KitGuru KitGuru.net – Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards
‘Built to be perfect' – there really is no better one liner to catch people's attention. We like the use of a plane on the artwork as it makes a change from moody semi naked women and pissed off dragons.
The box opens into a glorious gatefold presentation with a plethora of detailed specifications. It is so impressive I would assume many an enthusiast has seen this in a store, bought it then walked away to worry about the credit card bill later.
The bundle consists of two 6 pin to 8 pin convertors, an HDMI cable, manual, crossfire cable, Driver disc and manual.
The card itself is extremely heavy as the cooler is made entirely out of metal with a twin fan design. Underneath the cooler we have ATIs 40nm Cypress core which has 32 ROPS and 1600 Unified Shaders. The card uses a 256-bit memory bus with 1GB of GDDR5 and like all 5870s it is compatible with PCI-Express 2.1. All standard ATI 5000 series features are present including support for DirectX 11, Shader Model 5, Direct Compute, HDMI 1.3a (DTS Master Audio/Dolby True-HD) and Blu-Ray acceleration.
The Twin 8mm Superpipes transfer heat much faster to the fins compared to a conventional design. MSI rate this as having ‘90% better cooling' than the reference card.
I honestly think this is one of the most beautifully designed cards on the market.
The heatsink is made from ultra density aluminum with a large overall circumference for heat disssipation. MSI claim the heat of the GPU core will be transfered to each fin equally.
The card takes two eight pin PCI express connectors, each delivering 150W each, for a total of 375W. This should ensure maximum overclockability later in our testing.
The board incorporates a 15 phase VRM (13 phase GPU and 2 phase memory) and it is built on a 10 layer PCB which is slightly broader than a normal card. MSI calls this PCB a LPL, or ‘Lightning Power Layer' and the card also uses Hi-c Caps, 100% Solid State Chokes, Gold plated connectors, V Check points and a Proadilizer capacitor with 1000uF capacitance and low ESR to 1 m.
MSI adhere to the US Department of Defense MIL-PRF-39003L guidelines in regards to the heat levels and build ethic. They are keen to point out it has ‘military grade components' which are the Hi-C (Tantalum core) caps and Solid Core Chokes. This should not only help temperatures but increase overclocking ability later.
The card is slightly shorter than a reference design but ‘taller'.
Connectivity is covered by dual DVI link connectors with HDMI and Displayport.
Phew, this is as far removed from a reference HD5870 as we have seen. What a hell of a design from MSI, I am sure you will agree!
