Gadgetory

all right so welcome to another hardware canucks unboxing sort of preview video what we have in front of us is the XFX Radeon HD 5870 now this card is the talk of the town right now we've actually done a full review which you can see over at triple WR Canucks Calm it has all of the benchmarks as well as an in-depth look at the new card so I'm really excited for this let's get unboxing so let's take a look at the box we have the usual funky XFX style styled in ATI red on the right side we have a quick description of some of the ATI technologies that are included on the card and then then on the back we have sort of the marketing material and a general description of what is included with the card as well as their five-star support description on the right side there is the key features of the cards such as the one gig of ddr2 memory api's new infinity technology with support up for up to three displays and if you've ever seen a demo of that you'll know that this is some pretty radical stuff ATI stream technology offloading CPU tasks on to the GPU they still have an improved folding mind you but we have DirectX 11 GL crossfire a vivo dynamic power management now this is kind of cool down here what they have included is along with HDMI and the dual DVI we have DisplayPort which was a port when picked up by AMD they've adapted it in order to be able to use the eyefinity so you can have three monitors attached to a single display using DisplayPort and the PCI Express 2.0 support on the far side of the box we have these system requirements for the card and what that is is obviously need a PCI Express slot and a 500 watt or greater power supply and if you take a look at our review on the unit you'll see that that's probably not a bad recommendation and you'll need a dual 6 pin PCI Express power connectors crossfire you'll need for it also a quick description of what is in the box which we're gonna take a look at so let's open it up now as we open up the unit I'm just gonna Yammer on a bit about XFX is warranty they are one of the better warranties for ATI what they offer is off the bat a lifetime guarantee for the card for original owner on top of that they also offer a transferable warranty which is great if you're going to be selling the card after you're done that warranty transfers off to the buyer also they have a modder friendly warranty which if you're gonna be adding like a water block or a heatsink and fan or whatever they will still be able to cover the card in the event of a manufacturing that's the key manufacturing defect so let us open it up and see what we have we have a box inside a box obviously at the top we have a quick install guide which is the this is the physical depiction of how to install it we have an installation guide which basically teaches you how to install the drivers if you're not familiar with how to hit the next button we also have a CD here which I assume is going to be drivers and maybe some sort of overclocking utility we have the door hanger which you'll find in a lot of XFX cards now what's cool about this is they've included both the part number and your individual cards serial number along with a username and password thing so anything that you're going to need in order to arm a it if you have to you also have dirt two which is one of the premiere titles for DirectX 11 so most every version of the 5870 is going to include that be it XFX or another company I'm not going to show you the product key because I want to play it and then in here and no not quite yet let us take a look at we have a molex we have a molex to the PCI power connectors we actually have we have two of them there's VGA into into DVI and there is the crossfire connector alright and now it is time for the highlight of the show XFX Radeon HD 5870 video card and while this thing is huge right off the bat oh you see it has the front has the same style as the box which is a really nice design and boy is it a big card let's just move this out of the way quickly pull over we have a 9800 GX 2 which previously is one of the largest cards on the market will match it up with a 58 70 here and as you can see well the 9800 is trumped 5870 is by all means the largest card that you're gonna be able to find so I hope that if you're getting it you have a large case you're gonna need space for a ten and a half inch video card so just looking at the card here we have a plastic sort of PCB there on the back we have a little bit of venting on the side here as it goes in like so you have the PCI Express the power slots as well as a little bit of venting here you have the crossfire connectors here on the back you actually will have a cover over the PCB this is hopefully to eliminate some ESD if you're going to be touching a card like I am also we have on the front we have our two DVI connectors HDMI and there is that DisplayPort we're talking about and then at the bottom just a little bit of venting you'll be interesting to see how that affects the temperatures with that little amount of room other than that that's about all there is to the card it's really big it's going to be a big weight in your system but it looks pretty cool so let's take a look at the benchmarks and we'll be back all right so there we are the XFX Radeon HD 5870 I must say what a great card it's looking like it's going to take the crown as the single best GPU solution on the market and with a price tag of 399 dollars it falls right in line with the competition now ETI is also producing a cheaper version of the card which features sort of the same the same advancements in technology for about $299 and that is the HD 5850 now both of which are going to be really hard to find on the market right after release so if you wait a week or two hopefully more gonna start to filter into the retail channels other than that that is it for this unboxing video and have a good one