When I first saw PowerColor's HD 6870 X2 at Computex this year, I was quite sceptical. Could the company design their dual-GPU card without AMD's help? How would the card stand in performance? Now that the results are in, I have to say I am quite pleased with the PowerColor HD 6870 X2. The card is significantly faster than NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580, especially at 2560x1600. When compared to AMD's lineup, we see roughly equal performance as last generation's HD 5970, at lower power draw and less noise in gaming. HD 6990 and GTX 590 are still significantly faster with +16% and +18%, respectively, but they are also much more expensive.
Like all dual GPU designs the card suffers from increased power consumption in idle, multi-monitor and Blu-ray playback. During 3D gaming, power consumption is reasonable. In terms of noise, the card disappoints with its idle noise - it's the noisiest card we tested in a long time. Under load, noise levels are more in line with what other high-end accelerators offer today, actually below many of the high-end models. As a dual GPU design, the card also needs optimum driver support to perform at its best. AMD has gained lots of ground here recently with their regular CrossFire profile updates, but the best option for new titles is still a fast single GPU card.
Overclocking on our card was decent, with GPU clocks in the typical range of single GPU HD 6870 cards. Memory overclocking worked very well thanks to the Elpida GDDR5 memory which has amazing overclocking potential. Increasing GPU voltage was also possible using Sapphire's TRIXX, too bad PowerColor does not have an overclocking utility of their own. Thanks to the beefy VRM, there were also no issues at (an unreasonable) 1.4 V with air cooling. Even though the card did get very hot it handled the pressure just fine without any problems.
HD 6870 X2 uses a Lucid PCI-Express bridge chip, fast Elpida memory and an excellent CPL PWM circuitry. While this results in a tough, impressive product, it also increases pricing by quite a bit. The HD 6870 X2 is currently listed at Newegg for $520 which is certainly not cheap. When taking performance into account the card actually becomes the best price/performance card in the high-end segment, yet I would like to see lower pricing, definitely below $500 to make this card attractive to more buyers.