Video Card

Being a reference card there isn't a whole lot to look at. We can see how the ATI partners get their card, though. There are really only two colors to the whole setup. We've got a fair bit of black going on with a nice red stripe down the middle. To the right we have the fan that helps keep our card nice and cool.

At the back of the card we have a pair of vents that help draw air from a second source instead of just over the top where the fan is. In a situation where you're using CrossFire and both cards are going to be right on top of each other, it's good to know that the top card is able to pull air from a source which isn't the back of a hot graphics card.

Just next to the vents, but across the two, we have our two 6-Pin PCI Express connectors that are needed to get the card up and running. The good news is that ATI hasn't made the same mistake as NVIDIA in the early days of a full shroud cooler where the power connectors were too close together. We've got plenty of room to install and remove our power connectors which is nice.

Moving closer to the front, we've got our two CrossFire connectors, which as we've mentioned before gives us the ability to run up to three HD 5870s. We're happy to report they work well as we've already looked at CrossFire performance from the model.

The I/O department carries with it two Dual Link DVI connectors. Next to one is a vent that lets the hot air escape. The other has a further two connectors which include a native HDMI port and also DisplayPort.

Specifications

You're not going to get much more reference than the card we have with us today. The core comes in at 850MHz like the Sapphire we looked at which as we mentioned is the same clock speed as the HD 4890.

The memory has been increased from the HD 4890 with the 1GB coming in at 1200MHz or 4800MHz QDR.