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The Powercolor HD 5870 PCS+ arrives in a similar box to the HD 5850 version we reviewed last month. This strange fixation with futuristic cars being the centerpiece of box art.
The bundle contains a Crossfire connector, a driver CD, an installation guide, as well as a DVI-VGA Adapter and a free copy of the excellent Colin McRae Dirt 2.
The Powercolor cooler is huge and covers the whole card. It is rather mundane however, finished in plain black. The card is a dual slot design, exactly like the reference board.
The heatpipes add quite a bit of extra width to the card and if you have a smaller chassis this might cause fitting issues with the side panel. We had no problems fitting into the Thermaltake A60 Armor chassis however.
The card is supplied with two dual link DVI ports, an HDMI port and a Displayport. AMD's integrated sound device supports HDMI 1.3a which includes Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD, AC-3, DTS and up to 7.1 channel audio with 192 kHz / 24-bit.
If you have money to spare and want to buy two then the card fully supports Crossfire. We found with the inner crossfire connector on the PCB however that the Crossfire connector is very snug against the heatpipe.
The card is identical to the reference design when it comes to power connectors. Two 6 pin PSU feeds are required.
The memory on the card is Samsung, K4G1032FE-HC04. They are specified to run at 2500 MHz (5000 MHz GDDR5 effective) – which means Powercolor are being slightly conservative in their current configuration.
Christ you review a lot of video cards man, you must be burning out. Great review.
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.
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.
Shame there was no GTX480 tested in this review, would be good to see performance against it.
I love the HD5870 series, best high cards on the market right now. HD5970 and GTX480 dont count, they are far too loud.
Thats an awesome board, love the noise figures, think its quieter than the GTX460 which I didnt think was possible. right?
Very impressive card this, price isnt too bad either considering a reference, loud, hot running GTX480 is £50 more.
I like the cooler, but it looks quite large, might not fit into some small chassis.
@ 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.
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.
Its impressive, but most of these overclocked cards are very similar in the HD58xx range. hard to get excited anymore.
That overclock on the manual page is insane, why the hell are they selling them with such crap overclocks?
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.
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.
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.
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.
I dont know, I still wouldnt touch powercolor, they seem like a mickey mouse eastern make to me.
Decent pricing really considering the product. Looks good too, shame the black cooler is a bit boring looking, more heatpipe showing would look better 🙂
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.
Any place selling these in canada?
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?
this is quite close against the sapphire toxic card. which is quieter?
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.
Lovely review of a very sexy product. I cant get enough of the ATI reviews on this site.
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 !
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 !
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.
excellent review of a very good product.
Very impressed with this card. love the design and looks.
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.
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.