HIS HD7870 Fan GHz Edition (H787F2G2M)
Jun 6th, 2012 | By JaredFirst out of the gate is the suite of 3DMark benchmarks, while they are synthetic benchmarks they are widely considered the standard for comparing video card and system performance. Synthetic benchmarks don’t necessarily translate to real world performance, but give us a good comparison between cards with a standard scoring system. First I ran 3DMark Vantage on stock settings and then moved on to 3DMark 11. I ran Vantage on the following presets at default settings; Entry, Performance and High. 3DMark 11 was run with the presets: Entry, Performance and Extreme.
Outside of the Vantage Entry setting the 7870 Fan shows its muscle more as the settings increase. There is a nice gain from overclocking that seems to increase the gap as we raise the settings.
Next on the block is Unigine’s Heaven benchmark. Here is a blurb from Unigine’s website: Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced UNIGINE™ engine. 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.
It is the first DirectX 11 benchmark in the world, the original version was released at the moment of Microsoft Windows 7 launch in October, 2009. I ran the Heaven benchmark with default settings except for 2x AA.
In the Heaven benchmark the 7870 really seems to stretch its legs and put a sizeable gap between itself and the other cards.
The final benchmark for this chapter is with Lightsmark 2008, a realtime global illumination and penumbra shadows enabled benchmark. Natural lighting makes artificial graphics life-like. Computers get faster, but rendering more polygons doesn’t add value if lighting looks faked, so insiders know that the next big thing is proper lighting aka Realtime Global Illumination. Typical workloads in realtime rendering will shift. Lightsmark simulates it. Global Illumination renders often take hours. Is your computer fast enough for realtime?
We again see good numbers in the Lightsmark benchmark but not such great gains from overclocking. Now we are finished with the synthetic benchmarks, let’s throw some games at the 7870 Fan.