Asus EAH5870 Radeon HD 5870 Review

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, December 29, 2009, 02:29 PM EDT

Immediately upon its introduction, the ATI Radeon HD 5870 took the title for the fastest, single-GPU on the market. There was simply no other single-GPU that could touch it, not only in terms of performance, but in regard to features as well. And at the time, virtually all of AMD's strategic board partners were at the ready with products based on the Radeon HD 5870 reference design.

Unfortunately, due to some yield issues at TSMC, the foundry that manufactures the actual chips at the heart of the card, supplies of Radeon HD 5870 (and Radeon HD 5850) cards quickly dried up. AMD had the fastest, most feature-rich single GPU on the market, and it was incredibly difficult to buy one for a while there.

The supply issues have since cleared up, however, and Radeon HD 5870 cards are easily attainable once again. With that in mind, we're taking a look at Asus' take on AMD's flagship single-GPU, the EAH5870. Like essentially all of the other Radeon HD 5870 cards currently available, Asus' offering is based on AMD's reference design. But Asus does have a couple of tricks up its sleeve that help differentiate the EAH5870 from the also-rans. Read on and take a look for yourself...

Asus EAH5870 Radeon HD 5870 Review

Tags: Asus, Radeon, Gaming, DirectX, graphics, GPU, 5870

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com