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The HIS Radeon HD 6870 IceQ measures 28.5cm long, which is 4.5cm longer than the reference design. That said, the PCB is shorter than the standard version, measuring just 24cm opposed to the 25cm of the reference design, while the upgraded cooler adds another 4.5cm of length to the card.
Like the older Radeon HD 5870, the 6870 GPU has been fabricated using the 40nm process, yet AMD has been able to drop 454 million transistors and as a result the die size has shrunk by 24%.
The core is clocked at an impressive 900MHz, 50MHz higher than the Radeon HD 5870, while the GDDR5 memory operates slightly slower at 1050MHz. Pairing that frequency with a 256-bit wide memory bus gives the Radeon HD 6870 134.4GB/s of bandwidth, slightly less than the HD 5870.
The Radeon HD 6870 differs from the older HD 5870 in its core configuration. The HD 6870 has been downgraded from 1600 SPUs (Stream Processing Units) and 80 TAUs (Texture Address Units) to 1120 SPUs and 56 TAUs, while there are still 32 ROPs. It'll be interesting to see how this impacts the HD 6870, as it has 30% less SPUs and TAUs than the Radeon HD 5870, though again it's made evident this is more of a cut-down mid-range offering based on a refined version of the same technology.
The AMD reference design uses a fairly large aluminum vapor chamber heatsink made up of 39 fins measuring 13.5cm long, 6.5cm wide, and 2.5cm tall. The heatsink is then cooled by a 75x20mm blower fan that draws air in from within the case and pushes it out through the back. HIS has done away with the vapor chamber concept and gone with a large aluminum heatsink with a copper base, assisted by four huge 8mm copper heatpipes. The bulk of the heatsink measures 13.5cm long, 8cm wide and 3.5cm tall, making it considerably larger than the standard heatsink. A similar 75x20mm blower fan has been used, though the HIS design allows the fan to draw in more air from the topside as well as the underside.
This fan operates very quietly, helped by the impressively low 19 watt idle consumption of the Radeon HD 6870. When gaming the fan will of course spin up, as the card can consume up to 151 watts under load. That being said, at all times we found the fan barely audible, making the HIS Radeon HD 6970 IceQ a perfect candidate for Crossfire.
Whereas the heatsink and fan design of the AMD reference cards are fully enclosed within a custom built housing, HIS has taken a more traditional design approach. The back side of the card is fully exposed, showing off the blue PCB. While the large heatsink also cools the eight GDDR5 memory chips, the cards power circuitry is passively cooled using aluminum heatsinks.
To ensure the graphics card gets enough power, AMD has mounted a pair of 6-pin PCI Express power connectors -- identical to what you'd find on the Radeon HD 5870 as well as older Radeon graphics cards such as the 4870 and 4890.
Naturally, the Radeon HD 6870 supports Crossfire, and therefore in the standard position we find a single connector for bridging two cards together. The only other connectors are on the I/O panel. HIS has included a pair of dual DL-DVI connectors, a single HDMI 1.4a port, and two mini-DisplayPort 1.2 sockets, a typical configuration for a Radeon HD 6870. It's worth noting that while all Radeon HD 6870 graphics cards can support a max resolution of 2560x1600 on up to three monitors, this requires the use of the DL-DVI ports and a DisplayPort connector. HIS has managed to allow Eyefinity 3 support using the HDMI port instead, providing a more flexible option. Still, for those that want to stick with the mini-DisplayPorts, that is also an option. |
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rusta |
Posted on: 11/02/2011 10:23 PM
Thats a cool looking 6870 with one insanely massive cooler! |