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The Powercolor HD6870 PCS+ box is a striking design with a futuristic car on the front and specifications and details of the product on the sides.
The bundle is strong. There is a software CD, Crossfire cable, mini displayport to HDMI converter, VGA converter cable, literature on the PCS+ and a free copy of Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
The HD6870 PCS+ falls outside the reference design, which is what we all want to hear. There is a large 9 blade fan in the middle of the cooler which directly cools the copper heatpipes and aluminum fins underneath.
Connectivity is well catered for with DL-DVI, SL-DVI, HDMI/ 2x mini display port connectors at the rear. All of these are protected with removable plastic covers.
The PCS+ requires two six pin power connectors, which holds true to reference card specifications.
The card ships with eight Hynix H5GQ1H24AFA GDDR5 DRAM chips onboard which we have seen before on other AMD cards, such as the HD5770. These are cooled directly by the fan system above.
The cooler is based around three thick heatpipes, which spread the heat between two series of aluminum fins on either side of the copper core. We will investigate the cooling proficency of the Powercolor card later in the review.
GPUz reports 940mhz on the core and 1100/4400mhz from the memory. Memory bandwidth is measured at over 140GB/s which is impressive for a card in this price sector.
Excellent, but I just wonder are they starting to encroach into the price sector planned out for the 6970? I hear it will be around 300 inc vat, so this could very well only be 60 less. which means it might not be quite the deal !
Well I wasnt expecting powercolor to be out first 🙂 nice board indeed. very impressive.
This is very sexy, worth it for the cooler alone, im not that bothered about the overclocks out of the box.
Nice cooler but bring on the 6970
Fucking sweet man. if I had the money right now id be all over this. Might wait for the 6970 tho and save a few more months !
Powercolor are kicking ass and taking names lately. They still have a ways to go before they get the acclaim that sapphire do, but I really like the company. never let me down yet
Weill be good to see how this handles against the black edition from XFX.
10 more sounds like a bargain to me. any ideas when this is out, soon I hope?
Cooler looks brilliant. Nothing really that awesome mind you, much like their last generation cooler.
I dont for the love of god see why anyone needs a GTX580 with the performance levels one of these generates at half the price. even on a 24 inch screen, its pointless.
Awesome review KG.
Well, this just hits the spot. im an nvidia lover however so ill not move, but tis nice to see competition.
Hey, nothing wrong with powercolor. its just idiots on the net who keep saying sapphire are the only make they will buy.
I had a powercolor card years ago and it died, they didnt replace it, and I gave up and swore never again. I think their UK support is poor, unless it has improved recently. im afraid its XFX or sapphire for me.
You know Kitguru, your benchmarks would be much readable if you used black or dark background. It just needs more contrast. This way they’re not very easy on the eyes.
Love the product from powercolor, I hope to see XFX and sapphires models soon.
Since you received word from PowerColor directly, may I ask if you could ask them when are they going to release the Radeon HD 6970 with the PCS+ cooler? Thanks.
In fact, I was going to purchase this very same card, until I heard of the new models being released (I didn’t know they were ready for launch), so I decided to wait a little just for a review on the (future, hope) PowerColor PCS+ 6970. Thanks again!