PowerColor HD 6870 PCS++ 1 GB

[W1zzard]

PowerColor's new HD 6870 PCS++ comes with massively increased clocks out of the box which makes it roughly as fast as GTX 560 Ti or HD 6950. With a reasonable price increase of only $10 over the reference design, the card does not break the bank either, it is actually a worthy opponent to NVIDIA's GTX 560 Ti considering price/performance.

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[beautyless]

It's a little faster than 560Ti with lower price. Performance per watt look good.
so, it's should be success to fill in 560Ti gap in the market.

 

[Over_Lord]

It's mostly faster then HD6950 2GB, slower in DX11 titles and unigine of course..

But it consumes much more power than HD6950 2GB. Thats a let down.

 

[Relayer]

Very fast HD6870. Real good review, w1zzard. :thumbsup:

I like the dual crossfire fingers. Something, besides the O/C, to set it apart from the crowd.

 

[Razi3l]

Hey W1zzard will you be testing if it can run 3-way CF if you get a chance?.. I'm really interested to see how it would be and whether the scaling with 3 would be as good as it is for the 6900 cards, and great review.

 

[Xaser04]

Hey W1zzard will you be testing if it can run 3-way CF if you get a chance?.. I'm really interested to see how it would be and whether the scaling with 3 would be as good as it is for the 6900 cards, and great review.

Realistically at resolutions and settings that Tri CF makes sense this card would run out of memory before it runs out of GPU grunt.

In theory scaling should be excellent but actual game results may not show this due to Vram limitations.

 

[Razi3l]

Yea, that's true. But 6870s aren't all that bad in an eyefinity setup. Most people seem to run a single screen anyway.

 

[WhiteLotus]

A very quiet card in idle. I like this. I like this a lot.

 

[Xaser04]

Yea, that's true. But 6870s aren't all that bad in an eyefinity setup. Most people seem to run a single screen anyway.

HD6870's and CF HD6870's are fine with eyefinity this is true *but* to get decent scaling out of Tri fire the settings have to increased even further which will put a massive strain on the 1GB of memory the HD6870 has.

The above issue also affects the GTX580 in Tri SLI hence the release of the 3GB model.

Given the inclusion of dual CF fingers it would have made sense for powercolor to outfit this card with 2GB of memory.

 

[Razi3l]

HD6870's and CF HD6870's are fine with eyefinity this is true *but* to get decent scaling out of Tri fire the settings have to increased even further which will put a massive strain on the 1GB of memory the HD6870 has.

The above issue also affects the GTX580 in Tri SLI hence the release of the 3GB model.

Given the inclusion of dual CF fingers it would have made sense for powercolor to outfit this card with 2GB of memory.

Well that's all true but at present there aren't many people running an eyefinity setup so to most it wouldn't matter. But then again running 3 of these would also be overkill but most people would do it anyway.

 

[wahdangun]

Hey W1zzard will you be testing if it can run 3-way CF if you get a chance?.. I'm really interested to see how it would be and whether the scaling with 3 would be as good as it is for the 6900 cards, and great review.

this.

i really want to see if 3/4 way scaling is improved since HD 5970, and you all guys forget that HD 5870 and 5970 only have 1 GB of Vram

 

[Xaser04]

this.

i really want to see if 3/4 way scaling is improved since HD 5970, and you all guys forget that HD 5870 and 5970 only have 1 GB of Vram

Which both suffered from a lack of Vram at eyefinity resolutions causing stuttering (a widely known issue with the HD5970 especially at 2560x1200 and beyond). The eyefinity 6 and HD5970 4GB models didn't suffer from this issue although their scaling was relatively poor (as is HD58xx scaling compared to HD68xx & HD69xx scaling).

Tri /Quad Fire scaling will rely heavily on settings that push the GPUs to the limit, unfortunately this brings with it a hefty Vram requirement. The results for this card in that sort of config would be inconclusive as you would either get no scaling due to a lack of GPU utilisation (CPU limitation to a degree) or poor performance as they run out of memory.

 

[STCNE]

Great review Wizzard, but one thing I am wondering about, did you use the new drivers? The Civ5 result seems really strange, it is a good 10fps faster than the 6970?

 

[alexsubri]

I'm really thinking about selling my crossfire 5850 to buy 6870 in crossfire

 

[Cool Mike]

Does anyone know when the PCS++ will be available

I cant find it anywhere. Still early, maybe in the pipeline headed for Newegg?

 

[antuk15]

I fail to get excited about the 6800 series when they're slower then the 5800 series.

It has a whopping 125Mhz core speed advantage over the 5870 and it some games it's barely any faster.

 

[pantherx12]

I fail to get excited about the 6800 series when they're slower then the 5800 series.

It has a whopping 125Mhz core speed advantage over the 5870 and it some games it's barely any faster.

Protip: the 6870/6850 are the tier that 5770/5750 were at last time. They've gone back to their older naming scheme where x900 is their highest end stuff and x800 is upper mid : ].

So of course they're going to be slower, 5770 was slower than 4870 and 4890 too. ( although over-clocked much nicer )

 

[antuk15]

Protip: the 6870/6850 are the tier that 5770/5750 were at last time. They've gone back to their older naming scheme where x900 is their highest end stuff and x800 is upper mid : ].

So of course they're going to be slower, 5770 was slower than 4870 and 4890 too. ( although over-clocked much nicer )

I know that but when they're not any cheaper then the 5800 series it makes them a tough buy.

I can get a brand new sapphire 5850 for £101.

So what's the point of the 680 series?

 

[Relayer]

^The 5800 series is EOL'd What you're seeing is close out, clearance pricing. I think the 6800 series is very good value. Real close to 5800 performance, lower power consumption, and ~1/2 the price of the 5800 series in it's prime.

 

[Cool Mike]

Has anyone found these (PCS++ 6870) for sale anywhere?