Date:
Monday , August 30, 2010
Author:
Mark Warner
Editor:
Brent Justice
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ASUS EAH5870 V2 STALKER Edition Video Card Review

ASUS is back making another play for your hard-earned upgrade money. This time, ASUS have brought out the EAH5870 V2 STALKER Edition, a Radeon HD 5870 with an improved cooling device. Does a bundled game and improved cooling device make up for its $100 price premium?

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Evaluation Method

We evaluate what each video card configuration can supply us in terms of a playable gaming experience while supplying the best culmination of resolution and "eye candy" graphical settings. We focus on quality and immersion of the gameplay experience rather than how many frames per second the card can get in a canned benchmark or prerecorded timedemo situation that often do not represent real gameplay like you would experience at home. Then we will follow with apples-to-apples testing based on real gameplay as well.

Test System Setup

For our test system platform we are using an ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution motherboard with an Intel Core i7 920 overclocked to 3.6GHz, and 6GB of Corsair DDR3-1600. For the power supply, we will be using a CoolerMaster Real Power Pro 1250W.

While it might be "overkill," we use the Core i7-920 processor at 3.6GHz in an attempt to prevent our evaluation from being CPU limited. Obviously, we make every effort to not use CPU limited games for video card evaluations, but the i7-920 at 3.6GHz seems to put many peoples’ minds at ease when it comes to that subject.

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For all NVIDIA GPU based video cards we are using ForceWare 258.96 WHQL. For all AMD GPU based video cards we are using Catalyst 10.8 WHQL.

Below is a screenshot of GPU-Z after installing the ASUS EAH5870 and Catalyst 10.8 WHQL drivers.

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