UPDATED! 5870X2 & 5850X2 on display

[Etihtsarom]

I wonder if you can get back half an inch with that cooler off and use a water block. Does the stock cooler extend past the PCB a little? Or is that just wishful thinking? Looks like I will have to relocate my res and redo my loop with this one.

!@!!! I'mma open a company making 2"/3" rectangular ducts to allow the 5870X2 to go right through the HDD Cages to the front vents for fresh cool air intake.
Edit: I'll also be selling "5870x2-to-5.25" drivebay conversion kits", the pitch line will be " buy this kit, if you don't want your card to break right off the PCI-E lane."

Let me know if you guys are interested.

[grimeleven]

Nothing to do with the bios, they had to fix the memory controllers and possibly have something change on the GDDR5.

There was a flickering when the memory clocks changed, which is why they didn't implement the lower memory clocks w/ powerplay.

They had to mod the BIOS so it boots with lower clocks so YES it had something to do with the BIOS. There might have been stability issues but it was the memory being too high that caused the overheating on these, just by downclocking the ram it was able to cool down itself with the stock cooler, below 50c. No flickering/crashes/bugs ever running 6 months, ofc not all cards the same. Notice the difference since the 4870 http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews....842&pageid=20#

What ATI talked about stability loss is when they lowered the CORE clock, not the ram, hell i even ran it at 100mhz no problem.

I just wish Artic Cooling (or someone) would make some new heatsinks that use a full shroud and exhaust but still outperform the reference ones. My biggest issue with aftermarket is everything but water bleeds all the heat into the case. This is why I never ordered a 4870x2 Accellero ( that and it took 10 years to release ) I couldn't imagine the heat from 2 (up to 600watts of heat...) of those being bled into a case... Any reduction in noise levels would be lost as you'd need to have some serious high rpm exhaust to combat the ambient case heat XD

My experience so far with the Accelero is that since it's able to cool (efficient) it's not really pushing lot of hot air into the case. Say you do a cold boot @ room temp 20c, once booted my card stays @37celcius idle, loading a crysis for 1hour the card is running at 55 maximum and CPU temps are similar to when i had stock cooler. I know, different story with 2 of them, but a good vented case with 24cm fans should be okay, mine is a HAF932.

[LordEC911]

They had to mod the BIOS so it boots with lower clocks so YES it had something to do with the BIOS. There might have been stability issues but it was the memory being too high that caused the overheating on these, just by downclocking the ram it was able to cool down itself with the stock cooler, below 50c. No flickering/crashes/bugs ever running 6 months, ofc not all cards the same. Notice the difference since the 4870 http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews....842&pageid=20#

What ATI talked about stability loss is when they lowered the CORE clock, not the ram, hell i even ran it at 100mhz no problem.

No, they couldn't down clock the memory due to the flickering that was caused by the state change, I believe. They couldn't implement a bios fix for the 4800series because it wouldn't do anything to fix the flickering, since it was most likely caused by the early GDDR5 memory controllers.

[Lightman]

No, they couldn't down clock the memory due to the flickering that was caused by the state change, I believe. They couldn't implement a bios fix for the 4800series because it wouldn't do anything to fix the flickering, since it was most likely caused by the early GDDR5 memory controllers.

Yes, precisely to do with GDDR5 memory retraining. HD48xx series memory controller was simply retraining link too slow and was causing filckering.

[Glow9]

Anyone know if the 5850x2 or 5870x2 you are still going to have to put in like configs or profiles so both cores actually work with a game or is it all just going to be plug and play now?

[WorshipMe]

So is it fair to say that the HD 5870 X2 will use slower clocked cores to reduce power consumption? I can't believe they'd call it the HD 5870 X2 if it was just 2x HD 5850.

[Solus Corvus]

So is it fair to say that the HD 5870 X2 will use slower clocked cores to reduce power consumption? I can't believe they'd call it the HD 5870 X2 if it was just 2x HD 5850.

The 4870x2 used two full speed 4870 cores. The 5870 uses less power then the 4870, so the 5870x2 will probably be full speed cores as well.

[Sadasius]

!@!!! I'mma open a company making 2"/3" rectangular ducts to allow the 5870X2 to go right through the HDD Cages to the front vents for fresh cool air intake.
Edit: I'll also be selling "5870x2-to-5.25" drivebay conversion kits", the pitch line will be " buy this kit, if you don't want your card to break right off the PCI-E lane."

Let me know if you guys are interested.

I'll take TWO!

[Chickenfeed]

The 4870x2 used two full speed 4870 cores. The 5870 uses less power then the 4870, so the 5870x2 will probably be full speed cores as well.

It is using roughly the same amount of power with current drivers in recent games but its true TDP is higher so don't overlook that fact. I expect some newer releases will show the 5870 using more ( although not much, more is still more ) Unless they figured out a way to make the PCB design much more efficient than the 4870x2, I'd be surprised to see the 5870x2 with 850/4.8 clocks.

As far as not believing them calling it a 5870X2 at lower clocks, although it would be inconsistent with past cards, the 295 comes to mind. It was basically 2 275s at lower clocks. Who knows, ATI might not even stick with the 5870x2 name ( although I'm assuming they plan to )

Where profiles are concerned, as far as I can tell it will still be the same old CF implementation using PLX so it will still have all of the draw backs of dual gpu setups ( mainly driver issues / lack of support ) If only AMD added user made profiles like Nvidia, that would be a start... Nothing worse than waiting 2-3 weeks for a driver to properly enjoy your new game on your new shiny dual video card setup.

The mentioned flickering still occurs with 5800s by the way although only when using more than 1 display while overclocking ( it uses 400/1200 idle clocks with multiple displays vs 150 / 300 with 1 )

[Shakti]

...

[villa1n]

When is the NDA/Release Date on these up... October 22nd? I m getting itchy to pick up a pair of 5850's but want to see the cooling and scaling on the x2's first ^^

[RFC Rudel]

when will be the 5870 SIX released?

[naokaji]

So is it fair to say that the HD 5870 X2 will use slower clocked cores to reduce power consumption? I can't believe they'd call it the HD 5870 X2 if it was just 2x HD 5850.

The 5870 itself is a downclocked card already, remember the yet to be released 5890.

[Manicdan]

The 5870 itself is a downclocked card already, remember the yet to be released 5890.

with sofar every card having different number of shaders, do you think the 5890 will have 1600 like the 5870 or more?

[annihilat0r]

No, it's just the clocks.

[Manicdan]

then it better be alot of clocks. like 200-300mhz higher

[Helloworld_98]

then it better be alot of clocks. like 200-300mhz higher

it'll probably be 1GHz, then they can claim first GPU with a 1GHz core at stock.