FRONTPAGE ASUS Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition DCII 2GB GPU Review

[Overclockers.com]

ASUS sent us a Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition DCII (or, if you prefer, ASUS HD7870-DC2-2GD5-V2) to test, and you my lucky readers get to see the results of this test. Of course there will be a number of pictures between there and here, as well as some specs and such. The DCII cooler promises to be 20% cooler and "Vastly quieter". That's a direct quote off the box, I find it vaguely amusing as it sounds like something I would write in a review! It's also difficult to pin down exactly what "vastly" is, but I figure I can take a crack...

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[Bobnova]

Aha! A review!

 

[dr_emad]

Thank you

 

[Nebulous]

Ooooo, nicey! I luv the DCII models. Me wants one!

 

[TheHutchTTU]

Super Alloy Power! GO!

 

[Xeon_KI]

would be interesting to see this card go head to head with a Tahiti LE 7870

Great Review!

 

[Boulard83]

Thanks for another good review !

Weird thing with the coil wine, thanks for sharing that part.

 

[Ivy]

I would like to see "coil whine" stuff solved. Higher gain than a super alloy cap, because i dont think that this card is gonna be used for more than 5 years (not enough to pass 60000 h). Of course its always nice to see quality parts inside new GPUs, but we all know that it wont even change the OC capability in term GPU isnt cherry picked and OCd to extreme levels.

 

[Bobnova]

Me too.
More input filtering on the GPU might do it, complete the partial Pi filter on the input for the core VRM maybe.
But that'd be more expensive.

According to the rep I talked to (asus requires you to talk, on the phone, to a rep before things are published. They don't get to tell you what to say, other than that all their marketing is mentioned) Asus has ~50 PSUs they test with to make sure things are good.
I suspect they're oldish PSUs.

 

[Ivy]

Still curious how PSU noise actually is raising by certain cards but not most of the other cards? Certainly, a graphic card is a main power eater and it can affect a PSU pretty heavy. But whats happening here basically is that the input of the card is causing interferences with the internal parts of the PSU, and finally causing those parts to create noise.

However, how that works exactly and what could be done to prevent that, i got no idea, im not a expert of that kind of stuff. But surely, the "myth" of GPU and/or PSU noise is true and actually it can be GPU or PSU or even both at once making noise. That means, in order to solve those kind of issues, either a GPU or PSU can be exchanged and the quality wont matter at all, just compatibility is a matter. Pretty weird but interesting story and rather new to me but learning never stops.

 

[Bobnova]

GPU switching frequeny and PSU switching rrequeny. If they're close the ripple each causes starts resonating, which is loud.

 

[Ivy]

Hmm, so basically it works kind of a amplifier. So basically its not necessary to create "highest load"; all whats important is to hit that spot and that can happen under different circumstances.

 

[orbit]

Dual 6Pin ?

Bought one. Using a brande new 600W CoolerMaster RS-600-ACAB-M4 PSU.
But this PSU has 1 6Pin connector.

If connected with only 1 6Pin connector, I get one green led, one red led on the GPU.
The system boots fine, *but* the card is not detected.

Using a Y connector, from two 4Pin to one 6Pin, I get both green leds on the GPU but the system hangs. Can't even get to the BIOS.

That happened also with the older 400W PSU.
Any hint ?

System has a single 1GB 533Mhz DIMM RAM. Its intended for heavy GPU computation, for crypto code.

Tks::Moon

 

[madhatter256]

Bought one. Using a brande new 600W CoolerMaster RS-600-ACAB-M4 PSU.
But this PSU has 1 6Pin connector.

If connected with only 1 6Pin connector, I get one green led, one red led on the GPU.
The system boots fine, *but* the card is not detected.

Using a Y connector, from two 4Pin to one 6Pin, I get both green leds on the GPU but the system hangs. Can't even get to the BIOS.

That happened also with the older 400W PSU.
Any hint ?

System has a single 1GB 533Mhz DIMM RAM. Its intended for heavy GPU computation, for crypto code.

Tks::Moon

Could be some other piece of hardware causing the problem. Have you tried another stick of RAM???

The only info I can find on that specific model is that it may be a bottom-end model of that line of PSUs, meaning, it may not be a true 600watt PSU. In other words, the PSU you bought is a fake 600watt PSU OR you have another underlying hardware problem.

 

[orbit]

Thanks. Haven't tried another stick of RAM, but I will.
Updated the motherboard (Asus P5V-DM DH) BIOS to the last vresion. Went well...

So this GPU really needs both 6Pin connected ? From the official specs, it seems one may be enough, fot the low 175W usage...

Its PCIe 3.0, but should be no problem on this older mobo, right ?
Right now I'm with an older nVidia GT8400EN and working fine, on that same PCI-e.

Only mobo and GPU connected to the PSU. Booting a Linux from an USB pen...

 

[madhatter256]

Yeh, you need both plugged for any functionality. As for it being PCIE 3.0, it doesn't matter if you are going to use it for crypto currency mining.

I've mined on first generation PCIe lanes.