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‘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!
Good god man, its alive. that is a mental card, it appears to have been out for a while, how come ive never heard about it ! ME WANT!
That is stunning , simply stunning. Sapphire must be worried if MSI keep these up !
that overclock is insane, over 1ghz on the core? bloody hell man.
1ghz on the core and what the hell on the memory ! I need a silverstone raven 02 for my setup too!
£20 more than a reference design? ill have it. if I could afford it :p
Just ordered one, ill post a picture of my receipt on the forums 🙂
That is one mega mega board. I love all the work they put into the hardware rather than just slapping a crappy cooler on it.
Who the hell needs a GTX480 when you got one of these, or two in Crossfire. If anyone here as two of them in Crossfire, ill be green.
Power drain is quite high but what a card that is. well worth the money.
Wonder if I could get a deal on a Crossfire setup !
ITs a really nice design and normally these cards really dont appeal to me at all.
Bit out of my price league but great review, really enjoyed that one.
seems well priced considering. Ill get one when they drop to 200 quid.
MSI are seriously underrated at times, all the attention goes to Sapphire. some of their motherboards are wicked good.
Love lovely lovely. ill have one 🙂
What a design that is. nice to see other companies doing these apart from asus. its actually quite affordable too, considering.
temps seem good, power consumption is high, but nothing compared to GTX480
would have liked to see some compares with GTX480 🙂
ITs way out of my price range, but if I had money to buy a HD4870 id get this for sure, absolutely !
Great review man, I wonder how many people actually buy these cards. they seem way expensive.
Nice review, cheers. what a great card. shall discuss it with you on the forums
Impressive design from the ground up, dont often see that kind of attention to detail.
Right, ive been looking at all these cards this month and im getting sick of it, having a crappy old GTX250. just ordered this, time to warn the wife.
I still think the sapphire vapor is nicer.
Would like to buy one of these myself, but hey im poor 🙁
how cool is the LED strip on the back of the PCB? wicked man.
how cool is the LED strip on the back of the PCB? wicked man.
Love the cooler, wonder who made that for them? arctic cooling maybe?
Nah its not arctic cooling, they dont make metal coolers like that. maybe MSI internal one.
MSI make coolers? I thought all these companies farmed out jobs like that to specialists.
Nah arctic cooling only do that if their name stays on the cooler. this is not them for sure.
I really enjoyed that review. i always like reading about hardware I can’t afford 🙂
power consumption is high, but two 12 pin feeds would explain that. this card is sucking some serious wattage.
It is my dream to play GTA4 at 2560 on a HD5870. I shall have my dream in the next 2 months 🙂
Good temps, for the power intake. Love the board.
nice card indeed. great clocks too. I didnt think it was possible to hit 1ghz on core on air.
MSI FTW with this beast. love the cooler too. like the pictures, turned otu well.
very interesting indeed. the 8mm heatpipes are certainly good ideas. they are normally 6mm right?
Nvidia really are not making much ground on older tech hardware. HD5870 is still kicking n screaming.
They really should have overclocked this card more out of the box, dont you think?
its very interesting to see the 8mm pipes. those are much thicker than the normal design, id love to know who makes the cooler for MSI. thats not an internal design, specialist job.
wonder what the thermal limit on those cards is? 105c like nvidia GTX480?