XFX HD 5870 Black Edition Vs VaporX Vs HD 5850 Review Benchmark

The ATI vs Nvidia or Red vs Green battle has been played out for over a decade with many tech enthusiasts strongly camped in one corner or the other. Over past years, the graphics giants have traded blows with the pendulum swinging back and forth but the DirectX 11 skirmish would seem to signal a victory for the red corner.

At its launch, ATI’s flagship 5 series card – the Radeon HD 5870 – was duly praised but could never definitely be hailed a success until Nvidia’s response was analysed. Some six months later, the green camp finally had a product fit for launch. The GTX 480 was just that. Unfortunately, whilst performance levels were reasonable, high power consumption, high temperatures, high pricing and a noisy stock cooler ultimately cost Fermi and Nvidia.

So the HD 5870, endorsed by Fermi’s poor showing, is many enthusiasts graphics card of choice and as expected, the ATI vendors are quick to respond releasing factory overclocked and tweaked versions of the flagship card to heighten performance and lower noise levels and running temperatures. Enter the XFX Radeon HD 5870 Black Edition..

Specifications:

GPU Clock MHz	900 MHz
Stream Processors	1600
Bus Type	PCI-E 2.0, PCI-E 2.1
Performance	Black
Memory Interface Bus (bit)	256 - 512
Memory Type	DDR5
Memory Size (MB)	1024 MB
Memory Clock (MHz)	5000 MHz
Microsoft® DirectX® Support	11
Shader Model Support	5.0
Open GL Optimization and Support	3.2
Minimum Power Requirement (Watt)	500W with two 6-pin power cable
Cooling Fansink	√
ROHS	√
Profile	Double
Dimensions (Imperial)	11 X 4.376 X 1.5, 11.14 x 4.38 x 1.5
Dimensions (Metric)	27.9 X 11 X 3.8, 28.3 x 11.12 x 3.81
Max Resolution Analog	1600 x 1200, 2048 x 1536
Max Resolution Digital	2560 x 1600
ATI Radeon CrossFireX™ Technology	√
ATI Radeon PowerPlay™	√
ATI Radeon Stream Technology	√
ATI Eyefinity Technology	√
DisplayPort	1