14 DAY TRIAL // NVIDIA is on its way towards finally covering the entire graphics market and Advanced Micro Devices won't manage to bring out anything new for a while. AMD also does not seem to have any intention of lowering its price points. This is just another reason for its partners to once again bring out customized versions of existing video boards in order to stay competitive, and PowerColor just did exactly that. The company came forth and provided a new incarnation of a water-cooled controller it unleashed last year.
Over eight months ago, PowerColor released the LCS (Liquid Cooling Solution) HD5870, a liquid cooled (obviously) edition of ATI's original creation. Now, that same board has reincarnated as the LCS HD5870 V2. This product will come with factory overclocked settings and an EK full-cover waterblock.
The waterblock features a copper base that makes contact with not just the GPU, but also the memory and power regulator chips. It is supposed to drive operating temperatures lower than 50°C at load, even in spite of the tweaked frequencies.
The GPU operates at 950 MHz instead of 850 MHz, whereas the 1GB of GDDR5 is set at 4,800 MHz and has an interface of 256 bits. 1,600 stream processors are also present, as are dual-DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort outputs. Needless to say, CrossFireX and ATI Eyefinity are supported.
"We got very positive feedback from the first version of the LCS HD5870,” said Ted Chen, CEO of TUL Corporation (TUL owns the PowerColor brand). “Now we released an upgraded version with factory overclocked settings and offer a cool working environment. We're sure that it will exceed expectations from gamers.”
Unfortunately, the hardware maker decided not to publish any information on pricing just yet. On the other hand, it did mention that the package would include a coupon for DiRT 2, which gives users one more reason to wait in anticipation for this final detail to be disclosed.