# Powercolor HD 5870 PCS+



## W1zzard (Feb 5, 2010)

PowerColor's brand new HD 5870 PCS+ comes with an overclock out of the box and an amazing cooling solution that makes the card quieter than any other card in this performance segment. For a price increase of only $10-$20 over the reference design this seems like a great deal.

*Show full review*


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## air_ii (Feb 9, 2010)

Nice and thanks! On a side note, my Sapphire does 1 GHz default voltage on Furmark ! That's on water though...


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## ArkanHell (Feb 9, 2010)

Thats a beautiful piece of hardware imo.


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## inferKNOX (Feb 9, 2010)

IMO Club 3D 5850 Overclocked Edition = Powercolor HD 5870 PCS+ = Sapphire 4870 toxic as far as cooling kit goes.





Quite unimpressed with that.
For good custom cooling Sapphire VaporX/Toxic & HIS IceQ FTW!!


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## pantherx12 (Feb 9, 2010)

I hate the cooler, looks so cheap, especially with the heatpipes sticking out messily like that.


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## W1zzard (Feb 9, 2010)

pantherx12 said:


> I hate the cooler, looks so cheap, especially with the heatpipes sticking out messily like that.



except that it delivers the best combination of noise, overclocking, temps of all 58xx cards that i tested so far.


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## pantherx12 (Feb 9, 2010)

W1zzard said:


> except that it delivers the best combination of noise, overclocking, temps of all 58xx cards that i tested so far.



Still doesn't make it pretty or better then after market


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## dir_d (Feb 9, 2010)

Good review but i really wanna see the 5870 lightning review. 1000Mhz is great i can get my current 5870 to 1000 but its hard


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## Mescalamba (Feb 9, 2010)

I think that beside not exactly stunning look, its great card. 1000MHz on GPU at 70°C load? Thats nice..


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## Delta6326 (Feb 9, 2010)

Nice review, nice card to bad it isnt 2gb cant wait to see some of those  im waiting for a 68*0


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## Fourstaff (Feb 9, 2010)

Batmobile looks much better, but this is a better product than the reference design, and we wouldn't spend our a lot of our time looking at the innards of our pc, so I would pick this over the reference.


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## pantherx12 (Feb 9, 2010)

Fourstaff said:


> Batmobile looks much better, but this is a better product than the reference design, and we wouldn't spend our a lot of our time looking at the innards of our pc, so I would pick this over the reference.





Tell this to people with sidewindows that take up 90% of the side panel 


I'm constantly looking at my rig, its purty


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## W1zzard (Feb 9, 2010)

Delta6326 said:


> Nice review, nice card to bad it isnt 2gb cant wait to see some of those  im waiting for a 68*0



i can tell you the conclusion of the 2 gb card review "looks nice on paper, but the extra gb of memory doesn't do anything"



dir_d said:


> Good review but i really wanna see the 5870 lightning review. 1000Mhz is great i can get my current 5870 to 1000 but its hard



once msi has cards they will send me one for review, dont worry


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## Mescalamba (Feb 9, 2010)

W1zzard said:


> i can tell you the conclusion of the 2 gb card review "looks nice on paper, but the extra gb of memory doesn't do anything"
> 
> 
> 
> once msi has cards they will send me one for review, dont worry



2GB should be usefull for hi-res Eyefinity. (6x LCD and such)


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## Steevo (Feb 9, 2010)

W1zzard said:


> i can tell you the conclusion of the 2 gb card review "looks nice on paper, but the extra gb of memory doesn't do anything"
> 
> 
> 
> once msi has cards they will send me one for review, dont worry



Wha wha wha what!?


Not even for GTA4?


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## W1zzard (Feb 9, 2010)

Steevo said:


> Wha wha wha what!?
> 
> 
> Not even for GTA4?



gta4 programmers fail


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## Steevo (Feb 9, 2010)

W1zzard said:


> gta4 programmers fail



U make me sad. 


I guess it's time to order the 5870 and get some new coolant and memory for my system.


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## DOM (Feb 9, 2010)

W1zzard said:


> gta4 programmers fail





Steevo said:


> U make me sad.
> 
> 
> I guess it's time to order the 5870 and get some new coolant and memory for my system.



i play it on my asus 9600GSO Q at 3.6GHz 6gb ram not max cuz the card only has 384mb


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## Steevo (Feb 9, 2010)

I thinkI am out of memory and bandwidth on my 4850 1Gb increasing the memory clock increase frame rates, but it doesn't overclock so well. i didn't know if the extra vmem helps with the small stuttering with high view distance, right now I am at 32 with all other settings maxxed and get occasional stuttering and some decal and texture corruption from the memory I believe. 

I wanted a card that could handle a 50 or better draw distance and some better high res textures and decals.


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## mrcmark (Feb 9, 2010)

nice review!

Im really excited for the MSI 5870 lightning and 5850 cyclone to come out. 1000 ghz ftw!


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## Zubasa (Feb 9, 2010)

pantherx12 said:


> Tell this to people with sidewindows that take up 90% of the side panel
> 
> 
> I'm constantly looking at my rig, its purty


You really won't see much of the heat-pipes because you are looking at the top of the card from the side panel 
I own one such case, so you can take my word for it.


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## mrcmark (Feb 9, 2010)

they should make vc's gpu on the revise so we can adore them. just a thought


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## mlee49 (Feb 9, 2010)

Holy CRAP that card must be insanely quite!  Are those numbers right? 27dba idle 32dba load? Really?  WOW!


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## W1zzard (Feb 9, 2010)

mlee49 said:


> Holy CRAP that card must be insanely quite!  Are those numbers right? 27dba idle 32dba load? Really?  WOW!



yep it really is insanely quiet for the performance offered


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## erocker (Feb 9, 2010)

Steevo said:


> U make me sad.
> 
> 
> I guess it's time to order the 5870 and get some new coolant and memory for my system.



Yes you should. While yes the programming does suck for GTAIV, DLC for PC is on the way! 

So does ATi need a bigger memory bus for 2gb's of RAM?


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## Steevo (Feb 9, 2010)

Lets not start that shit again!


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## erocker (Feb 9, 2010)

Steevo said:


> Lets not start that shit again!



Lol, where is our "friend?"  That big hullabaloo had to do with 1gb of RAM in which a 256bit memory bus is sufficient. Those who own 5xxx series know that anyways. I'm just wondering if this is the reason we haven't seen the 2gb card in retail. I'm all for ATi building a bigger beastlier card. I'd buy it.

I would also like to see Sapphire or Powercolor sell just these coolers for retail. I had one of these on my 4890 in it was indeed the best air cooling solution on a GPU I've ever used.


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## kora04 (Feb 9, 2010)

Hey Wiz, why did you say that that card reached 1GHz without moding like other cards?
I thought all the 58xx and 57xx series card come with voltage control through things like MSI Afterburner and such.


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## Steevo (Feb 9, 2010)

I would love to see one bare for watercoolers, but you know some idiot would buy it, cook it and demand warranty. Or put on a 1990's Pentium heatsink with screws.


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## Polarman (Feb 9, 2010)

Power comsumption and fan noise is what i always check in video cards.


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## eidairaman1 (Feb 10, 2010)

About time powercolor had something nice released


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## lism (Feb 10, 2010)

> # Slightly higher power consumption than reference design



I think this is because a certain voltage is set on the GPU.

Alot of people are trying to reach the magical 1GHz, and thereby the voltage would be set to archieve 1GHz. I might be totally wrong, but if anyone wants to measure the default vGPU voltage? 

Rather other cards consume lower but overclock alot lesser then some cards. The VCore for these cards might be lower then cards that actually archieve 1GHz 'stock'.


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## Cheeseball (Feb 10, 2010)

> The GPU voltage is managed by a UP6213 voltage controller, which *does no*t support I2C software voltage control.



God damn it Powercolor. This is the only thing that disappoints me about their custom-PCB cards.


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## mp3boy (May 15, 2010)

no review for the PCS++ version?


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