PowerColor PCS+ AX5870 Video Card Review

It's been some time since the launch of the ATI Radeon HD 5870, over six months from September of 2009. In that time, the graphics card world has not stood still, yet the HD 5870 reigned supreme for the entire time as the world's fastest (single) GPU. Now that Fermi has finally launched, that title belongs to the GTX480, but the 5870 has matured since its launch and it's time to take a look at where it's at today. Development has continued on both the hardware side and the software side. Driver updates have been a constant source of improvement and anguish, nothing unusual there. It seems like ATI and NVIDIA typically produce only one set of drivers in any given year that gets universal acclaim from the user community.

The PowerColor PCS+ AX5870 is one of several new HD 58xx series cards released by ATI AIB partners in the last few months that follow a new design pattern. Advances in power-semiconductor packaging have allowed for a simpler VRM implementation that also consumes much less real estate on the board. At the same time, the use of a down-flow HSF arrangement eliminates the dead spots found below and behind the blower wheel on the reference design. The combination makes for a smaller, more efficient, and more reliable card that's less costly to produce. I call that progress, but there are others who bemoan the process of removing cost from a design, commonly known as Value Engineering. I can understand the angst if functions and features are being removed, but finding a cheaper way to deliver the same performance is a good thing, unless you need to establish and maintain snob appeal for your product.

Benchmark Reviews has tested a couple of ATI Radeon HD 5870 video cards already, so the performance and features of the GPU are hardly news, but with a number of second-generation cards appearing in the marketplace, we thought it was time to sample one and see how the basic design has matured. Please follow along as we give you a detailed look at one of the latest high-end Radeons from PowerColor.

About the company: PowerColor

PowerColor, established by Tul Corporation in 1997, is a graphics industry leading brand name now and well known for its outstanding performance and innovative technology. As a leading provider of graphics card, PowerColor offers powerful, reliable and cost-effective solutions to customers worldwide.

PowerColor is the platform of choice for avid PC gamers and video prosumers looking to get the best possible performance out of the latest graphics processors from ATI. PowerColor graphics cards deliver every-last-drop of super-charged performance from ATI's most advanced visual processing units (VPU). Running a PowerColor graphics card, today's gamers are able to unleash the 3D graphics performance of their favorite game playing it the way it was meant to be played.

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