PowerColor HD6870X2 Review
Conclusion
Published: 6th July 2011 | Source: PowerColor | Price: £300 |
Conclusion
The PowerColor HD6870X2 is quite a complex thing to sum up in a snappy few lines.
All of the press blurb relentlessly hammered home the fact that the HD6870X2 was designed to best the nVidia GTX580 and if that is the sole measure of the PowerColor HD6870X2 then clearly it's attained its goal.
Throughout testing the HD6870X2 outshone the GTX580, sometimes was up with the GTX590, and also regularly out-performed two HD6870s in Crossfire. This last bit is especially impressive as normally when two GPUs are placed on a single card there are reductions in performance due to power draw issues, or the need to keep the whole thing cool.
Speaking of keeping things cool, this has been far and away the biggest drawback of the current range of cards. Compared to the Radeons of old the 6 series have, almost to a man, been hot and loud. The PowerColor HD6870X2 isn't really either of these things when we consider how that we've got two GPUs to try and tame. It's not cool, our overclock was thermally limited more than anything. It's not exactly quiet when compared to any of the nVidia offerings. However if you are expecting two GPUs to be twice as hot and loud as a single HD6870, then by that measure it's actually doing quite well, even if it ends up being just as loud and warm. This is largely a product of the twin-GPU design more than a problem with the cooler, which is very good indeed. As you can see, it's not as simple as it might seem.
Performance is indeed excellent, and a single card will always be more energy efficient than a pair. You don't need a ton of cables off your PSU and even an ITX board can handle the card happily. However a couple of the results we obtained, Unigine in particular, weren't quite as stellar as one would hope, especially the minimum frame-rate of some games caused noticable stutters. Although we're not sure if this is related to the drivers which follow the normal Radeon problem of being just not as stable as their nVidia challengers. During testing the whole system froze on more than one occasion.
Finally pricing which, at the time of going to press, isn't officially available. We've heard word that HD6870X2 should be available for around $450 which should mean (with the normal conversion methodology of just replacing the dollar with a pound) a UK price of between £300 and £350. We'd hope it would be on the bottom end of that and if it comes in around the £300 price mark it's a steal. If it ended up being more towards the £350 mark then we'd definitely question it as a valid purchase despite its GTX580 beating. After all you can pick up a couple of HD6870s for about £260, so once you take into account the better cooler then £300 would be about right. So we'll score based on a retail of £300 and you can adjust once the price becomes available.
All in all the PowerColor HD6870X2 is a great performing card that gives high frame-rates across a raft of games. The huge heat-pipes on the cooler keep everything cooler than we expected and in normal use it's not distractingly noisy although under extreme loading it becomes both hot and loud.
However it's much easier to live with than many of the other Radeon cards around and for that it's deserving of OC3D Silver Award.
Thanks to PowerColor for providing the HD6870X2 for review. Discuss in our forums.
Most Recent Comments
Nvida might even drop the price of the 570 or maybe the 580 now in response to this, they usually drop their prices when AMD out performs them.
£130-40 x2 + the lucid on board chip.
totally forgot about this card in the mist of buying a new one.
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Originally Posted by ruthless_villain
yay and amd card thats cheaper than a 580 and beats it |
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Originally Posted by Mr Moose
Very nice review Bryan, I agree that the heat pipes could do with a little bit of elbow greece. Do you have the poor crossfire in unigine down to drivers or poor compatibility? Seems odd that it can't compete with 6870CF when that's exactly what it is.. |
So I think it's probably a driver issue, but it's equally possible that only in very extreme loadings (and Unigine is fearsome) does the limitations of the dual-GPU single-card solution become apparent.
btw newegg has it for $519
Nice card with good perfomance.
I was hoping a better price, maybe cheaper than two 6870's, was it too much to ask?
I was waiting for a 6870x2 review, this is the first I see on the net, thanks oc3d!
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Originally Posted by Relayer
Was it the GTX560 or GTX560ti in SLI that was used in the charts? |
that being said if they are £300 its going to be hard to ignore these when they hit the shelves.
oh yea xD
Okay. Um... Had wooden teeth, chased Moby Dick.
Wish the PCB was a different caller though.
Would have seriously considered this with a Z68 sniper but you know what they say about red and green
Ti. That's the only SLI GTX560s we've reviewed and at the time the non-Ti version wasn't around. They are the MSI ones.
Thanks, Bryan. I asked because I would have been surprised if it was the "non TI" performing that well. It could cause confusion and make some think that the 560 was that fast.
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Originally Posted by VonBlade
To be honest I am unsure. The Crossfire performance in a title such as Warhead or Metro was good enough to believe that it's working okay. 3DM11 is akin to Unigine in that it's very shader heavy, but that did well too. So I think it's probably a driver issue, but it's equally possible that only in very extreme loadings (and Unigine is fearsome) does the limitations of the dual-GPU single-card solution become apparent. |
I had the 4870x2 and it was a room heater, big and ugly. Until i water cooled it. Now I have the nVidia GTX470 and I am happy with it. I liked the review, especially graphs and I like the card to be honest. I don't like the temps and would like to se better designed cooling like Asus does it. End. Cya.
It was going to my 470 that made me realise you are always better off with a single powerful gpu. I would never rely on the incoming 295 but I have heard that the 590 has no micro stutter issues at all so I am quite hopeful about it. In DX10.1 it hit both Tropics and Heaven out of the park, breezing past a 480 so I would assume it was due to the drivers..
Radeon issues are always the drivers man. I really hoped with the massive success of the 5 series Rads they would have improved, but it was like stepping back to 2005
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