ASUS Radeon EAH6870 unboxing
A few days ago we covered the new Radeon HD 6800 series graphics cards, and now it’s time for a little unboxing here on Tech in Style, as we just got our hands on a brand new EAH6870 card from ASUS!
Just to recap, this HD 6870 the more performance-geared of the two new Radeon HD 6800 series cards, leading the slightly tamer Radeon HD 6850. It’s DirectX 11-optimised and uses 1120 stream processors, a 900MHz engine clock, and 1GB of GDDR5 video memory clocked at 4.2GHz (actual) on a 256-bit memory interface.
ASUS EAH6870 graphics card
Looking at the box, the art style on the EAH6870 maintains continuity with the knight and warhorse motif as we’ve seen in previous EAH cards from ASUS; most notably in last year’s AMD Radeon HD 5000 series.
Opening up the ASUS EAH6870
It's well packed in plenty of foam.
This version of the EAH6870 remains quite close to the reference design in terms of looks. However, one big difference is the shroud: it’s made of aluminium, which helps with cooling. ASUS reports its EAH6870 runs an impressive 14°C cooler than standard.
The ASUS EAH6870 graphics card
EAH6870 - end on
The lines throughout the design even go along the sides
Overall, this graphics card looks a lot like the Radeon HD 5000 reference designs, with a very elegant and attractive shroud that goes all around to contain the heat and push it out the back. This way those high temps are less likely to escape into the case, which helps with system stability.
There are now 5 display outputs: 2xDVI, 1xHDMI, 2xDisplay Port
As you can see, the I/O arrangement with the Radeon HD 6800 series is quite generous – these cards are designed for six-screen AMD Eyefinity displays, so they need those multiple outputs. This is a change from the previous HD 5000 series where only one, extremely expensive HD 5970 Eyefinity Edition card was designed for the full six outputs.
Don’t forget ASUS also includes its Voltage Tweak overvolting interface with the EAH6870. With proper cooling, Voltage Tweak can result in up to a 50% speed gain compared to the AMD reference clocks. The more efficient and tolerant design of the Radeon HD 6800 series likely means generally greater overclockability compared to the 5000 series too, but that’s something for the community to establish over time.
Also keep in mind the HDMI here is version 1.4a, plus this graphics card ships with AMD’s 3D display technology HD3D.
With its very reasonable price point and strong performance (on a par with the slightly pricier Radeon HD 5850), the ASUS EAH6870 hits a nice sweet spot for gamers and DIY PC builders looking for a good value.