march 9 2010

overclockersclub reviewed the PowerColor Radeon HD 5870 PCS+

The PowerColor HD 5870 PCS+ is an overclocked 5870 Cypress GPU core with 1600 stream processors and 1 GigaByte of GDDR5 memory @ 1225 MHz, The core runs at 875 MHz. The core is cooled by a heatsink with four pipes, while the memory gets air cooling on its bare surfaces.The 40nm technology allows more transistors in the same area and it will lead to a higher power and productivity efficiency and less costs.

The card is wider then the most other cards in the 5870 series because of the heat pipes sticking out by approximately an inch, this video card was compared to the ASUS GTX285 MATRIX, ASUS ENGTX275, Asus GTX 260 Matrix, Sapphire HD 5850 Toxic, Sapphire HD 5870, Sapphire HD 4890 Vapor-X 1GB and the Sapphire HD 5770 Vapor-X.

The review also focuses on the ATI Catalyst Control Center software, a tool that can overclock the GPU and adjust fan speeds, scalable in the ATI Overdrive tab, next to adjusting monitor and desktop controls.

The Intel Core i7 920 and an MSI X58 Platinum with Mushkin HP3 12800 7-7-7-20 memory formed the heart of the test setup.

Conclusion:

In all of the benchmark testing this graphics card did great! Usually it was in the top 2, thanks to the factory overclock it was often the #1. The was card running cool under load thanks to the massive heatsink with four heat pipes. The extras are: a free Dirt 2 game, protective caps on the CrossFireX connectors, ATI Eyefinity that allows a resolution to span on several monitors, ATI PowerPlay for a very cool temperature and a green environment.

Benchmarks:

Far Cry 2, Resident Evil 5, Crysis Warhead, Darkest of Days, Call of Duty World at War, Batman Arkham Asylum, Left 4 Dead, 3DMark 06, Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War II, 3DMark Vantage.

Overclocking:

With temperatures of round and about 50 degrees Celsius the reviewers got a stable overclock @ 950MHz GPU speed and 1320 MHz memory speed. Voltage programs were not able to adjust the voltage. Keep in mind that the card has already been overclocked 25 MHz by the manufacturer.