So there we have it. An HD 5870 has prodigious performance and HD 5970 goes a step further. The HIS package costs £520 and consists of the graphics card, a voucher for Dirt 2, a DVI-to-VGA adaptor, a DVI-to-HDMI adaptor, said mini DisplayPort-to-DisplayPort adaptor and power adaptors for both six- and eight-pin connectors.
Battle Forge 1.1 Results
1920 x 1080, Very High Quality
Average framerate in frames per second (f/s)
Longer bars are better
In addition, HIS includes a basic tool kit - screwdrivers and torch - and a limited number of HIS cards will come with an iClear card that claims to reduce interference between your sound card and graphics card. We have no idea whether this is a valid claim or pure hokum.
The Sapphire HD 5970 costs £530 - so a pound extra for each of those extra megahertz of clock speed - and includes the same adaptors and Dirt 2 voucher, but you get something extra on the CD: a copy of Sapphire's Redline utility.
When it comes to overclocking the HD 5970 is more interesting than you might expect. Most graphics cards will overclock by at least ten per cent unless they are a factory overclocked model that is already close to its limits.
AMD makes something of a song and dance about the fact the HD 5970 is unlocked for overclocking – surely just like every other graphics chip on the market - and the OverDrive settings in the Catalyst drivers have maximum settings of 1GHz core speed and 6GHz for the memory speed.
Far Cry 2 Results
1920 x 1080, Ultra High Quality
Average framerate in frames per second (f/s)
Longer bars are better
That’s a huge step from 725MHz - or 735MHz - but we found that the Sapphire would only overclock to 750MHz/4400MHz, while the HIS went a little further, to 790MHz/4400MHz.
COMMENTS
Pricey, but for me there is an advantage
Ever since I built this machine back years ago when it was running two nVidia 7900GTXs (and heating my room at the same time) I've had a Matrox Triplehead2Go monitor splitter to give me three-screen gaming (and loads of screen space for programming IDEs). Not every game ran well with it - in fact, while a lot of games list the resolution as available in the options screen, actually selecting it completely knackers the perspective and makes the game unplayable. Escape From Butcher Bay is a good example.
With Eyefinity, I could dump my extortionately-priced and annoyingly analogue first-generation external splitter box on eBay, buy a couple of adaptors for my existing monitors, and use the money to soup the machine up even further. Say, with a huge, expensive, completely over the top graphics card? Hell yeah...
Definitely something I'll be looking into. So long as it doesn't require the same number of wires and fecking about as my existing setup - and considering this thing already has 3 output connectors without any external boxes at all, that's quite likely - I would be very interested.
Review makes no sense..
The price is totally irrelevent and it's still cheaper than an nVidia card that costs more and isn't as powerful.
So how did it get a 65% score exactly?
Anybody that buys a card that's this powerful (me included) isn't going to give a damn about the price.. except in the knowledge you're going to get more bang-for-buck than with nvidia..
Seriously this review is just wrong.. No really.
You review what it is - arguably the most powerful single card money can buy, and if you can get comparable for cheaper (even nVidia could actually do cards even close to this powerful) /then/ you start knocking points off...
You put two GTX 295's in your PC, it's not going to be as powerful, it's going to use up at least 4 slots in your case and it's going to cost you 800 quid before you even get started with the 15TW PSU you're going to need.
Seriously - what's the deal? I mean really where is the nVidia comparison anyways?
Also...
While I'm ranting..
"so these figures might be sustainable provided we could stand having the cooling fan running at full tilt during a gaming session"
Firstly most people are going to water cool and secondly.. Yes, if you play games without sound it's going to get annoying but who does that..
If we're going to be talking about the sound it makes - what's it like at idle? If in a normal environment when it's not being pounded and it's quiet, that's all that matters.
That's hot!
I have always said there aren't enough computer rendered female rastafarian models in the graphics card industry.
I always worry...
... that if I watch late night TV and I get bombarded by the inevitable 'chatline' adverts aimed at the sad and lonely I have actually become part of that target audience simply by being there.
By the same token if I bought this I would become part of the group of buyers likely to be swayed by pictures of sci-fi body armoured young women on hi-tech equipment. I'm not sure which group is sadder.
