Heya' just saw the press release for the Powercolor 6870x2 and wanted to start a little discussion here (which hopefully gets more meat on its legs when reviews starts to come up, perhaps one here in Bit-tech?). My personal opinion thus far is that this is Great! Always wanted to see the "budget" cards get some love with integrated sli/crossfire not just the top cards 590/6990! I'm not too impressed with the looks of the cooler, but who knows it might be good.. I'm just damaged from the DirectCU II cooler Hopefully this becomes successful and other manufactures picks this up, hopefully nvidia cards as well. What do you think about it? Official homepage: http://www.powercolor.com/Global/products_features.asp?id=364#Specification
Yeah at the moment it is priced too high, at least in Sweden, with an price tag of ~£389. Which is more than just buying two single 6870 cards But the card has hardly hit the market, the 389 price tag is probably an estimation! It is my hope that they go sane and tag it at the cost of 2x single 6870 cards I'd like to see an 460Tix2, Funky!
This sort of cards have been made for ages, I remember seeing HD4850x2's and all sorts of crazy stuff. Anyway it seems to be always the same story: it's a special edition designed by a single (usually small) manufacturer, the price is too high and/or availability is absolute zero. If you happen to score one, the support is always going to be a mystery as you have the only card in the whole country Good luck with the warranty. Nice idea, and maybe I'm just too cynical here, but I really don't see this being any more successful than the earlier versions... Kinda shame, as two barts-cores really pack some serious performance (easily beats HD 6970).
@Jipa - The earlier cards such as 4870x2 where usually top end for its generation where as this card is rather in the mid-range! but yeah, these cards sure have not been too successful mostly due to bad pricing since they cost a lot to produce for the manufacturer rather than just kickin' the reference card - but hopefully they give it an good price tag and we get an roll! About the support / warranty I'm not sure what you are on about, just kick it easy and drop it off where you bought it?
HD 4870x2 was the reference top dog, but I said HD 4850x2: http://www1.sapphiretech.com/ca/products/products_overview.php?gpid=265
You mean the Zotac one? Did it ever get in to EU? :/ Well 4850 was still a high end card, where as going from 6990 to 6870 is quite an down step
That cooler will dump a lot of heat into your case - might be worthwhile if you plan to water cool it.
I have a 4870X2 in another rig, and it's been an awesome card. If you think a 6870X2 is good, get a load of this! A 6970X2 http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&so...2eC4DQ&usg=AFQjCNGH9BxO0L0lQnz-vT5_05F0sRehWw 3x8pin power connectors!
Power delivery. But this 6870X2 seems to have some potential as long as it's internally crossfired. Still it's a potshot, but it's nowhere near as bad as yesteryear's HD3850X2 or 7800GT X2. Then again that was made by Asus and now others are picking up the trend.
Yeah I was a bit worried about this, since it does not blow the heat out the PCI slot But I belive(Hope!) that there will be other variations (read: different coolers, different manufactures)
Club3D will release an HD 6870 X2 card as well! The cooler looks to be kind of the same, alto the price on it dropped to £370 so it is going the right way
Well I love my 6870 crossfire setup so I'd say this will be pretty good. The scaling on 6000 series crossfire is great. To be honest they run fairly cool in my system so as long as your case air flow is decent I can't see the cooler dumping air into your case being that much of a problem.
With two HD 6870's costing about £280 and two HD 6950's under £400 it's still pretty damn far from making any sense whatsoever But yeah I suppose it's good for the franken-gpu if there are more manufacturers making them.
