14 DAY TRIAL // Though it was revealed about a week or so ago, only now has MSI's latest iteration of the AMD Radeon HD 6870 come to market, one that boasts a certain dual-fan cooler.
For those consumers interested in a reminder, the AMD Radeon HD 6870 is one of the two currently available HD 6000 series graphics cards.
It is aimed at the higher part of the mainstream market and is powered by the Barts graphics processing unit (GPU).
A while ago, a leak revealed that Micro-Star International will soon be releasing a remodeled version of the board.
The card has now been officially launched, though perhaps not as well detailed as end-users may have been hoping for.
As far as things left unchanged compared to the stock card go, it has 1,120 stream processors, as well as 1 GB of GDDR5 VRAM which works on an interface of 256 bits.
There is also mention of Eyefinity-ready dual-DVI, HDMI and dual mini DisplayPort connectors, as well as Solid CAPs, which boost quality and stability.
Unfortunately, the press release that MSI issued held no sort of information on the clock speeds of the GPU, shaders and memory.
This is somewhat unusual, considering that the company did mention that the overvoltage function within the MSI Afterburner overclocking software can drive the Barts higher, depending on user-controlled settings.
On the other hand, it does point out the fact that, instead of the reference cooler, the Twin Frozr II is employed.
With five heatpipes and two fans, said cooling module can drive operating temperatures lower by 19 degrees compared to the reference version.
Not only that, but the sound output is also supposed to be lower, by 12.8 dB to be exact.
Unfortunately, as is the case with the frequencies, the availability and pricing have still not been revealed.