PowerColor AX7870 2GBD5-2DHPPV2E Radeon HD 7870 GHz EZ Edition 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card (UEFI ready)

Pros: -It is compatible with ASrock Extreme4 970, I am an idiot posted in my last review it wasn't; Please don't let my stupidity scare you away from this excellent card.

-Errthang
-Overclocks so nice
-Probably best value i have ever gotten for a GPU, has a larger advantage than
-Comes with FOUR (Count em) FOUR free games
-Cheaper than the Myst, same performance

Cons: -Requires a Bios newer than october 2012, which can be found on your Mobo manufacturers website

-My own stupidity. (disregard the 2 egg review I posted saying it didn't work with an ASRock Extreme4 970)

Other Thoughts: There is no difference between this card, and the Powercolor MYST other than the cooling system, and although people seem to complain about inferior cooling from Powercolor, I have found that with my card overclocked to 1200 MHz from the stock speed of 925 MHz that my card runs at around 70Celcius at full load with the fan at 36%(Room Temp 78F). I have not seen my fan reach even 50% speeds while the GPU was under full load at this clock speed meaning it stays pretty quiet.

Mind you this is a single 92mm fan as opposed to the 80mm fans found on most GPUs, so it is slightly quieter than most single fan GPUs. One reccomendation I have for overclocking is setting the fan speeds to auto so your system can adjust as you change tasks, setting your fan to manual and putting it above70% will be obnoxiously loud. Guaranteed.

I know people like to throw around the phrase "Best bang for your buck!" a bit too often. So much so that the saying has lost a lot of its meaning on here to me when I am reading reviews. But this product is no mere 7870; it has 1536 Stream Processors (7870 has 1280Stream Processors, and 7950 has 1792Stream Processors) but also it has a faster Tahiti GPU based off those in the 7900 family opposed to the Pitcairn one used in the 7870, giving this card an edge for around the same price as a 7870 GHz edition.

Pros: tahiti le

Cons: yet to get a working one

Other Thoughts: First card shipped from Newegg had faulty bios. had to pay to ship it to them for RMA. Recieved new card a month later from RMA process and had to day 1 RMA the card again because the HDMI port doesnt work. (worked on the first card) Also have to pay to ship it back again. Tip, Just get a better brand. dissapointed

Pros: OK 3D performance

Cons: This fan and heat sink "solution" are woefully inadequate for overclocking.

Other Thoughts: Was loving this card until the fan failed and the room began to fill with smoke.

Pros: Amazing quality on gaming ( I am coming from a 512mb 9800GT)

Cons: Everything has just been peachy with my new build and this card. I recently installed Daz Carrara and when i was rendering a high resolution image i started to get major coil whine.

Everything i have searched for has said that this can happen in video cards when under high stress. I've gamed on high settings (bioshock, tomb raider, crysis, etc.) with no problem, but this was the first instance of this. Every time i render as well.

Should I RMA?

Pros: Fit's in a typical ATX mid-tower case
Reasonably quiet even at high fan speeds
Handles top level games at near full ultra level graphics

Would actually give it a 4.5 egg rating if possible for some of the cons listed below

Cons: Plastic fan shroud that is a bit flimsy
Fan shroud doesn't completely reach the connector plate
Fan exhausts hot air into the case instead of out the back
Can get a bit hot, hitting over 70C when OC'd and under full load.

There is some sort of conflict with drivers or something in my set up that causes the vid drivers to fail and forces a computer reboot when coming out of low power (but not hybernate) state.

Other Thoughts: Definitely felt I was taking a bit of a risk with this card, powercolor isn't really a "name" company and was replacing a MSI 6950 twin frozer that has served me well for the last two years. But I've had the card for over a month now and I'm very happy with it. Install was very straight forward and as noted, fit in my mid-tower case with out any trouble. Booted up, loaded up the 7900 lvl drivers to replace the 6950 drivers and away it went.
Loaded up Bioshock and Tomb Raider (loving this game btw) and took it for a test run. As advertised, you can run both games at near full ultra with no problems. Even without overclock the card at all, I was getting better than 30fps on a 1900x1200 24" Dell ultrasharp, after figuring out how to over clock (more on this in a sec) I'm getting better than 40fps. Both games look amazing and run very smooth with only a small bit of stuttering in the most intense battles, but nothing that leads to deaths. Very glad I got this with the 30 dollar rebate, $200 for a great card and two top level games, well worth the risk :)
.
Now, for the overclocking. Like many other people in the reviews here, I was having a hell of a time figuring out how to overclock this card properly. Since I had a MSI card, I still had MSI's Afterburner OC program loaded. So I opened it up and started messing with the slider bars. It drove me nuts for over a week. You'd move a slider bar and nothing would happen, or the core clock would briefly pop up to the new setting and then start bouncing around but never stay at the new OC freq. I was checking other forums looking for answers and saw a solution that worked for someone else. *Manually edited profiles*
What you have to do is create profiles inside whatever OC program you are using and then go edit the file manually. With MSI afterburner, save the standard default settings in profile slots 1 and 2 and the close the program. Go find the Afterburner folder and find the profile in the profile folder, the name will be about 60 chars of nonsense. Open up the file in notepad. You will see something like this:

[Startup]
Format=2
PowerLimit=
CoreClk=
MemClk=
FanMode=
FanSpeed=
[Defaults]
Format=2
PowerLimit=0
CoreClk=975000
MemClk=1500000
FanMode=1
FanSpeed=60
[Settings]
CaptureDefaults=0
[Profile1]
Format=2
PowerLimit=0
CoreClk=925000
MemClk=1500000
FanMode=1
FanSpeed=56
[Profile2] **** This profile was manually edited****
Format=2
PowerLimit=20
CoreClk=1150000
MemClk=1500000
FanMode=1
FanSpeed=56

To get the OC you want, you *must* put the powerlimit up to 20, then just pick the core and memory freq's you want and save the file. Now fire up Afterburner again, click on profile 2 button, hit apply and you should see your clock speeds switch to the new settings and stay there during gaming. Just make sure you have adequate cooling, it will get hot.

Pros: I have an "old" Biostar TA790GXE(no bios update since 2010) so I was not sure that 7870 will work on it (UEFI bios), but decided to pull the trigger.
I turned PC on and -> blank screen. After 15 minutes of struggle it still wasnt working, although onboard video showed the signal. I was ready to return it but
went into bios and checked "primary video " setting. It was set as 1)Integrated 2)Video-PCIex
I changed it to vice versa and vuala - it worked!
For some reason mainboard couldn't "skip" onboard video on go on PCIexp (like it did with old videocard), until i forced PCIexp to be a first video output in bios.

Cons: Had to remove rack with HDD's (otherwise didnt fit), now i have to keep case open with HDD's seating on the floor outside the case with all wiring around. :)

Pros: Had this for 2 weeks now. Ordered on Fri, received on Mon.......WOW. Thank You NewEgg!!!!

Saw the 7950 3GB the other day for roughly 30 bucks more the other day and thought *&^$%. But I gotta tell ya, I am perfectly happy with this card.

I was going to go nvidia but didnt want to drop 300 for the 660ti. I'd always had amd cards before, and my games of choice are need for spped games, I've always had stuttering issues and was really set on getting nvidia this go around until I ran across this card.

Stuttering of any sort is now a non issue. I just overclockedthis card at 1100/1600 and put it through its passes and temp topped out @ 66c, at stock temps it was 64 max

Cons: not a single one.

Pros: Good deal if it works for you.

Cons: Had to RMA second one for refund.

Other Thoughts: My second one worked, but overclocking didn't work and it crashed/locked up my PC about once a day while gaming.

I'm returning my second one for a refund.

I just got the Sapphire 7870 XT, which is Sapphire's version of this card. WOW - the difference is huge. I did various tests before pulling out the Powercooler and ran same tests on the Sapphire.

Also, the BIOS on the Sapphire is .30 which is actually older than the Powercolor which had .31. I saw on some forums people updating their BIOS, but that's not for me.

So not sure why the Sapphire is better. Older, more stable BIOS? Better cooling? Better build? Get the Sapphire, its worth the extra $.

Newegg has been awesome to deal with returning both Powercooler cards.

Pros: Running most games on ultra quality with no lag. Amazing card

Cons: Audio blocks out at intervela of a few seconds every once in a while, but it's probably not the GPU's fault.

Other Thoughts: Awesome card a must buy

Pros: Price
Potential Value
Potential Performance

Cons: Poor Build Quality
Inadequate Cooling

Other Thoughts: This card shipped with the old "31" bios from January. This bios is apparently buggy. Card won't operate at rated speed unless slightly overclocked. And won't overclock at all :)

RMA'd for refund. Gonna have to buy something a bit more inspiring...