Club 3D 7870 Joker XT Edition Review
Conclusion
Published: 14th January 2013 | Source: Club 3D | Price: £177.60 |
Conclusion
We're beginning to wonder if there is a bad card in the Club 3D range, because on the evidence so far it's clear that there isn't.
The original HD7870 was around £270 and got a Gold award due to the performance compared to similarly priced cards at the time. The intervening months have seen a serious price war between nVidia and AMD, and the cards have generally plummeted in price. So much so that the Club 3D HD7870XT Joker Edition comes in at a frankly mind-blowing £177.
This is a custom PCB, with the much beefier Tahiti LE GPU on board and a custom cooler, able to be overclocked far beyond the rated speed, and yet it's well south of £200. With a high-end GPU now well into the £400+ range this means that the Joker is not only a mid-range card, it's a lower mid-range card in price terms.
Certainly not in performance though. The card is excellent in every scenario, and only the most demanding games in our tests show that the reduction in shaders when compared to the HD7950 has any real-world effect. We wondered why the Tahiti LE had seemed to be slid quietly out the door and it's obvious when you look at the performance. It is, barring a couple of very specific titles, a match for the much pricier HD7950. So why anyone would choose to buy one of those instead of saving around £50 and putting it towards something else is beyond us. Manufacturers must be frightened of having a warehouse full of unsold HD7950s, hence the low-key release of this model.
It's not only the performance that is excellent either. The bundle is fantastic with two great games, Far Cry 3 and Sleeping Dogs, one decent one in Warfighter and a risible one in Dirt Showdown. Although if you like your racing games firmly in the Outrun level of complexity then you might even like Dirt Showdown.
The only thing we can criticise is that the Coolstream GPU cooler is right at its limit on the Joker. Although the temperatures are still below 80°C we'd prefer to see this model equipped with the two fan variant, just to squeeze that bit more out of an already stunning card.
Once again Club 3D have released a product that ticks all the boxes and doesn't empty your wallet. If you're in the market for a powerful graphics card at an affordable price you'd be insane to look at anything other than the HD7870XT Joker Edition. Not only worthy of our OC3D Gold Award, but for making every other manufacturer revisit their pricing structure it gets our OC3D Value For Money award too. Buy one. Buy two. You'll thank us.
Thanks to Club 3D for providing the HD7870XT Joker Edition for review. Discuss our findings in the OC3D Forums.
Most Recent Comments
man this Club 3D is churnin' out some interesting feature cards..
thanks, Tom.
The TUL corporation are a major source for these releases (and TUL either owns or contracts supplies to Club3D, Powercolor and VTX3D). I'm only aware of Sapphire being the other manufacturer to release a Tahiti LE; possibly because of other major manufacturers not wanting to compromise on the existing 7870/7950 price point given the amount of stock they will likely have.
Cards to look out for:
Club3D Joker
Powercolor 7870 Myst
VTX3D 7870 Black
Sapphire 7870 XT
There is also not going to be an AMD reference Tahiti LE. Also worth noting that this will not crossfire with other 7800 "Pitcairn" cards but will work with 7900 cards which obviously have the same "Tahiti" PCB.
Do you think were gonna see anything from nvidia to counter this card, like a 660 with more shaders unlocked ???
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Originally Posted by badtaylorx
just to clarify....is this performance duplicated on ALL tahiti le cards, or just the joker???
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What I'm curious about is if the 3 Tahiti LE cards available in Europe: PowerColor 7870 Myst. Edition, VTX3D 7870 Black Edition and Club3D 7870 jokercard have the same cooler and PCB? The Club3D one is around 20 - 25€ more expensive, I don't really understand why.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Club-3D-HD78...8185753&sr=1-2
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Originally Posted by J-a-c-o-b
Found this on Amazon I hope, can someone confirm (preferably Tom) that this is the right one.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Club-3D-HD78...8185753&sr=1-2 |
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Originally Posted by Dorkstar
Club3d has really made some impressive products since i've been following them over the past few months. Shame they aren't in the US yet.
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.Also, anyone got any ideas as to water block compatibility with this card? Kind of an oddball, so I would suspect that one doesn't exist (unless you get a GPU-only block)
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Originally Posted by J-a-c-o-b
Found this on Amazon I hope, can someone confirm (preferably Tom) that this is the right one.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Club-3D-HD78...8185753&sr=1-2 |
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Originally Posted by xMBliss
yeah the joker one is taihiti le. besides it says it has 1536 stream processors, regular 7870 has 1280.
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Originally Posted by Mgutierrez33
Also, anyone got any ideas as to water block compatibility with this card? Kind of an oddball, so I would suspect that one doesn't exist (unless you get a GPU-only block)
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Originally Posted by J-a-c-o-b
Found this on Amazon I hope, can someone confirm (preferably Tom) that this is the right one.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Club-3D-HD78...8185753&sr=1-2 |
Because i'm looking at getting one of these pretty soon, and they're out of stock on the Kuston PC site that is linked in the review.
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Originally Posted by Geee-master
Got mine and it's just awesome so worth the wait. Bought of amazon got it 3 weeks later. Truly epic card for the money
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Originally Posted by powerfuse0
I got mine a couple of days after I ordered it. Got it from the site TTL said about. Kustom PC or something, Do you find that the fan it loud on 60%? & also does auto fan speeds make the card get too hot?
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CSS Valid
http://www.overclock3d.net/gfx/artic...112856620l.JPG
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