PowerColor HD6870 Eyefinity 6 Edition CrossfireX Review

1. Introduction2. Powercolor HD6870 Eyefinity 6 Edition3. Testing Methodology4. Setting up EyeFinity5. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark6. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage7. Synthetic: 3DMark 118. Single screen: Alien V Predator9. Single screen: Tom Clancy HAWX 210. Single screen: Metro 203311. Single screen: Lost Planet 212. Three screens: Call Of Duty Black Ops13. Three screens: Colin McRae Dirt 214. Three screens: F1 201015. Four screens: Dead Space 216. Four screens: Just Cause 217. Four screens: Mafia 218. Four screens: Assassins Creed Brotherhood19. Image Quality: HQV Benchmark V220. Real World: BluRay Playback with PowerDVD 10 Ultra21. Technical: Power Consumption22. Technical: Acoustics Performance23. Technical: Thermal Dynamics24. Technical: Overclocking25. Closing Thoughts26. View All Pages

KitGuru has reviewed many AMD HD6870 graphics cards in 2011, but today we are looking at something very special, the Powercolor HD 6870 Eyefinity 6 Edition graphics card.

This particular board is supplied with a custom heatpipe cooler, 6 mini DisplayPorts and an additional 1GB of memory to ensure that performance is strong at very high, multi screen resolutions.

This card is based around a Barts XT GPU with 1120 stream processors. The core is clocked to 900mhz and the 2GB of GDDR5 memory is paired up with a 256 bit memory interface which runs at an effective 4200mhz.

Those of you who dislike reference cooling solutions will be pleased to see that this particular edition is cooled by Powercolor's dual slot heatpipe solution, which is meant to offer better cooling performance while reducing the noise levels.

Specification

Graphics Engine	Powercolor HD6870 Eyefinity 6
Video Memory	2GB GDDR5
Engine Clock	900MHz
Memory Clock	1050MHz (4.2Gbps)
Memory Interface	256bit
DirectX® Support	11
Bus Standard	PCIE 2.1
Standard Display Connecors	Mini‐DisplayPort x 6
Feature Support
OpenGL	Supported
CrossFireX™ Technology	Supported
ATI Stream Technology	Supported
ATI Eyefinity Technology	Supported
ATI Hypermemory Technology
Display Support
VGA Output
DVI Output	Single Link DVI-D x2 (By Adapter)
DisplayPort	On Board (Mini DP) x6
HDMI
TV Output
HDTV Output
HDCP Support	Supported
Maximum Resolution
VGA	2048×1536
DVI	2560×1600
DisplayPort	2560×1600
HDMI	1920×1200
Power Specs + Board Dimensions
Board Dimensions	241.3mmx111.2mmx38mm
Minimum System Power requirement (W)	500W
Extention Power Connector	Two 6-Pin PCI Express Power Connectors

The Powercolor HD6870 Eyefinity 6 Edition arrives in a simple, yet effective red box with a good high resolution image on the front. Specifications are listed on the side and rear of the box.

The bundle includes literature on the product, an installation guide and software CD, with Crossfire cable. As this is a special Eyefinity 6 Edition, Powercolor have included a total of 6 converter cables. These convert the signal from any of the mini Displayport connectors to (4) DisplayPort (full size) and (2) single link DVI.

The card is built around a traditional red coloured ‘Ati' PCB. This is a custom PCB design which obviously differs from the majority of cards on the market as it has six DisplayPorts. The custom cooler has a larger central positioned fan which cools the heatsink and heatpipes underneath.

Is it an attractively designed card with the letter ‘6' demanding attention at the side of the cooler.

A clean row of six Mini DisplayPorts are all that is offered, but with the adapter cables supplied those without an expensive Displayport screen will be fine. It can output to all ports simultaneously, if you are lucky enough to have six screens, and a desk big enough to handle them all.

The HD6870 Eyefinity 6 Edition is CrossfireX capable in two way configurations. It requires two 6 pin PCIe power connectors to operate properly.

The card is equipped with 2GB of Hynix H5GQ2H24MFR memory. The cooler is a three way heatpipe design which transfers heat into two rows of aluminum fins on either side of the middle section.

A GPUz overview of the hardware. A brief recap – the 40nm Barts core with 1120 unifed shaders, running at 900mhz, with GDDR5 memory operating at 1050mhz (4200mhz effective), tied into a 256 bit memory interface.

For our review today we are using one of KitGuru’s strongest systems, featuring an Intel Core i7 970 processor clocked to 4.33ghz with a Noctua NH D14 Cooler.

Our testing will take place across various sections. We will be running some basic benchmarks first to get an overview of the performance for a user with a single screen.

We will follow this up some 3 screen (5760×1080) and 4 screen (7680×1080) testing at super high resolutions.

With two of these cards you could theoretically power 12 screens, although for gaming demands we would recommend either 3 or 4 maximum.

PowerColor HD6870 Eyefinity 6 Edition in CrossfireX

Main Hardware Test System:
Processor: Core i7 970 @ 4.33ghz
Cooling: Coolit Vantage
Motherboard: MSI X58A-GD65 (MS-7522)
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10
Power Supply: OCZ ZX 1250W
Memory: 6GB GSkill Performance Gaming ram @ 902.9 MHz (2:10) @ 7-8-7-24
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V+ 512GB Gen 2 SSD (Storage) / Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB (OS boot)

Camera: Nikon D300S and R1C1 Kit

Monitors: Dell Ultrasharp U2410 (A00)
Iiyama ProLite E2472HDD x2
Iiyama Prolite B2712HDS

Other graphics cards (single screen comparisons):
Nvidia GTX590
Nvidia GTX580
Zotac GTX580 AMP! Edition
Nvidia GTX570
XFX HD5970 Black Edition 4GB (QuadFireX)
AMD HD6990
AMD HD6970
AMD HD6950
AMD HD6850
AMD HD6790
AMD HD5870
AMD HD5850
Sapphire HD5770 Vapor X Edition (860mhz core)
MSI N560GTX Ti Twin Frozr II
nVidia GTX570
nVidia GTX 550 ti (900/1026)
nVidia GTX460 OC (715/900)

Software:
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit

Unigine Heaven Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
HQV Benchmark
Catalyst 11.4 Driver
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark
Cyberlink PowerDVD 10 Ultra
Cyberlink Media Espresso
Forceware 266.58 WHQL

Technical Monitoring and Test Equipment:
Keithley Integra unit
Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Extech digital sound level meter & SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter

Games:
Alien V Predator
Metro 2033
Tom Clancy HAWX 2
Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2
Colin McRae Dirt 2
F1 2010
Dead Space 2
Just Cause 2
Lost Planet 2
Mafia 2
Assassins Creed Brotherhood
Total War: Shogun 2

All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests all games across five closely matched runs and average out the results to get an accurate median figure.

Setting up the Powercolor HD6870 EyeFinity 6 graphics card for multi screen is a painfree experience thanks to the latest drivers. The image quality from the Catalyst drivers is class leading and the new Catalyst Control Center is a much needed improvement when compared to the previous versions.

After connecting the four monitors to the card, they all appear within the ‘my digital flat panels’ section of Catalyst Control Center. If you have any problems at this stage, but sure to click ‘preferences’ and select the advanced viewing mode.

The next stage is to configure the panels as a ‘single’ group. This merges all the screens into a SLS (Single Large Surface) environment. The added benefit of this is that the taskbar in Windows spans all monitors within this shared configuration. The image above show various configurations, although this will depend on how many monitors you have attached.

Once all the monitors are set into SLS, then the resolution is combined – in this case 7680×1080 resolution.

The image above shows a four screen setup with the card, with monitors running individually via ‘extend'. They can all be independent resolutions. We use UltraMon for finer control over the individual panels, it is well worth a purchase.

A 7680×1080 backdrop across four screens, configured into a Single Large Surface environment.

The desktop real estate with 3 screens (5680×1080) or 4 screens (7680×1080) is fantastic. You can open multiple applications simultaneously without having to worry about minimising them for easy program access.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

1080p is a standard resolution we use with the Heaven Benchmark on all graphics cards, this means all review results are comparable throughout previous months.

Shaders are set to high, Tessellation to normal, anistrophy to 4 and Anti Aliasing is disabled.

A single card can hold onto the performance levels of the HD5870, with a higher minimum frame rate. In CrossfireX, these cards are capable of outperforming the overclocked GTX580 AMP! Edition from Zotac.

Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7.  This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.

A final score of under 30,000 points in CrossfireX is certainly impressive, especially when we consider that it is outscoring the overclocked GTX580 by over 3,000 points.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

The card delivers around the same performance as the HD5870 with this Direct X 11 engine. In CrossfireX they score a very tasty 8,125 points, which puts them around 2,000 points ahead of an overclocked GTX580.

Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today.

To test the cards we used a 1080p resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on. We use this with most of our graphics card testing so cards are comparible throughout reviews.

The single card manages to maintain good frame rates at our chosen settings with this intensive Direct X 11 engine. When two are configured into a CrossfireX system, the scaling is fantastic, averaging 86 fps.

Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2 is an arcade-style flight action game developed by Ubisoft Romania and published by Ubisoft. After the events of the first game, the H.A.W.X squadron is sent to Middle East, where a high level of violence is being registered, and the appearance of various insurgents leaders in various hotspots. The team also has to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Russian nuclear weapons. The player will be controlling three groups: one American (Hunter), one British (Munro) and one Russian (Sokov), each with its own pilots and supporting characters. There will also be references to other characters in the Tom Clancy universe.

We are testing in full DX11 mode with all settings to maximum.

HAWX 2 is a game which runs significantly better on Nvidia hardware, however in single and CrossFire configurations, the Powercolor HD6870 delivers a great gaming experience. Again, dual card scaling is very strong, performing much at the same level as a HD6990.

The makers of Metro 2033 – 4A Games was founded by people who split off from GSC Game World a year before the release of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, in particular Oles’ Shiskovtsov and Aleksandr Maksimchuk, the programmers who worked on the development of X-Ray engine used in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series. The game utilizes multi-platform 4A Engine, running on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Microsoft Windows.

There is some contention regarding whether the engine is based on the pre-release X-Ray engine (as claimed by Sergiy Grygorovych, the founder of GSC Game World, as well as users who have seen the 4A Engine SDK screenshots, citing visual similarities, shared resources, and technical evaluation of the pre-release 4A Engine demo conducted at the request of GSC Game World), or whether the engine is an original development (as claimed by 4A Games and Oles’ Shiskovtsov in particular, who claims it would have been impractical to retrofit the X-ray engine with console support). 4A Engine features Nvidia PhysX support, enhanced AI, and a console SDK for Xbox 360. The PC version includes exclusive features such as DirectX 11 support and has been described as “a love letter to PC gamers” because of the developers’ choice to “make the PC version [especially] phenomenal”.

We tested at 1920×1080 with settings on default ‘normal’

Metro 2033 is an intensive, demanding engine which proves difficult to power at these settings. The single card would need lower settings, but by adding two, the frame rates dramatically improve, increasing above 30fps at all times.

Lost Planet 2 is a third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the sequel to Lost Planet: Extreme Condition which is also made by Capcom, taking place ten years after the events of the first game, on the same fictional planet. The story takes place back on E.D.N. III 10 years after the events of the first game. The snow has melted to reveal jungles and more tropical areas that have taken the place of more frozen regions. The plot begins with Mercenaries fighting against Jungle Pirates.

After destroying a mine, the Mercenaries continue on to evacuate the area, in which a Category-G Akrid appears and attacks them. After being rescued, they find out their evacuation point (Where the Category-G appeared) was a set-up and no pick up team awaited them. Lost Planet 2 runs on the MT-Framework 2.0, an updated version of the engine used in several Capcom-developed games.

We are testing in DX11 mode with all settings on the highest. Direct X 11 features are on high. AA is disabled.

Lost Planet 2 favours Nvidia hardware and at these settings with 4MSAA it proves a little tough for a single card to power. That said, disabling AA would improve single card performance significantly. In CrossfireX the performance is good, remaining playable at all times.

Call of Duty: Black Ops takes place during the Cold War, in the 1960s. The story focuses on the CIA's Special Activities Division (SAD) Studies and Observations Group (SOG) (originally and currently called “Special Operations Group”) – backed clandestine black operations carried out behind enemy lines. These missions take place in various locations around the globe such as the Ural Mountains in central Russia, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam. The single-player campaign revolves around an experimental chemical weapon codenamed “Nova-6”.

Black Ops was a great game, which didn't really have a particularly taxing engine. Even in single card mode the HD6870 Eyefinity Edition can power this game at the selected resolution. CrossFire scaling is pretty good, enhancing both minimum and average frame rates.

Colin McRae: Dirt 2 (known as Dirt 2 outside Europe and stylised, DiRT) is a racing game released in September 2009, and is the sequel to Colin McRae: Dirt. This is the first game in the McRae series since McRae’s death in 2007. It was announced on 19 November 2008 and features Ken Block, Travis Pastrana, Tanner Foust, and Dave Mirra. The game includes many new race-events, including stadium events. Along with the player, an RV travels from one event to another, and serves as ‘headquarters’ for the player. It features a roster of contemporary off-road events, taking players to diverse and challenging real-world environments. The game takes place across four continents: Asia, Europe, Africa and North America. The game includes five different event types: Rally, Rallycross, ‘Trailblazer,’ ‘Land Rush’ and ‘Raid.’ The World Tour mode sees players competing in multi-car and solo races at new locations, and also includes a new multiplayer mode.

We are testing across three screens in Direct X 11 mode with 16af enabled. All settings are switched to high.

A single card is perfectly capable of powering this Direct X 11 engine across three screens, maintaining a 33> positive frame rate throughout.

F1 2010 is a video game based on the 2010 season of the Formula One world championship. It is the sequel to the 2009 video game based on the same series. It was released in September 2010 on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Windows platforms. The game was confirmed by Codemasters on 23 April 2009. The game engine is based on the new EGO 1.5 engine, an unofficially titled evolution of the EGO 1.0 engine that was created specially for the title.

We are testing across three screens with 8af and high settings.

Again, even with a single card, this game is playable, although it is borderline at our settings. Adding another card really helps boost the frame rate performance, highlighting solid Crossfire scaling.

Dead Space 2 is a survival horror third-person shooter. The player controls Isaac Clarke from a third-person point of view, looking over the character’s right shoulder. The game features no HUD elements, relying on holograms projected from the player character and his weapons to show information such as messages and ammunition count, respectively. Player health and stasis is shown by a visual indicators located on Isaac’s back. Isaac must fight an alien organism that infects and takes control of human corpses, turning them into “Necromorphs”, mutating their bodies.

Necromorphs must be dismembered as the alien organism controls host bodies via tentacles extending into their limbs. Other, larger types of Necromorphs that cannot be dismembered will often have yellow, glowing pustules, indicating weak spots. Occasionally, when an enemy gets close enough to Isaac, they will grab a hold of him, and the player must repeatedly press a key to fend off the enemy, with failure to do so leading to death of the player character.

Dead Space is a phenomenal game, and it looks great across 4 screens at 7680×1080 resolution.

Just Cause 2 is an open world video game. It was released in North America on March 23, 2010, by Swedish developer Avalanche Studios and Eidos Interactive, and was published by Square Enix. It is the sequel to the 2006 video game Just Cause.

Just Cause 2 employs the Avalanche Engine 2.0; an updated version of the engine used in Just Cause. The game is set on the other side of the world from the original Just Cause, on the fictional island of Panau in Southeast Asia. Panau has varied terrain, from desert to alpine to rainforest. Rico Rodriguez returns as the protagonist, aiming to overthrow the evil dictator Pandak “Baby” Panay and confront his former mentor, Tom Sheldon.

PhysX was disable, and all other settings were on high. AA was disabled. AF was set to 8x.

The HD6870 Eyefinity 6 Edition manages to maintain great frame rates throughout, never dipping below 30 fps.

Mafia II is a gritty drama which chronicles the rise of World War II veteran Vito Scaletta, the son of Sicilian immigrants. As the game progresses, Vito will join the Falcone Crime Family and become a made man. There are 15 chapters in the game, connected into one storyline.

We tested at 7680×1080 with fullscreen: on, antialiasing:off, Anisotrophic filtering: 8x, Shadow Quality: High, Ambient Occlusion: on, Geometry Detail: High and APEX PhysX: off.

CrossfireX scaling with this game is very poor, however the two cards managed to generate playable frame rates, hovering above the danger zone at all times.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood is a third person action-adventure video game with main emphasis on sandbox style gameplay in an open world of Italy. Like the previous installments, the gameplay's core mechanics are based on parkour movements, crowd-blending stealth, assassinations and melee fighting system. The combat system features several improvements and for the first time in the series, the game offers a multiplayer mode alongside 40+ hours of single-player gameplay.

We customised to very high image quality settings.

Again, great performance from the Crossfire rig, averaging well over 30 fps and dropping to 27 fps from a high vantage viewpoint of the sprawling city scape.

HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evalute motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.

There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on Bluray. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content so will we.

This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.

Read our initial analysis over here.

	Powercolor HD6870 EF6
Dial	4
Dial with static pattern	5
Gray Bars	5
Violin	5
Stadium 2:2	5
Stadium 3:2	5
Horizontal Text Scroll	5
Vertical Text Scroll	5
Transition to 3:2 Lock	5
Transition to 2:2 Lock	0
2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video	5
2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video	5
3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed	5
5:5 FPS Animation	5
6:4 12 FPS Animation	5
8:7 8 FPS Animation	5
Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP)	5
Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE)	5
Random Noise: Sailboat	5
Random Noise: Flower	5
Random Noise: Sunrise	5
Random Noise: Harbour Night	5
Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Luminance Frequency Bands	5
Chrominance Frequency Bands	5
Vanishing Text	5
Resolution Enhancement	15
Theme Park	5
Driftwood	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Skin Tones	7
Total	196

The image quality with this hardware and the latest Catalyst drivers is very impressive indeed, scoring 196 points out of a possible 210.

Cyberlink PowerDVD 10 is one of the finest solutions for the Blu-Ray experience on Windows and we found this software to work perfectly with this configuration. We tested with the Bluray Disc of Avatar, one of our favourite sci-fi films in recent years.

With hardware acceleration enabled average CPU load is 8 percent with it dropping to 2 percent in some scenes. The most we recorded was 13 percent which means this system is free to perform other tasks without causing playback issues.

To test power consumption today we are using a Keithley Integra unit and we measure power consumption from the VGA card inputs, not the system wide drain. The best way to get maximum load results is by using Furmark, and even though it is not indicative of a real world situation it shows the limits the card can theoretically demand. The ‘gaming’ results are measured when playing Crysis Warhead and is a more valuable result to take from this.

The PowerColor HD6870 Eyefinity 6 Edition is a very efficient card, demanding only 17 watts when idle and 118 watts when under gaming load. Two of these cards in CrossfireX would demand less than 250 watts when gaming.

We have changed our method of measuring noise levels. We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. We are using a heatpipe based passive power supply and an Intel SSD to keep noise levels to a minimum. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests. Ambient noise in the room is around 20-25dBa. We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation.

Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

The Custom Powercolor cooler is good and much quieter than the reference design. It hovers between 34 and 35 dBa when gaming.

The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 23c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.

Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.

The cooler manages to hold the temperatures at 74c when gaming, and this rises to 80c when fully loaded in the Furmark stress test. Fan speeds peak at 67 percent when gaming and this rises to 76 percent when loaded in Furmark.

To overclock today, we used one of our favourite software tools, Sapphire's TriXX.

We managed to push the core to 960mhz, any higher and the system would hardlock. The memory hit a limit at 1230mhz (4920mhz effective).

The Powercolor HD6870 Eyefinity 6 Edition is a fantastic graphics card and one that works particularly well across multiple panels. AMD's reference HD6870 solution is very capable, but Powercolor have added a custom, proprietary cooling solution and redesigned PCB layout which enhance the overall package. While very few people will have six Displayport monitors at hand, Powercolor have supplied a wealth of cables to convert the digital output signals.

With two HD6870 cards in CrossfireX it is possible to game at 7680×1080. While it doesn't always work, depending on the game, it really does need to be seen to be believed. The ultra wide display view really enhances the immersive appeal of the game.

Powercolor's addition of an extra gigabyte of GDDR5 memory also aids frame rate performance with some of the more demanding engines. With six digital outputs on each card, you certainly won't be stuck for some huge display configurations, if the desk is big enough for the task.

Thanks to the new Catalyst Control Centre, it is a breeze to set up an Eyefinity system, and many of the latest games work without an issue. Widescreen Fixer is also a very useful application, as it adds some native support for titles which don't automatically configure the correct aspect ratio.

The PowerColor HD6870 Eyefinity 6 Edition is a well thought out product that offers great cooling performance, low noise levels and a healthy 2GB of GDDR5 memory. They are also very efficient cards, demanding a modest 120watts when gaming. This means you don't have to worry too much about a huge electricity bill next quarter, even if you have two of them set up in CrossfireX.

Gaming performance is excellent and when paired up, they are generally faster than an overclocked GTX580, with the added benefit of supporting many screens.

Pros:

• Custom cooler is quiet
• temperatures are excellent
• multiple screen support is first class
• quiet
• additional 1GB of memory over reference edition
• faster than a GTX580 when paired up in CrossfireX

Cons:

• Will demand a price premium over reference board
• you will spend more money on additional screens

KitGuru says: Multiple screen gaming, class leading IQ with kick ass performance

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