Introduction

Radeon HD 6870 X2 Market Segment Analysis Radeon

HD 6870 GeForce

GTX 560 GeForce

GTX 560 Ti Radeon

HD 6950 GeForce

GTX 570 Radeon

HD 6970 GeForce

GTX 580 PowerColor

HD 6870 X2 Radeon

HD 6990 GeForce

GTX 590 Shader Units 1120 336 384 1408 480 1536 512 2x 1120 2x 1536 2x 512 ROPs 32 32 32 32 40 32 48 2x 32 2x 32 2x 48 Graphics Processor Barts GF114 GF114 Cayman GF110 Cayman GF110 2x Barts 2x Cayman 2x GF110 Transistors 1700M 1950M 1950M 2640M 3000M 2640M 3000M 2x 1700M 2x 2640M 2x 3000M Memory Size 1024 MB 1024 MB 1024 MB 2048 MB 1280 MB 2048 MB 1536 MB 2x 1024 MB 2x 2048 MB 2x 1536 MB Memory Bus Width 256 bit 256 bit 256 bit 256 bit 320 bit 256 bit 384 bit 2x 256 bit 2x 256 bit 2x 384 bit Core Clock 900 MHz 810 MHz 823 MHz 800 MHz 732 MHz 880 MHz 772 MHz 900 MHz 830 MHz 607 MHz Memory Clock 1050 MHz 1002 MHz 1002 MHz 1250 MHz 950 MHz 1375 MHz 1002 MHz 1050 MHz 1250 MHz 855 MHz Price $200 $200 $230 $275 $330 $370 $490 $520 $725 $710

First seen at Computex this year, PowerColor has designed a unique HD 6870 card with the HD 6870 X2. It unites two Barts processor on a single graphics card running in a CrossFire configuration. This approach enables the PowerColor HD 6870 X2 to end up being classified as high-end graphics card, delivering performance catered to 2560x1600 resolutions or multi-screen setups.Since the HD 6870 X2 is not an official AMD product, PowerColor could not rely on any AMD reference design as base for their card. This means that PowerColor had to come up with a solution on their own, for example they replaced the PLX/AMD PCI-Express bridge with a chip provided by Lucid. In terms of clock speeds the card follows the frequencies set out by the HD 6870 reference design - just with two GPUs crammed onto a single PCB.First online listings for the PowerColor HD 6870 X2 suggest a quite high retail price of $520, in this review we'll see whether the card can justify that cost.