SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6870 Review

Today we will be looking at how this card preforms against others in the same performance and price range. The SAPPHIRE HD 6870 is a pretty old card but is still worth reviewing because it can still run most games smoothly, for a low price. This card is available for around $170 which puts it right in between the price bracket. This is a mid to high end level card that can really help improve your system. So far it has been keeping up with almost everything that has been thrown at it. Keep reading to see how well the Sapphire 6870 performs against the others.

 SPECIFICATIONS

Output

1 x Dual-Link DVI

1 x Single-Link DVI-D

1 x HDMI 1.4a (with 3D)

1x DisplayPort 1.2

GPU

900 MHz Core Clock

40 nm Chip

1120 x Stream Processors

Memory

1024 MB Size

256 -bit GDDR5

4200 MHz Effective

Dimensions

250(L)x115(W)x40(H) mm

Software

Driver CD

SAPPHIRE TriXX Utility

Accessory

DVI to VGA Adapter

6 PIN to 4 PIN Power Cable x 2

The overall design of the card is almost Batman like in a way. It has many jagged edges and an overall dark sleek looking design. It s equipped with a nice big center placed intake fan to draw in air to cool down the heat spreaders and heat pipes. This card has a case of coil whine but so do most other non reference model cards. This card is very open in its design, meaning more air will be able to flow through the card to keep the  components cool. If you compared this card to a reference based model this will most likely achieve a lower overall operating temperature. Sapphire has designed this card to out preform reference models in terms of temperatures. This also allows for more overclocking headroom because it gives you a lower overall temperature to achieve higher clock speeds without the risk of it over heating.

The top of the card is kind of bland looking but as long as it dosent hinder preformance i dont see it as a problem, after all it just sits in your case where no one can see it. This would only be a let down only if you have a nice big acrylic window were the top of the card can be seen. I believe most wouldn't be to bothered with this technical detail. Lets move on to the power connectors and there location.The top right of the card is where you're going to find your two 6-pin power connectors. They are conveniently placed near the edge so your power cables should reach. Almost every card on the market today uses this same exact set up for there power connectors so its pretty much standard on a card like this.

On the back is where you will find the PCB and the mounting screws for the shroud and heat sink. The blue PCB may not be the best color choice here because it brings to much attention to the top of the card. I would have preferred to see a black one instead of this, however if you're sporting a blue themed pc this would be a prefect addition for your system. It would really reflect off the lights and give it that added blue glow. This card uses a PCI-e 2.0 connection with a bandwidth of 256-bits.

Here is where you will find the rear I/O which is pretty much standard for all graphics cards. The only big change would be that most mid to high end cards use two mini display ports. This card provides you with every connection type you would need for any monitor setup. This card comes with one dual link and one single link DVI connections along with one display port and one HDMI (with 3D) connection. You will also find a decent sized opening to allow air to be exhausted out the back of the case to keep the inside of your case as cool as possible. This card has many other opening other than this exhaust port so its not going to totally remove all the hot air this card produces.

Test Rig
MSI 870A-G54
AMD Athlon x4 645 (3.7GHz)
Corsair Vengeance 8GB 1600
OCZ 600w PSU

Benchmarks

OVERCLOCKING

This card was overclocked using Sapphire's Trixx overclocking utility. We overclocked the card to a 1GHz core clock and a 1200 MHz memory clock. We ran Furmark with this configuration for about 1 hours to check for stability. Heaven Benchmark v3.0 score was a 1631, min FPS was 29.3 and max was 125.

TEMPERATURES

Temperatures were recorded with HWMonitor and GPU-Z. We used Furmark as a heavy stress tester to see what the highest temperatures we could receive were. This of course is an unrealistic situation so temperatures are going to be lower when using for normal gaming and personal use. 

Temperatures	Idle	Load
Stock	43°	68°
Overclocked	49°	89°

POWER CONSUMPTION

Power Usage	Idle	Load
Stock	225w	375w
Overclocked	254w	395w

CONCLUSION

Overall the SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6870 is a great graphics card with plenty of power for what most consumers will use it for. The only complaint is it is a little on the noisy side when playing graphic intensive games. There are many others on the market that will perform better but these only have slight advantages over the SAPPHIRE 6870. In terms of a real world scenario as well as benchmarking, the Sapphire 6870 performed more than adequately which is good news for gamers because they can save a bit of money without sacrificing any performance

Performs well                                    

Overclocks well                                              

Great performance for the money                

Included accessories

Coil Whine
Loud at times
Doesnt keep up with other similarly priced cards

Verdict
Performance	8
Value	8.5
Quality	8
Features	8.5
Accessories	8
Final Score	8

.

Sapphire has really outdone themselves and did an exceptional job on this graphics card. It brings high performance at a reasonable price. So if your on a tight budget or just need a mid ranged card this one is perfect for you. What more could you ask for in a card as good as this for the price. Well done Sapphire.