KitGuru has looked at many flavours of HD5870 over the last two months. Today we are going to look at a Powercolor version which is moderately overclocked and comes preinstalled with a hefty heatpipe cooler.
The HD5870 is still ATI’s flagship single core card and has been paving the performance path for many months, only recently usurped by the new nVidia GTX 480. All is not lost for ATI however as the HD5870 is still a big seller, thanks to cooler temperatures, lower power drain and quieter performance. It is also around £70-100 less expensive, which makes for a considerable saving.
The Powercolor card we are looking at today has a core speed bump of 25mhz and the memory also gets a 100mhz effective increase.
Both the cooler and the PCB are a non reference design and after looking at the Powercolor HD5850 PCS+ we have high hopes this card will be just as impressive.
| Radeon HD 5850 |
Radeon HD 5870 |
Powercolor HD 5870 PCS+ | |
| Core Clock | 725 MHz | 850 MHZ | 875 MHZ |
| Memory Clock | 1000 MHz | 1200 MHz | 1225 MHz |
| Memory Size | 1024 MB | 1024 MB | 1024 MB |
| Memory Bus Width | 256 bit | 256 bit | 256 bit |
| Shader units | 1440 | 1600 | 1600 |
| ROPs | 32 | 32 | 32 |
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July 15, 2010
#1
Christ you review a lot of video cards man, you must be burning out. Great review.
July 15, 2010
#2
Falls in line with what I would expect performance wise. Quite disappointed on the overclock and I think what you said in the conclusion was spot on. I would think they have brought these cards out, realised how much more they can do, updated the bios. put an extra + on the box, and are charging £10 more for the ‘extra’. Id get the PCS+ and overclock it, like in this review.
July 15, 2010
#3
Those noise levels are remarkable, it may not be the fastest HD5870, that goes to the MSI lightning, but its the quietest. id take this one over any other performance card, just due to that.
July 15, 2010
#4
Shame there was no GTX480 tested in this review, would be good to see performance against it.
July 15, 2010
#5
I love the HD5870 series, best high cards on the market right now. HD5970 and GTX480 dont count, they are far too loud.
July 15, 2010
#6
Thats an awesome board, love the noise figures, think its quieter than the GTX460 which I didnt think was possible. right?
July 15, 2010
#7
Very impressive card this, price isnt too bad either considering a reference, loud, hot running GTX480 is £50 more.
July 15, 2010
#8
I like the cooler, but it looks quite large, might not fit into some small chassis.
July 15, 2010
#9
@ Stefan, there is a head to head on kitguru with the HD5870 sapphire card and a GTX480. check the review index
shows t he figures, which would be almost identical for this card too.
July 15, 2010
#10
havent read it all yet, but I always check out the dBA pages on kitguru as I love that testing methodology you use. On this alone the powercolor card is massively impressive.
July 15, 2010
#11
Its impressive, but most of these overclocked cards are very similar in the HD58xx range. hard to get excited anymore.
July 15, 2010
#12
That overclock on the manual page is insane, why the hell are they selling them with such crap overclocks?
July 15, 2010
#13
the overclock is too weak, for such a good product. the PCS++ is clearly out to fix that mistake. seems a bit sly to me.
July 15, 2010
#14
Isnt there a rule book guide that ATI send out to their partners about not overclocking past specific speeds? I think this has something to do with it.
July 15, 2010
#15
nah. The only rules I know are the memory speeds have to fall into guidelines, so legally they could have put the memory at 1250mhz, to give samsungs 5000mhz rating, any higher is dodgy and I think they would be open for suing.
The core, thats different, its clearly capable of 950mhz easily, even across a range of cards, and they are doing this now with the secondary PCS++ card just released. I suppose they had to charge £10 so people who bought the PCS+ werent pissed off it was the same price.
July 15, 2010
#16
best graphics card reviews on the net. just enough useful info to help me work out what to buy. love the db testing and power consumption testing. sites that test power over a complete system load are wasting their time, I can’t tell what is the card or the system. much too difficult to work out.
July 15, 2010
#17
I dont know, I still wouldnt touch powercolor, they seem like a mickey mouse eastern make to me.
July 15, 2010
#18
Decent pricing really considering the product. Looks good too, shame the black cooler is a bit boring looking, more heatpipe showing would look better
July 15, 2010
#19
Powercolor are a really good make, as far as I know most companies get these cards made in the same factory anyway. palit make most of them.
July 15, 2010
#20
Any place selling these in canada?
July 15, 2010
#21
MSI Lightning or this? hard choice. MSI lightning is faster, more expensive, but slightly louder. I hate noise and think id opt for this and just overclock it a bit more. views?
July 15, 2010
#22
this is quite close against the sapphire toxic card. which is quieter?
July 15, 2010
#23
I would assume going on the results that this is quieter than the sapphire toxic, but kitguru changed testing methods a while ago so hard to tell.
July 15, 2010
#24
Lovely review of a very sexy product. I cant get enough of the ATI reviews on this site.
July 15, 2010
#25
Powercolor are really good, I feel the need to defend them. I had a few of their cards in the past, as they are normally cheaper than sapphire. never had a problem, they are still working in older machine actually !
July 15, 2010
#26
The power consumption is a little high, but the efficiency seems good, thanks to the cooling system, low noise, great performance, high overclocking options. good well done I say !
July 15, 2010
#27
These are too expensive for me, but I like this 5870 more than the others reviewed here. why? the noise levels are class leading. I hate fan noise.
July 15, 2010
#28
excellent review of a very good product.
July 15, 2010
#29
Very impressed with this card. love the design and looks.
July 15, 2010
#30
I still think the HD5850 is the best value card on the market as you can overclock most of them to reach HD5870 performance levels.
July 21, 2010
#31
I resently bought Vertex3D 5870 (its the same company just different name in EU) and couldnt be more satisfied with the card. First thing I was worried was the heat but it seems these cards run very cool and are quiet. Performance is ofcourse the same as it has been since the launch and what PC users now lack are GAMEs that actually utilize thse amazing beasts.