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- Date:
- Monday , August 30, 2010
- Author:
- Mark Warner
- Editor:
- Brent Justice
- Google +1
ASUS EAH5870 V2 STALKER Edition Video Card Review
ASUS is back making another play for your hard-earned upgrade money. This time, ASUS have brought out the EAH5870 V2 STALKER Edition, a Radeon HD 5870 with an improved cooling device. Does a bundled game and improved cooling device make up for its $100 price premium?
Introduction
ASUS is a Taiwanese computer hardware manufacturer, best known as a builder of high-quality mainboards for mainstream and enthusiast desktop PCs. Over the many years the company has been in business, it has expanded its business into graphics cards, sound cards, notebooks, Netbooks, displays, and many other product lines. It is perhaps one of the best-known hardware manufacturers in the business, and it would be very hard to find a gamer or other hardware enthusiast who has not owned an ASUS product, or is not familiar with the brand.
Today, we’re going to examine one of ASUS’s newly re-designed Radeon HD 5870 graphics card, the ASUS EAH5870 V2 STALKER Edition. It features an ATI Radeon HD 5870 GPU paired with 1GB of GDDR5, a slightly higher GPU frequency and a game bundle all for $448.
AMD’s ATI Radeon HD 5870 GPU
AMD launched the ATI Radeon HD 5870 GPU about 11 months ago, on September 22nd, 2009. It was the first DX11 GPU to market, and also introduced us to AMD’s Eyefinity technology. The GPU sports 1,600 stream processors, 80 texture units, and 32 render backend units, or raster operators, packed into a 2.15 billion transistor ASIC. AMD’s design called for the GPU to be shipped originally with 1GB of GDDR5, though 2GB models soon followed. The reference specification configured the GPU to run at 850MHz with the memory clocked at 4.8GHz DDR, bringing a theoretical limit of 153.6GB per second of memory bandwidth.
Some months later, NVIDIA joined the DirectX 11 party with the launch of their GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 products. Performance turned out to be very good with the GTX 480 and GTX 470, though power draw and heat generation have been problems with those products since they launched.
The ASUS EAH5870 V2 STALKER Edition
The ASUS EAH5870 V2 STALKER Edition is a fully customized and re-designed product from ASUS, built upon the Radeon HD 5870 GPU platform. It uses the same GPU and memory specification from AMD’s reference design, but with a custom cooling device and a custom Printed Circuit Board. The GPU on the EAH5870 V2 is clocked slightly higher than AMD’s reference design, coming in at 868MHz versus 850MHz reference specification. The 1GB of GDDR5 is clocked at 1.2GHz, or 4.8GHz DDR, matching AMD’s reference design. The video card is in stock right now for $448.
The packaging prominently features character art from the game S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat, which is bundled with the video card. The front of the box features a number of icons, describing some of the key features of the contained video card. The backside of the box is standard, mostly listing features and system requirements. There is also a large graphic indicating that voltage tweaking is possible on this video card.
The soft bundle with this video card comes with manual CD-ROM and a driver disc, which also contains GamerOSD, SmartDoctor, and Splendid. GamerOSD is ASUS’ in-game overclocking software, while SmartDoctor handles hardware monitoring as well as overclocking. Splendid is a motion video color correction software package. Also included is a printed setup guide and a small card, which is actually be a coupon for activating S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat on Steam.
The hardware bundle features a dual-Molex to 6-pin auxiliary power connector adaptor, a dual-6-pin auxiliary power to single-8-pin auxiliary power adaptor, a DVI to VGA adaptor, an HDMI to adaptor, and a single CrossFire bridge.
The ASUS EAH5870 V2 features the familiar AMD colors: black and red (which reminds us of our favorite website). The ASUS EAH5870 V2 is 10" long, not including the PCI bracket, which is approximately one inch shorter than AMD’s reference card. There is a large fan measuring 8.5 centimeters in diameter toward the rear end of the video card. It is a sealed cooling device, so that air that enters the fan will be forced out of the back of the case via ventilation slots in the PCI slot bracket. ASUS claims that the 8.5cm fan combined with the heat-sink’s "pure copper" cooling fins results in 17% better cooling efficiency than AMD’s reference cooler. You will also notice that the corners of the PCB are beveled.
The power connectors are found on the back edge of the video card, instead of on the top edge opposite the PCI-express connector. This may cause clearance problems for the required power cables in some cases, but as the video card is shorter than the reference design, it should not cause a problem for too many users.
The business end of this video card features one dual-link DVI connector, one HDMI connector, and one DisplayPort connector. It also features a large slotted vent for heat to escape the cooling device. The back of the EAH5870 V2 has the usual miniscule surface mounted electronic components and a spring-steel bracket which helps keep the cooling device securely mated to the surface of the GPU.