[H]ard|OCP
Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Back Into The Chassis
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September 02, 2010 3:39 PM CDT
- Date:
- Tuesday , September 22, 2009
- Category:
- GPU / Video Cards
- Manufacturers:
- AMD
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
AMD's ATI Radeon HD 5870 Video Card Review
AMD’s ATI Radeon HD 5800 series debuts today and the new ATI Radeon HD 5870 is now available. We will give you all the gritty details of the HD 5800 Series, and show you just how well the new flagship ATI Radeon HD 5870 accelerates games. Can you say, “I like twice as much performance in the same power envelope.”
ATI Radeon HD 5870 Pictures Cont.
We were able to get a hold of the actual heatsink/fan combination, sans video card, used on the ATI Radeon HD 5870.
In the first picture below you are seeing the back of the plate that would be attached to the back of the PCB, you can see through to the thermal paste because the PCB isn’t there. When we took the back plate off you see the pads that would rest on the back of the PCB and the clip that holds the heatsink firm onto the GPU. Flipping the whole thing over you will see the heatsink and fan in a quite simple configuration.
The heatsink utilizes four copper heatpipes to distribute the heat. It is within this area that we would expect IHVs to improve upon cooling, offering unique cooling solutions in the future. The fan has undergone a bit of work, supposedly reducing the pitch of the whine that has so often occurred on past ATI video cards. In our testing we didn’t notice any annoying whine or pitch problems from the fan at idle or full load. In fact, we would have to say that the fan is relatively quiet. Only at system startup is it identifiable that the fan is even working, and then only for less than a second.
Here is the Radeon HD 5870 installed into our test system. You will want to watch out for clearance, this video card clocks in at a full 10.75" inches long to the edge of the red vents on the back. You can see a close-up of the top vents above, the air that escapes here is very hot and does exhaust into your case. If however, you have a side panel fan or fan on the back of the chassis near the expansion slots, it could potentially exhaust this hot air. Also worth noting is a mention of the "intake vents" on the rear edge of the card. When quizzed about the value of these, we got a very serious, "Because the look cool," answer. And we have to admit, yeah, the look pretty cool if you are into that sort of thing.