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ASUS Radeon HD 6870 Video Card Review

Manufacturer:	ASUS
Product:	ASUS Radeon HD 6870 Video Card
Date:	Thu, May 19, 2011 - 05:00 AM
Written By:	Brian Giacoletti -
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A Closer Look At The ASUS Radeon HD 6870 Video Card

Now is the moment we have all been waiting for; we actually get to take a look at the ASUS Radeon HD 6870 before we go ahead and install it into our computer. One thing I would like to point out is the length of this card because most of the video cards that have a custom cooling system such as the CU system also have a shorter custom sized PCB. This card does not. The card comes in at a whopping 11' long and may not fit in some of the smaller cases on the market today very well, or at all for that matter. Here we get a look at the ASUS Radeon HD 6870 in all its glory. Not a bad looking card at all, and the custom colored black PCB makes it look all that much better especially in a system like mine that is primarily black on the inside and all white on the outside.

As we can see, the majority of the front of the card is covered by the awesome looking CU cooler, but what about the back of the card? Well, I was surprised to see that the back of the card is almost completely covered with an aluminum heat sink that adds just that much more heat dissipation to the CU cooling solution.

In this picture we get a good view of what the rear of the card looks like; we can see that there are some slots cut into the cowl that cover the front of the card to add to the capabilities of the card to exhaust the heated air that comes from the GPU itself.

The top of the ASUS Radeon HD 6870 features some pretty sweet looking heat pipes that give the card the overall look of a hot rod. I guess later in the review we will see if the ASUS Radeon HD 6870 is truly a hot rod or not.

Now let's take a closer look at the CU cooler itself. It appears to be designed very much like a lot of the "Vapor Chamber" coolers that seem to becoming more and more popular with video card manufacturers. ASUS has the CU, Sapphire has the Vapor - X, and HIS has the Ice - Q. They all feature a vapor chamber type heat sink and fan combination and they all seem to have a 92 mm fan.

One thing I was really surprised to see on the ASUS Radeon HD 6870 is that ASUS decided not to add an HDMI connector, but rather employ the use of an HDMI to DVI adapter. As you can see, the connectors on the card include two DVI connectors and two Display port connectors even though there appears to be plenty of room to have added the HDMI connector. But what do I know? I'm not a hardware engineer.

Next Page - The Test System

Review Index

Page 1 - The ASUS Radeon HD 6870 Video Card Page 2 - ASUS Radeon HD 6870 Video Card Packaging Page 3 - A Closer Look At The ASUS Radeon HD 6870 Video Card Page 4 - The Test System Page 5 - Batman: Arkham Asylum GOTY Edition Page 6 - Metro 2033 Page 7 - Aliens vs Predator Page 8 - Left 4 Dead 2 Page 9 - S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat Page 10 - Battlefield Bad Company 2 Page 11 - 3DMark 11 Page 12 - Furmark 1.8.2 Page 13 - Unigine Heaven 2.5 Page 14 - Temperature Testing Page 15 - Power Consumption Page 16 - ASUS Radeon HD 6870 Video Card Overclocking Page 17 - ASUS Radeon HD 6870 Video Card Final Thoughts

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