Thread: Asus Radeon hd 5870/g VII currently for its middle-rate mastery

We have been complimentary the Nvidia GTX 460 currently for its middle-rate mastery, but at the high end of the graphics market the HD 5870 even rules the roost. Nvidia’s GTX 480 might be slightly quicker than the HD 5870, but the collection of massive power consumption, heat output, loud and high cost create it unlikeable. However, Nvidia is aquiring tougher on the costing front at least, creating HD 5870 costs (which have not shifted much since its free previos September) appear less effective.

It was just a month before that we were appearing at Asus’ top end, tweak-tastic Matrix Radeon HD 5870, but the Asus HD 5870/G VII is targeted at those appearing to grab themselves a Radeon HD 5870 for a more practical cost tag, without having to compromise on effective high-end characteristics such as a custom cooler, warranty-backed overclock and a packaged game. That is the hardware tantamount of creating your cake and eating it also.

The Asus does not push the boat out too much though, so do not go looking Matrix levels of overclocking prowess. A reasonably nominal bump in clock velocity from 850MHz to 868MHz corresponds to a teeny two percent high – scarcely sufficient to net you 1fps additional in many games.



However, to reach this overclock constantly Asus has overvolted the Graphics processing unit from the distinctive 1.15V to 1.21V, which will probably have a knock on consequence on the card’s power consumption and heat levels. As is common for most pre-overclocked HD 5870s, the GDDRV memory clocks have not been touched and stay at 4.8GHz effective. This overclock is just available on the HD 5870/G VII – there is a stock-velocity example, which drops the /G from its name.

Cooling the overclocked Graphics processing unit is a copper and aluminium heatsink and fan shroud that is not so unlike to the one determined on the Matrix. The Graphics processing unit itself is cooled through a copper reach plate by which 3 chunky copper heatpipes function, channelling the heat into the 35 copper fins.

The fins are adjusted laterally with the card so that air from the radial fan blows along the heat sink and out the back of the card, only as with the mention cooler. The fan is bigger than common, evaluatings 80mm in diameter. Cooling for the storage and power circuitry is managed by a chunky aluminium plate onto which the cooling fan and graphics processing unit heatsink are mounted, with intense thermal padding to assure a snug fit for the heat-developing element.