Radeon Hard disk drive 5970: The Carte du jour In Detail

The Radeon Hard disk drive 5970 is a truly massive graphics card, even for a high-end dual-GPU product. Its dimensions whale anything previously seen, measuring in at 30cm long and weighing a little over 1kg.

Our review sample hung a total of 6cm off the edge of our Asus P6T Deluxe motherboard used for testing.

Cooling the Hemlock XT GPUs is a large aluminum heatsink fabricated upwards of 36 fins. Measuring 16cm long, 7cm wide, and 2.5cm tall, it is slightly larger than that used in the Radeon Hd 5870. Connected to the base of operations of this heatsink is a massive copper plate which helps improve efficiency, while a 75x20mm blower fan draws air in from inside the case and pushes it out through the rear of the graphics card.

For the nearly part this fan operates very quietly, helped by the impressively depression 42 watt idle consumption of the Radeon Hard disk 5970. When gaming, the fan will inevitably spin upward as the card tin consume up to 294 watts under load, but fifty-fifty with the increased thermal stress the 5970 does not scream at intolerable levels.

The heatsink and fan have been enclosed within a custom built housing that conceals the entire graphics menu, which is the same design used with the Radeon HD 5870. This setup helps protect the carte du jour very well; Nvidia has been using similar enclosures for some time with their most prized graphics cards, such every bit the GTX 295.

Removing the heatsink exposes the two GPUs, GDDR5 retentiveness chips, and a few other disquisitional components.

With the heatsink off the Radeon HD 5970 looks almost identical to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, though it is noticeably longer.

Fundamental changes involve the new GDDR5 memory, improved power circuitry, and an updated 2.0 PEX span from PLX Technologies, used to link the GPUs together. All this hardware is cooled via the large heatsink that covers the majority of the carte's 30cm long PCB.

GDDR5 retentiveness works at an ever more impressive frequency (1.0GHz x 4) on this particular model, which features a full capacity of 2GB. The cadre configuration of the Radeon Hd 5970 doubles everything in the 4870 X2 with 1600 (320x5) SPUs, 80 TAUs (Texture Address Units), and 32 ROPs (Rasterization Operator Units).

AMD'due south reference card came equipped with Hynix ICs (H5GQ1H24AFR-T2C parts). These GDDR5 modules are rated for 1.25GHz operation, and so we expect to push them beyond the stock ane.0GHz configuration without hassle.

In gild to feed the graphics card plenty power, a pair of PCI Express ability connectors are used (6-pin and 8-pin sockets). This is the same configuration used by previous dual-GPU graphics cards such every bit the GeForce 9800 GX2 and Radeon HD 4870 X2, then electric current high-terminate power supplies should cater for this new graphics card.

The Radeon Hard disk drive 5970 naturally supports CrossfireX technology, and therefore in the standard position nosotros notice a unmarried connector for bridging ii cards together.

The merely other connectors tin be found on the I/O console. Our sample featured two dual-DVI connectors and a Mini Display Port connection. Merely like the Radeon Hd 5870, the 5970 can support a maximum resolution of 2560x1600 on non i but rather three monitors.