At 12 inches, this is the largest, most unwieldy graphics card we've seen in ages. Its size is borderline insane-there would be no reason to buy one if it didn't offer the kind of performance that it does. You'll need a very spacious cabinet and at least a 750 Watt power supply to use one. Given its rated speeds and fill rates, the Radeon HD 5970 is roughly as powerful as two HD 5850s in CrossFire mode, but in a single package which costs more. The 5970 consumes less power, blocks fewer PCle slots, and support Eyefinity gaming across multiple monitors, while two 5850s are quieter and can be bought one at a time. The 5970 is easy to overclock to 5870 speeds with the supplied software. The enormous vapor chamber cooler should take that kind of punishment, though at your own risk.

Performance wise, the 5970 easily beats Nvidia's dual-GPU GeForce GTX 295, and takes the single-card crown for now. We recorded a score of 19,996 in 3D Mark Vantage, well above the GTX 295's score of 18023 and the Radeon 5870's score of 15428. The gaming tests gave us a phenomenal 48.30 fps in Crysis Warhead at 1920x1200 using Enthusiast settings.

VERDICT: If you have the cash, this is the most outrageous card available today.

FOR: Absolute power

AGAINST: Enormous size, power hungry.


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