12 replies to this topic

[Crazykenny]

*review under construction*

Used Hardware:

Case: Coolermaster HAF922
PSU: Coolermaster UCP 900W
Motherboard: ASUS M4A79T Deluxe AM3+
Processor: AMD Phenom II X4 945, @3.01ghz
Memory: 2x 4GB OCZ DDR3 1600mhz
HDD: 1TB Western Digital Black.

CPU Cooling: Coolermaster V8
Additional GPU Cooling: 230mm fan blowing from the side. 3x 120mm exhausting hot air.

First Impressions:

I had to go trough hell and high water to get this card. The ATI 5000 series where badly stocked here in Dutchyland and I needed a replacement card before my next LAN Party thats going to take place within the next couple of weeks. The thought of buying a 400 series Nvidia crossed my mind aswell, particulary the GTX470. But the power consumption and thermal footprint put me off. So it was decided, I'm sticking with ATI this round. The next decision was wether to go for a 5970, which is hella expensive or go for 1 special edition 5870 and crossfire it with the same card later one. I choose the later. I ordered my first card at a computershop called Paradigit with the promise they'll deliver it the same week. So they did...

The first thing I noticed was the box, it was abnormaly large. For a second I thought they send the wrong card, the shop cleric proved me otherwise and I was send home with a big grin. Once home I opened the box to take a better look at the card. I ignored the featureset at first, so I'll cover that later on.

To give you people a rundown of the card specifications; the card comes equipped with a none-reference cooling block that consists soley of copper. Fresh air is supplied by a 8.5cm fan in front and power is distributed to the card via a 6 and a 8 pin PCI-E connector. GPU clock is stock clocked at 850mhz whilest the scourging fast 1GB of GDDR5 memory is set to 1200mhz, making 4.8ghz effective. GPU Core and memory communicate trough a 256bit bus.

To cover it again, this card is BIG. Really big. Unlike the reference design its actually shorter, but what it shrinks in length more then makes up in width. This must be one of the widest cards I have seen in a while. The 8.5cm fan is mostly responsible for this.

Plugging in the card was childs play and done faster then you can say OMFGBBQ. Hooked up and ready to go I turned on my PC...

Featureset:

While my PC was booting up I took a closer look at whats still remaining in the box. Firstly, I would like to note that ASUS has done a wonderfull job on the box art, it really stands out and contains all the necessary information a techy needs to get going. When opening the the box you'll find that there is another box in there. Its all black and has the ASUS trademark on it with a nice golden colour, I'll call it the main box from now on since it contains all of the hardware.

The main box is divided up into 3 sections. 1 for the driver and voltage tweaking software, 1 for the dongles, etc and one for the card itself.

The card software of the card is put in a thin box directly over the cards compartiment. It contains the driver CD which probably has the latest Catalyst Control Center on it and so forth, handy to have but not really usefull for me since I download the latest drivers from the web. The next CD is far more interesting since it contains ASUS voltage tweaking software called: ASUS Smart Doctor. With this nifty little program you can up the voltage on the GPU and push it beyond limits that a normal reference card can even comprehend. I have yet to try it out though, since my overclock runs fine on stock voltages.

Next to the main card compartiment we find the small hardware section. It contains a molex to 6 pin PCI-E connector and a molex to 8 pin PCI-E connector to give the card juice if your powersupply is lacking those connections. Secondly we find a DVI to VGA connector, a DVI to HDMI connector and a Display-Port to HDMI connector, all are pretty self explanitory so I wont go over them in detail. Last but not least we find a Crossfire bridge, wrapped up nicely in bubble foam, a nice touch but they are probably not long enough to connect two card on my 16 PCI-E slots since they are further apart.

Overall the featureset is what you can expect from any graphics card today. Nothing to fancy, but more then enough to get you going. Good job ASUS!.

Edited by Crazykenny, 24 April 2010 - 10:47.

[Kris]

Holyshit, that's one big ass card O.O

[Camille]

 Kris, on 23 Apr 2010, 9:12, said:

Holyshit, that's one big ass card O.O

mine's bigger

Spoiler

j/k

though nowhere near as cool as this... how much did you pay for it online kenny?

[Crazykenny]

 Camille, on 23 Apr 2010, 10:21, said:

 Kris, on 23 Apr 2010, 9:12, said:

Holyshit, that's one big ass card O.O

mine's bigger

Spoiler

j/k

though nowhere near as cool as this... how much did you pay for it online kenny?

€339,- for normal customers its around €399,-. Its not a reference design 5870.

[Shirou]

As in this is a golden sample? If it is then why not put a water cooler on it for some serious overclocking.

[Alias]

My brother got his for the equivalent of roughly 300-320 Euros, and it's retail.

wat

Edited by Alias, 23 April 2010 - 14:59.

[Crazykenny]

Cool, cheapest here is €329,- retail.

[Gen.Kenobi]

Oh noes...mine is just a ATI HD 5850 1Gb... I had to pay R$ 1100....damn Brazil...

[Shirou]

 Crazykenny, on 23 Apr 2010, 20:21, said:

Cool, cheapest here is €329,- retail.

You won't get higher clocks for 330, those are around 400. Figure the MSI Lightning, XFX XXX, Sapphire Toxic and other versions. Those are stock overclocked with better cooling.

According to the box he has, this is a golden sample, as in it was meant to be clocked higher than normal and has probably been selected for it during production. With a good cooling solution this chip may go well over 1000 Mhz. That is, beating the crap out of the GTX480. The 5870 can clock like hell, figuring the liquid nitrogen record is on 1525 MHz.

Edited by Trivmvirate, 23 April 2010 - 19:52.

[Crazykenny]

Overclocked the GPU core to 925mhz and raised the GDDR5 memory to 1325mhz.

EDIT: First part of the review added.

[Wizard]

Have you had to nail your rig to your desk? With the size of that fan it must generate quite a lot of upward lift

[ΓΛPTΘΓ]

Try out the 480GTX then, that is a real jet engine.

[Crazykenny]

 Wizard, on 24 Apr 2010, 0:33, said:

Have you had to nail your rig to your desk? With the size of that fan it must generate quite a lot of upward lift

No, not really. I can barely hear it when I'm playing DX11 games and it really has to go to work. I'm quite pleased with the noise output of this card compared to my old HD4870 crossfire set.

Edited by Crazykenny, 26 April 2010 - 20:26.