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Club3D HD 5870 Overclocked Edition tested

by on12 May 2010

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Club3D Radeon HD 5870 Overclocked Edition comes with dual-slot cooling, which is the case with the reference HD 5870 as well but the cooling solution is different.  

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The first time we unwrapped the card we noticed that the card is unusually short for an HD 5870. The picture below shows just how much shorter Club3D HD 5870 OC Edition is compared to the reference HD 5870.

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Note that reference Radeon HD 5850 is 24.1cm long (9.5 inches); Radeon HD 5870 is about 28cm long (11 inches) whereas Club3D’s HD 5870 OC Edition (as well as Club3D’s HD 5850 OC Edition) is 25.7cm long (10.1 inches).

Four large heatpipes could not be hidden behind the hood so they’re in plain sight. The card is about 13.5cm tall (with heatpipes). It turns out that Club3D HD 5870 OC Edition’s cooling is not the same one used on Club3D’s HD 5850 OC Edition (picture below).

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In order to efficiently transfer heat from the GPU to the HD 5870 OC Edition’s heatsink, the cooling uses two thicker, 8mm heatpipes combined with two thinner, 6mm heatpipes. Note that HD 5850 OC Edition’s cooler uses four 6mm heatpipes.

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Unlike reference cooling, where the fan is located towards the end of the card and blows through the car, Club3D opted on a central fan on its HD 5870 OC. As a result, some of the heat might be released inside the case so you might want to make sure your in-case airflow is adequate.

The efficiency of Club3D HD 5870 OC Edition’s cooling solution isn’t open to discussion as we measured more than 10°C lower temperatures compared to the reference card. Still, that only tells half the story as the cooling does all that while remaining silent in 3D.

The fan is a part of the plastic hood which covers the card. The same hood also improves the looks and directs the air from the fan towards the heatsink.

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The heatsink has a cooper base with four heatpipes. As you can see from the following picture, only the GPU is in direct contact with the base and the heatsink.

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Samsung’s K4G10325FE-HC04 (0.40ns 5.0Gbps) memory is cooled by the air passing through the heatsink.

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Just like the reference HD 5870, Club3D HD 5870 OC Edition card is powered via two 6-pin PCI-E power connectors. Unlike the reference card, whose connectors are placed on top of the card, Club3D decided to place the connectors at the end of the card. Although the card is shorter than the reference one, we’d rather have the connectors placed like on the reference card because this might pose a problem in smaller cases.

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Thanks to AMD’s PowerPlay technology, the HD 5870 (just like the HD 5850) consumes only 27W in idle mode and up to 188W in 3D. In comparison, HD 5850 draws up to 151W in 3D mode; the reasons of course hide behind lower operating clocks and 160 stream processors less than on the HD 5870.

Club3D HD 5870 Overclocked Edition card features the same set of outs as the reference card – two dual-link DVIs, HDMI and DisplayPort. Thanks to the advanced display output logic, the card has six TMDS signals at its disposal. The aforementioned signals can be combined in various ways where one dual-link DVI requires two TMDS lines.

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HD 5870 allows for using three outs simultaneously, as long as one of the three used outs is DisplayPort. Otherwise you’re limited to two monitors by using two DVIs or DVI-HDMI combination. ATI Eyefinity allows for combining output signals in order to get a high-resolution picture spanning over three displays. You can choose whether you want bezel correction, which basically means removing the picture hidden by the monitor’s frame. If you use more monitors placed next to each other, the part of the picture behind the frame will not shift to the next monitor but rather be omitted. This will be handy only in certain games or special apps, but you can forget about it during office work.

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All the memory is placed on the front of the card and unlike the reference HD 5870, there’s no metal backplate on the card.


Last modified on 12 May 2010
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