review….but why were the cards not benched while OCed. Also my were the cards tested on a AMD platform and not at least a OCed 4.5ghz 2500k/2600k/3570k/3770k ?????? It just does not make sense to do a crossfire review with a CPU that clearly bottlenecks the video cards at lower resolutions. You can clearly see this in every benchmark where the scaling stinks at resolutions below 2560/1600 since at that resolution it really starts to load the GPUs more then the cpu since the frame rates are finally low enough that the CPU is not bottlenecking the Graphics cards.
You clearly need to upgrade your video card benchmarking Platform to a intel z77 overclocked 3570k or 3770k.
My Oced 4.7ghz 2600k with SLI Evga superclocked GTX560TI’s @ 1015mhz cores and 2400 memory score better then these totally AWESOME HAWK 7870 cards. Its just a shame you are using such a lame cpu that its slowing them down on benchmarks and not showing the full potential of the video cards. I am pretty sure At least with a INTEL benchmarking platform you would see that the 7870 hawks are faster then a plain jane 7950.
Ah yes. Another Intel
Ah yes. Another Intel “NOTHING ELSE COMPARES” fan boy. First and utmost, I am not an AMD fan boy. I would say I’m more of an Intel Hate boy! Due to the way they treat their customers, the way they carry out business which has been more than morally questionable over the past decade, and the fact with a 10nm process decrease, “new/improved” architecture, they only yield a 5% performance increase over sandy bridge (power improvements of course, but that’s a given of a smaller process)? Clearly capable of a lot more; but they release it, to just milk their loyal customers. Argument could be the same if not worse than AMD’s Bulldozer. BUT, AMD doesn’t have anywhere near the R&D budget of Intel, nor was that their focus. They knew they couldn’t beat Intel with IPC so they leaned towards the higher core count and Multi-Tasking/Threading capability… Oh, not to mention the anti-trust suits with Intel.
Anyway, Getting off track here.
My question to people such as yourself, is that so what if the CPU is “bottle-necking” a xFire GPU setup at low resolutions? Guess what? You are getting well in excess of 60fps, even 100fps in some cases (60Hz is usually the highest NATIVE refresh rate of modern PC monitors) regardless.. so what does any higher performance achieve? Absolutely nothing, other than a lighter wallet. Also… do you play at low resolutions? Any gamer worth their weight in water would game at no less than 1080p. Why would you Crossfire for low resolutions? That’s like boosting your grandma’s daily commute so she can drive to the shops once a week in a 500HP Corolla…
Even the argument of future proofing has it’s flaws. As by the time the performance difference will make a noticeable/significant difference, your PC will still be out of date by then and you could buy something with 50-100% better performance at half the price. I have purchased absolute high end PCs before (in the early and mid 00’s when there was an argument it was ‘needed’). Waste… Of… Money.
I get absolutely fantastic video converting performance (comparable to sandy i7’s/Ivy i5’s), more than sufficient gaming performance and great multi-tasking/everyday performance. All this for $180 (FX-8320). A motherboard with 16/16x xFire, all the trimmings for $30 less than the same branded but Intel equivalent.
Not to mention I have never had an AMD CPU die on me. My Athlon 64 Clawhammer lasted 9 years (still working today) and 6 of those years was pretty much running 24/7 overclocked. I have had 3 Intels die on me (one even within the warranty period). Excluding stories from friends. I haven’t even built 70 PC’s yet. Worse I’ve heard first hand of AMD is I had a friends FX-4300 run at the wrong voltage (too high) so he had to set it manually until they fix it with a BIOS update.
Don’t get me wrong. If I absolutely needed the performance/IPC capabilities of an i7 (for work etc) I would buy one. However, I doubt many people would truly be in that position. Buying an overpowered processor is often caused by ego or pretentiousness. I understand that, just don’t label it as something else.
I can understand your point
I can understand your point of view, and even some of your frustration. But this man is correct. It isnt fair to Amd OR the readers of his review to skew the results of these benchmarks by not using a setup that completely takes cpu overhead out of the picture. Say whT you want about intel as a business, or as a producer of technology… they have better performing products. In the interest of letting users know exactly what levels of performance these cards are capable of, it is irresponsible to present a picture of performance based on an outdated setup. This is not to take anything away from this excellent and thorough review. But as the poster noted, these results are CLEARLY bottlenecked at resokutions lower than 2560, as evidenced by the general similarities of the frane rates at differing levels of resolution on different video cards. Are you trying to say that all cards tested, even though from different generations and product families ALL have similar performance?
Good Intel CPU’s eliminate
Good Intel CPU’s eliminate bottlenecks when testing GPU’s.
AMD CPU’s are a bottleneck. FACT.
7870 hawk CF bottlenecked by
7870 hawk CF bottlenecked by a X6 1100T… so sad!
AMD fanboys, please, accept the fact that an i7 or even an i5 could push those FPS a lot higher than this, at any resolution.
best review i’ve read on 7870
best review i’ve read on 7870 xfire! Thanks for the informative review, helped me make a decision!
7870 cf beat 7970/680
7870 cf beat 7970/680