Powercolor HD 5870 PCS+ Review

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.

Become a Patron!