Had we sampled this card a few months back upon the R7870's release we would have primarily dismissed it as an expensive white elephant because for a similar price, competing NVIDIA examples offered better value. However, with the recent AMD price drops, the R7870 HAWK now poses a radically different proposition because at £240, this is a card that offers HD7970 performance (when overclocked) and is equal to the NVIDIA GTX580 at factory overclocked clockspeeds. It can hold its own against reference flagship models yet cost a fair bit cheaper. It is however still one of the most expensive HD7870 cards currently available so whether this card represents value for money or still too expensive will depend a lot on your requirements. From one perspective it offers superior performance and quite possibly it's the fastest mid-range card currently available. On the other hand at £240 it is still cannot be classed as cheap.
The HD7850/70 models are rapidly gaining a reputation for being overclocking monsters and with the additional tools the MSI R7870 Hawk provides, overclocking just became easier, safer and most importantly for the extreme overclockers out there the overclocks attainable must surely be the best available on a Pitcairn based graphics card. That isn't to see this card is only for the extreme end of the spectrum, it clearly isn't because with the Twin Frozr IV cooling design you can be assured of excellent air cooling properties.
I find it hard to pick any major faults with the R7870 Hawk. It looks the business, has good, if somewhat noisy (under heavy load) cooling yet best of all, it overclocks magnificently. While some may claim it is still too expensive despite the recent aggressive AMD price cuts, you may want to consider what the competition offer because for £240, there is no other AMD 7870 which has the features of the MSI R7870 Hawk or overclocks as high. Couple this with it being £60 cheaper than NVIDIA's similarly performing card, the GTX580, the MSI R7870 HAWK begins to make much more sense.
Pros:
- Fantastic Overclocking ability
- Factory Overclocked
- Cool running
- Well specified components
- 'Extreme' features - voltage read points etc
- Blue Lighting
Cons:
- Noisy under heavy load
- Heavy power consumption
- GPU Reactor may intrude on space
- Fantastic Overclocking ability
- Factory Overclocked
- Cool running
- Well specified components
- 'Extreme' features - voltage read points etc
- Blue Lighting
Cons:
- Noisy under heavy load
- Heavy power consumption
- GPU Reactor may intrude on space
Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net. Thanks to MSI for providing today’s review sample.
