ASUS EAH5970 Review - PAGE 1

Once upon a time there was a videocard that surpassed all others. It was powerful, and could crush any game thrown at it. Every opposing card was shadowed by it's greatness. The card I speak of is the GTX 295, however, it's reign of terror has come to an end. There is a new beast that crushes everything in it's path, and this time it's from the red team. I'm of course referring to ATI's new 5970.

So exactly what is the 5970? Is it just 100 better then the 5870? As many of you know, ATI has created a new way of naming dual videocards. 59XX denotes a dual card, and the 70 refers to what GPU is used. Or at least that would make sense. The Cores on the stock 5970's are equivalent to that of the 5850's cores. So the 5970 is equivalent to a 5850 X2. The only difference is the name is slightly smaller, which makes it much easier to type out.

The 4XXX series of ATI cards had two dual cards. These were the 4870 X2, and the less popular 4850 X2. This means we may be able to hope to see a 5950, or even better a 5990. However, neither of these two theoretical cards are out yet, so let's stay focused on the monster at hand.

Today I'll be looking at ASUS's EAH5970. It's not an overclocked card, and it does not have any custom cooling. However it does have all of ASUS's extra features. These include SmartDoctor, Splendid, and GamerOSD. We'll also be able to tweak the video cards voltage, which is always fun. According to ASUS when using the voltage tweak technology, you can experience clock speeds of up to 31% faster. This means we can expect to overclock the Core Clock to around 900MHz, which is pretty sexy for a video card.

Anyway, let's cut the chit chat and take a closer look at the EAH5970.