Asus HD 5970 Voltage Tweak Edition

INTRODUCTION

With each new generation of GPU we see better designs capable of cranking out more FPS and handling new levels of DirectX. The 58xx series from ATI/AMD is no exception. The first GPU's we saw in that line were the 5870 and 5850 and we were thrilled with those. We didn't expect to see a dual core 58xx GPU this soon in the cores evolution.

The last generation of dual core GPU from ATI was the 4870x2 and it was two 4870 GPU cores on one card and was keeping the X2 naming scheme. This time ATI slid one in on us and named the new dual core GPU 5970. Little discrepancies like that set us to scratching our heads and we have to dig in and find out why they deviate from an established naming scheme.

Well after digging in and looking at the cards the Asus 5970 Voltage Tweak Edition has all the hardware of two 5870 but it has the clock speed of the 5850 so ATI named it the 5970 to avoid bad press by naming it the 5870x2 which wouldn't be correct because of the lower clock speed. Not to worry though ATI and Asus promise massive overclocking headroom so we should be able to push this card up to and beyond the stock clocks of the 5870. That or make some pretty blue smoke emanate from the chassis.

More than likely your not going to find many fancy stickers on the 5970 series cards, ATI adopts a chassis for it that incorporates holes to help heat escape. We actually like the absence of horrific monsters or heroic characters on the card. While it is the most powerful card we've ever seen, we don't feel it needs a cheesy sticker to make it any more impressive. Just the mesh black chassis and size are enough to impress most people.

To show you what we mean about size we "Pack" pictured several cards, on top we have the Asus HD 5970 Voltage Tweak Edition, below that we have a Visiontek 5870, Asus GTX-285, BFG GTX-275, and on the bottom we have a Sapphire 4870. The 4870 was, by todays standards a fairly small dual slot cooler card, the Nvidia GTX lineup was a little longer, then the ATI 5870 had those cool red air intake slots and beat the Nvidia size by about a half an inch, then here comes the Asus HD 5970 and beats the 5870 by about an inch. Your going to need more than 12 inches (the card it 12 inches) to wedge this behemoth in. Most mid-towers without removable HD cages won't accommodate this beast. Most full tower chassis will accommodate the 5970 but measure twice so you can avoid Dremmeling your chassis to fit the card. Believe us when we tell you that if any card in the world justifies buying an expensive full tower with 13 inch HD cage clearance is worth it, the Asus 5970 Voltage Tweak Edition is that card.