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No, you aren't seeing double. Ruby and her sister are on the front of the box, giving an early indication that ‘two is better than one'.
The bundle includes an installation guide, driver disc (our review sample didn't have a branded disc), Crossfire cable, power converters, display converter and Dirt 3 activation key for Steam.
This is a monster card, which is supplied with a heavy duty plastic cooler and dual fan configuration. It is built on a ‘traditional' ATI (are we allowed to say that now?) PCB.
The heatpipe based cooling system is formidable. The heat pipes are some of the biggest we have seen on a video card and are split into two arrays, to help dissipate heat from both cores on either side of the PCB. The design is very attractive and we love the appearance from the top down.
The HD6870X2 demands two 8 pin PCI power connectors to operate properly. This is the same as some of the high end GTX580's we have reviewed in recent months.
The card is CrossfireX capable if you have a power supply strong enough to handle the +12V demand. VTX3D supply a Crossfire cable with each card which is very useful.
The card is equipped with 2GB of Elpida GDDR5 memory (H10328ABG).
Removing the cooler is a straightforward process although there is twice as much work as normal, with 8 screws to remove. The Lucid chip sits in between both HD6870 cores. The PCB is a 13 phase PWM design with ferrite Core Choke and DrMos to help provide stability under full load situations. The cooler is a Direct Touch (HDT) design with a total of 6 heatpipes flattened and pressing directly against the cores.
The design incorporates several small heatsinks, positioned under the dual fan airflow to help with cooling performance.
An overview of the hardware in the latest version of GPUZ. Crossfire is enabled by default after the drivers are correctly installed.
VTX3D, never heard of them ! nicely designed card, but yeah bit hot for my tastes my own 6850 hits 80c in furmark..
I like the fact they are trying to break the reference designs, thats normally left for Sapphire. my concern however is that this cooler isn’t adequate. I read another review of the powercolor card and they found the same thing, I think one of the systems actually SHUT down in some testing. Did you experience any hard locking Zardon?
This is not for me, but yeah its cool to see X2’s again.
Id rather get the GTX580 as it runs much cooler.
No stability problems when gaming no.
Good idea, but there are so many cards now for every price range, its sure to confuse people
I think this will be closer to 400 sterling due to vat and current crap economy here
Interesting concept idea from Powercolor. certainly got them some headlines lately
Compared to the GTX580, this seems a much better deal IMO. faster, cheaper. etc.
Seems like it is a problem to get it cooled adequately. Many enthusiast users want sub 80c temps under load. 80-90c+ isn’t really that good a selling point, even if it is massively difficult considering the power on hand.
I like it, however why not just get two 6870s, which will run cooler? I understand not everyone will have a crossfire capable board, but stil…..
biggest heatpipes ever on a video card? we should hold a vote to find out
Maybe this is why the 580 has dropped to £339?
isnt it 6 core? (12 threads) in cpu =)
Hi Pelle, it is indeed. 6 physical, 6 logical. 12 threads.