Some words from GELID themselves:

The “Rev. 2 ICY VISION” cooler contains 5 power heatpipes in a unique heatpipe constellation. The heatpipes are interlaced into 85 optimized high-quality Aluminium fins. Together with a flat stack fin soldered Copper base, they enable the most efficient heat transmission and dissipation from GPU core in its class. Besides the heatsink, two 92mm UV-reactive fans with 11 blades in S-shape generate 20% additonal air flow than traditional fans. The fan contains a high-quality ball bearing to ensure a longer lifetime in high temperature environments.

The Icy Vision is packaged in blister style packaging. The design heavily utilizes the the light green that has come to be associated with GELID. It protected the cooler well.

GeLid Icy Vision front packaging

GeLid Icy Vision rear packaging

The Belly of the beast:

The very first impression we were struck with after removing the Gelid Icy Vision Rev2 from its packaging was, “Wow, this is light.” We anticipated something much heavier considering the sheer weight of the stock coolers on high end GPUs these days.

In the photo below, you can see the 5 heatpipes of the cooler and how they disperse to the dual heatsinks.

Gelid Icy Vision underside

The top view of the cooler showcases the dual 90mm fans.

Gelid Icy Vision top view

From the side, you can see that the Gelid Icy is actually quite tall. We will discuss what this means for the clearance of the heatsink a bit later on.

Gelid Icy Vision side view

The Icy Vision Revision 2 ships with mounting hardware for over 25 different video cards. If you have pretty much any of the last three generations put out by ATI/AMD or Nvidia, they have you covered. One caveat for owners of 6900 series hardware: you’ll need to pick up an additional pack of RAMsinks, called the Enhancement Kit.

Heatsinks and Backplates

Next: Our Test Bed

Packaging:

The video card:

Specifications and features:

Next: Test System, and Overclocking

Though the packaged is a rather plain, no frills, box; the Sapphire Radeon HD6770 is anything but plain looking. Stepping away from the flashy packaging of most other Sapphire branded products this package is pure function and utility. By focusing on the product contained inside rather than marketing a pretty box Sapphire presents this card (and a few others) with a bold and different approach.

Packaging:

Looking at the card itself makes one forget about the rather plain box:

For a size comparison a GTX 465 was used to represent the more massive cards in this price range. The smaller size of the Sapphire HD6770 makes it more versatile increasing its usefulness in applications where space is at a premium.

Next: Features

SilverStone engineers aim to create another first-class, no-holds-barred chassis with the Temjin TJ11. The TJ11 incorporates some great features from past SilverStone products along with new designs, such as the “Air Penetrator” fans, to help achieve this goal. In addition, there are plenty of ergonomic touches, such as quick access filters, hot-swappable hard drive bays, removable motherboard tray, CPU back plate cutout, and optimized cable routing paths to keep your system running as efficiently as possible.

For hardcore enthusiasts, the all-aluminum TJ11 was specifically designed to be easy to work with, as the entire chassis is free of rivets, so everything can be taken apart. It also has a larger “downstairs” compartment than the TJ07, built to house the largest 4×140mm radiators available on the market.

The potential and the flexibility of TJ11 should be unrivaled in today’s marketplace. However, we will be tossing the TJ11 on our test bench to find out just how good Silverstone did in the creation of the TJ11. Let’s see how it stands up to these lofty expectations, shall we?

Packaging:

Specifications and Features:

Next: A look at the Silverstone Temjin Series TJ11

Packaging:

The ASUS HD 6950:

Specifications:

Next: Test System & Overclocking

Packaging:

The ASUS HD6970:

Specifications and features:

Next: Test System, and Overclocking

The AMD 6850:

Specifications and features:

Next: A Look into the Architecture

The Breakdown:

This will be a straight comparison between these two above cards. It is unbiased with no agenda or “BS” whatsoever! There are people out there who believe that some sites get paid off by big companies to present their product in a good light, well not us. We will bring you honest results which we stand behind and would not be ashamed to show anyone at anytime. You will be able to find correct figures for the system and settings we used. All systems will be a little different, so keep this in mind.  Don’t go off on a tangent because a game is a few FPS different than yours.

Test System:

Overclocked:

*Red = ATI, Green =Nvidia*

3dMark:

Bad Company 2:

World in Conflict:

Synthetic Benchmarks:

3dMark:

FurMark:

Unigine – Heaven v2.1

Unigine – Tropics v1.3

Unigine – Sanctuary v2.3

Game Benchmarks:

*All tests ran at the applications highest allowable detailed settings*

Battlefield – Bad Company 2:

Call of Juarez:

Champions Online:

Company of Heroes:

Warhammer – Dawn of War II:

Dirt 2:

Far Cry 2:

Final Fantasy XIV:

Fuel:

Tom Clancy’s – Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter:

Just Cause 2:

Mass Effect 2:

Call of Duty – Modern Warfare 2:

Operation Flashpoint 2 – Dragon Rising:

Risen:

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:

1920×1200

1920×1080:

1680×1050:

1600×1200:

Street Fighter IV:

Team Fortress 2:

Wings of Prey:

World in Conflict:

Temperatures:

Computer Case

Tech Station

Temperatures were pretty even until we moved into the overclocked settings. Running at stock speeds, the two cards run at about the same temperature, with Nvidia taking the slight lead in load temperature. However, the 5870 does have a commanding lead in the idle/web surfing tasks with a 14-16C difference. I think this probably comes as a shock to most people, seeing everyone talks about how hot the Nvidia cards are in every aspect. The GTX480 was very respectable at stock speeds, but where the 5870 shines is in the overclocking. You can run this card fully overclocked and not turn your room into a sauna, the same cannot be said for the 480, with it hitting 99-100C during testing!

Power Consumption:

Notice in the test below that this is total system power consumption. We tried our best to push the load as much as possible on the video card and nothing else. We ran FurMark at the highest settings our system would allow and we feel this gives the most reliable readings on GPU load and on how much wattage the cards put out without stressing other components in the system too much. (Total consumption measured at outlet.)

As you can see from the chart above, the 5870 wins the power consumption tests hands down. With the 5870 overclocked, it is still under max load wattage of the stock GTX480. With the 480 overclocked, it raises some eyebrows with the amount of watts that the card eats up. This could be a problem for someone who is not expecting that much load and does not have an adequate power supply. Just be aware of this before buying.

Fan Noise:

We would have to say this is pretty much a tie between the two cards. They are both quiet during basic use, and then, they both get extremely annoying once the fan kicks in and you hit a higher percentage of fan use. So knowing how both fans sound, we could not give the edge to either of the cards. You could always water cool both cards and then you would no longer have to worry!

Conclusion:

As you saw from all of the gaming and synthetic benchmark tests we ran on the two cards, the GTX480 seemed to be in the lead for the majority of them. We thought the HD5870 would put up more of a fight than it did and we were wrong! The 5870 got “beaten up” for the most part and we almost felt bad. It was like putting a college freshman up against a well-seasoned senior in football. With that said, though, the 5870 is still an fantastic card. Yes, it did get beat, but if you look at the numbers it was cranking out, they were still very impressive, and it will easily run any game on the market without a problem. For the most part, the 480 will be able to boast of a few extra FPS while running the same games. We are guessing that the extra boost in performance is why the GTX480 costs $499, while the HD5870 is a little cheaper at $429 (these are MSRP prices of course).

There were a few bright spots for the HD5870, such as when we ran the power consumption and temperature tests. The 5870 was definitely the big winner in both of these tests. The idle power consumption of the overclocked GTX480 is actually superior to the overclocked 5870. This was a big surprise to us once we saw the final numbers on power usage. Just keep in mind how much power the GTX480 uses while overclocked under load as this could cause a potential system failure if your PSU is not up to snuff. Temperatures were also a big plus for the 5870. The stock idle temperatures were very low, but where it really shines is once we overclocked it. The max temperature we saw was only 84C, however, when we overclocked the GTX480 we saw a massive jump in temperatures with a max temperature of 100C! That is just a bit too high for us to feel comfortable while gaming for extended periods of time.

Overall, both cards were extremely impressive! You cannot go wrong with either choice, however, there are a few give-and-takes with both cards when considering the temperatures, power consumption, and price versus the game performance. It may also depend on how you feel about the cards and your brand loyalty, which personally we feel shouldn’t come in to play, but some can be more passionate in this regard. We can safely say that both cards will have no problem playing any game on the market. We are hoping this review will help you in your decision on which card or brand may be best for you. The results above were 100% legitimate and without biased opinions or personal agendas presented in the article. Take it for what it is; the truth between the two graphics cards.

Packaging:

The ASUS EAH5870:

Specifications and Features:

Specifications:

• Bus Standard: PCI Express 2.1
• Video Memory: GDDR5 1G
• Engine Clock: 850 MHz
• Memory Clock: 4.8 GHz ( 1.2 GHz DDR5 )
• Memory Interface: 256-bit
• D-Sub Max Resolution: 2048 x 1536
• DVI Max Resolution: 2560 x 1600
• D-Sub Output: Yes x 1 (via DVI to D-Sub adaptor x 1 )
• DVI Output: Yes x 2 (via HDMI to DVI adaptor x 1 )
• HDMI Output: Yes x 1
• DisplayPort: Yes
• HDCP Support: Yes
• Adapter/Cable Bundled: 1 x DVI to D-Sub adaptor
• 1 x CrossFire cable
• 2 x Power cable
• 1 x HDMI to DVI adaptor
• Software Bundled ASUS Utilities & Driver
• Note the Card Size is 10.25 inches x 5 inches.

Features:

Overclocking Software and Results:

ASUS SmartDoctor is included as one of the utilities on your ASUS driver CD. Once installed and running, you will be greeted with the above screen. This is where you can tweak the voltage on the card. You will also be able to change your core speed and memory from this area as well. Our one complaint with the software, as mentioned in our ENGTX480 review, is the GUI. It looks so 90’s compared to other software on the market that does the same thing. We think the GUI could use a nice revamping to give it a better and more up-to-date look.

In the ‘Settings’ area of SmartDoctor, you can see two different sections, one for fan control and another for temperature alarm. The Fan Control section is very easy to customize and will let you set how fast you want your fan running at specific temperatures. This is a very simple way to tweak the fan settings in order to get the most out of your card. The other screen shot (right) let’s you put alarm settings on your video card’s temperatures. This may help keep your mind at ease during long gaming sessions.

Overclocking Results:

We started overclocking with no voltage tweak, just to see what we could get out of the card, for people who do not like to mess with voltages. We finally ended up with an overclock of 950/1335, a 9.4% gain on core speeds and 11.2% increase on memory speeds. Next, we upped the voltage to 1.39 on the 5870 and ended up with a nice overclock of 1008/1351, a 16.1% increase on core speeds and 12.5% increase on memory speeds. Overall, these are very nice overclocks, as no overclocking is guaranteed by manufacturers.

Overclocked Benchmarks:

All Settings At Stock:

CPU stock GPU OC @ 950/1335

CPU stock GPU OC @ 1008/1351 @ 1.39v

CPU @ 4GHz GPU OC @ 1008/1351 @ 1.39v

3dMark – All Settings

We will not add much to the charts above as they do a great job of speaking for themselves. You can clearly see what each setting used on the video card will get you in terms of gaming performance. Now you can make a more informed decision on what settings you will need to run your game of choice, whether it is overclocked or not.

Synthetic Benchmarks:

3dMark:

FurMark v1.7:

Unigine – Heaven v2.1

Unigine – Tropics v1.3

Unigine: Sanctuary v2.3

Game Benchmarks:

*All tests ran at the applications highest allowable detailed settings*

Alien Breed Evolution:

Battlefield – Bad Company 2:

Call of Juarez:

Champions Online:

Company of Heroes:

Warhammer – Dawn of War II:

Devil May Cry 4:

Dirt 2:

Far Cry 2:

Final Fantasy XIV:

Fuel:

Tom Clancy’s – Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter:

Just Cause 2:

Mass Effect 2:

Call of Duty – Modern Warfare 2:

Risen:

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:

1920×1200

1920×1080:

1680×1050:

1600×1200:

Street Fighter IV:

Team Fortress 2:

Wings of Prey:

World in Conflict:

Temperatures:

Computer Case

Tech Station

With the temperature chart above, you can see how good the temperatures really are with this card. Idle temperatures, under all three clock settings, are very low and acceptable for any air-cooled card. The ASUS EAH5870 does a great job at keeping load temperatures in check, even when we raised the voltage on the card, the load temperature only reached 84C with FurMark running. This is a great accomplishment to have a card with this much horsepower not melt everything in sight while running Furmark on the stock cooler. We were quite impressed with just how well the ASUS EAH5870 did in our temperature test.

Power Consumption:

Notice in the test below that this is total system power consumption. We tried our best to push the load as much as possible on the video card and nothing else. We ran FurMark at the highest settings our system would allow. We feel FurMark gives the most reliable readings on GPU load and on how much wattage it puts out without stressing other components in the system too much. (Total consumption measured at outlet.)

With the tests above, you can see just how much wattage you can expect to use during gaming/benchmarking. This should assist you with your PSU shopping and the uncertainties that it always brings. You can now refer to the chart above, and make a better decision on how many watts your PSU will need to be able to deliver. The chart will also give you an idea of what to expect from the much loved energy bill you will get every month. The power consumption of this card is definitely not as much as we were thinking it would be. The 5870 had a very friendly 419w usage, fully loaded and overclocked, with extra voltage added to it. Idle wattage is also quite low, which is nice because we can’t always be gaming, as unfortunate as that may be. Overall, very respective numbers in terms of power consumption for such a powerful card. ATI worked hard on this aspect and it shows.

Fan Noise:

We did not have a decibel meter handy at the time of testing. However, you really don’t need one because there is a definite point where you will start to notice the fan. We have found this line to be at just about the 55% mark.  You will notice, without a doubt, that the fan is working when you crank up the fan to 100%.  There is no way a normal person can sit in the same room for an extended period of time at this speed. It drove us crazy while we ran it for a few tests, and that was only for about 10 minutes. Maybe some people like the sound of a jet engine coming from their case, however, we could certainly do without it. Suffice it to say that you will not want to leave the fan running at 100% for extended periods of time, but for short benching runs it should be tolerable. The good thing about this card is that with the overall cool temperatures that the card produces, you will rarely, if ever, have to hear the fan noise much over 60%. For this, we are grateful to ASUS/ATI and the cooling solution they have provided.

Conclusion:

Overall, the ASUS EAH5870 did a great job with everything we tested it with. It took graphically demanding games and pulled up a lawn chair, sat back, laughed at them, and asked for more. The 5870 kept all the minimum FPS at a playable level at all times. We feel the minimum FPS is one statistic overlooked in gaming and other benchmarks and this is why we provide minimum, maximum, and average FPS for all to see. Average FPS alone can be very misleading, so we make the extra effort to show you everything we can. Overclocking the card was easy, as we have come to expect from ASUS and their great bundled tweaking software. Once they update the interface of the software, we will be sure to shut up about the Windows 95 look of it.

Temperatures of the 5870 were better than expected. We were thinking a card with this much power/performance would crank out a lot of heat. The 82C max temperature we saw with Furmark was a pleasant surprise. As most people will not ever see this temperature, unless possibly while benchmarking, this is great news. The fan, however, is still loud once the card gets hot and the fan gets above 60% speed. This is not a big concern, as explained above, as it would only get to that point during benching.

Our final thought? We would not think twice about recommending this card to any of our friends. The ASUS EAH5870 is a great performing card! For the price, you cannot go wrong and we would be hard pressed to find any competition for it in this range. ASUS has a winner on their hands with the EAH5870, and it will definitely be a card to reckon with for a long time to come.

The ASUS EAH5870 V2 has earned the TechREACTION.net Gold Silicon Award!







You can find the ASUS EAH5870 V2 currently on sale at NewEgg for $389.99 (after MIR).

Thank you to ASUS for the review sample.

Packaging:

The 5770:

Specifications:

Features:

• ATI Eyefinity
• Advanced GDDR5 Memory Technology
• 40nm Process Technology
• ATI Stream Technology
• ATI Avivo HD (DVD/HD-DVD/Blue-ray Playback)
• ATI CrossFireX™ Multi-GPU Technology
• PCI-Express 2.0
• Dual-Link DVI
• HDMI
• DisplayPort
• Microsoft DirectX® 11
• OpenGL® 3.1 and 3.2
• Shader Model 5.0
• ATI Catalyst Control Center™
• Accelerated Video Transcoding
• Dolby® TrueHD and DTSHD Master Audio™ Support
• Anti-aliasing features
• Multi-sample anti-aliasing (2, 4 or 8 samples per pixel)
• Up to 24x Custom Filter Anti-Aliasing (CFAA) for superior quality
• Adaptive super-sampling and multi-sampling
• Gamma correct
• Super AA (ATI CrossFireX™configurations only)
• All anti-aliasing features compatible with HDR rendering
• Physics processing support
• ATI PowerPlay™
• Windows® 7 support

Test System:

Overclocking:

When starting the overclocking, a few things came up, so we decided to let the Auto-Tune function in CCC make the recommended overclock while we were gone. Little did we know that it takes its sweet time in doing this. About five hours later it was finally done. We took the settings that Auto-Tune gave us and tried to push it even higher.  We thought maybe the program would be geared toward the safe side.  However, come to find out, it gave us max overclocking results. Without flashing the BIOS, or anything like that, we hit the ceiling with the clocks posted above.  We ended up with a really nice 13% and 20% overclock on the GPU clock and memory clock, respectively. This is not bad at all, especially for the average user who would like a little more muscle in games. Especially considering the fact that you can use the Auto-Tune function and get max settings; anyone can now overclock their cards like a pro.

Synthetic Benchmarks:

3DMark01

3DMark03

3DMark05

3DMark06

FurMark: AA8x

1920x1200

1680x1050

1280x800

Unigine Heaven: DX11, HIGH, Tesselation-Enabled, AA8x, AA8x

1920x1200

1680x1050

1280x800

Game Benchmarks: *All details set to HIGH*

Batman Arkham Asylum: AA-8x AF-16x.

1920x1200

Bad Company 2 – AA8x AF16x

1920x1200

1680x1050

1280x800

Company of Heroes – AA-enabled  AF-NA

1920x1200

1680x1050

1280x800

Call of Juarez-  AA-4x DX10

1920x1200

1680x1050

1280x800

Far Cry 2 –  AA-8x AF-NA DX10

1920x1200

1680x1050

1280x800

FUEL:  AA-8x AF-16x

1920x1200

Tom Clancy’s HAWX – DX10 AA8x

1920x1200

1680x1050

1280x800

Just Cause 2: AA-8x AF-16x

1920x1200

1680x1050

1280x800

Modern Warfare 2: AA4x AF-NA

1920x1200

1680x1050

1280x800

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:  AA-4x DX11

1920×1200

CPU @ Stock // GPU @ Stock

CPU - Stock GPU - 960-1435

CPU-4.1 GPU-stock

CPU-4.1 GPU- 960-1435

1680×1050

CPU @ Stock // GPU @ Stock

CPU-Stock GPU- 960-1435

CPU-4.1 GPU-stock

CPU-4.1 GPU- 960-1435

1280×800

CPU @ Stock // GPU @ Stock

CPU-Stock GPU- 960-1435

CPU-4.1 GPU-stock

CPU-4.1 GPU- 960-1435

Team Fortress 2: AA8x AF16x

1920x1200

1680x1050

1280x800

Torchlight:

1920x1200

1680x1050

1280x800

World In Conflict:

1920x1200

1680x1050

1280x800

Power Consumption:

Notice in the test below that this is total power consumption. We tried our best to make the load as much as possible on the video card and nothing else. We ran FurMark at the highest settings our system would allow. We think FurMark would give us the most reasonable readings on GPU load and how much wattage it puts out without stressing other components in the system too much.

With the tests above, you can see just how much wattage you can expect to use during gaming/benchmarking. This should help you with your PSU buying needs and the uncertainties that it always brings about. You can now refer to the chart above and make a better decision on how many watts your PSU needs to be. The chart will also give you an idea of what to expect from the much loved energy bill you get every month. Even with the card taking the system up to 277w while overclocked, this is still a very reasonable number for most people. It has definitely improved over the power hungry ATI/Nvidia cards of old.

Temperature Testing:

Testing Conditions:

• Ambient Room Temp: 24C
• Ambient checked before and after tests
• Card set at test settings for 15 minutes to get idle temperature

Video Card @ Stock

Video Card @ 960/1435

After finishing the tests, we notice one major difference. The 5 series card temperatures are leaps and bounds ahead of the old 4 series! Finally, ATI got the temperatures under control and these cards can no longer be used as a substitute to fry up some eggs. With the vast improvement in heat dissipation, once again, it is a viable option to run crossfire and not have your room feeling like a sauna after a few hours of gaming.

Fan Noise Level:

We did not have a decibel meter handy at the time of testing. However, you really don’t need one because there is a definite line where you will start to notice the fan. We have found this line to be in the range of 53%-58%.  You will notice, without a doubt, that the fan is moving air. When you crank up the fan to 100%, the real noise is let loose! There is no way a normal person can sit in the same room for an extended period of time at this speed. It drove us crazy while we messed with it for a few tests, and that was only for about 10 minutes. Maybe some people like the sound of a jet engine coming from their case? We could certainly do without it, so suffice to say you will not want to leave the fan running at 100% for long periods of time.

Final Thoughts:

Also be sure to check out TestFreaks for more reviews on the Sapphire Radeon HD5770 1GB.

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