It was almost a year ago that ATI began introducing their new Radeon HD 5000 series cards, starting with the then-flagship 5870 model, for a price just under $400. Shortly after that the top spot was taken over by the dual-GPU 5970, but at a cost that was nearly double - $700. Now here it is 11 months later and the market has held fairly steady, despite nVidia's release of the GTX 400 series in the interim, you still can't find a 5870 or 5970 for much less than what they initially launched. However what you do find now is a bigger variety of manufacturers offering non-reference cards, overclocked editions and various game bundles. ASUS has combined all three of these into their latest EAH5870/G/2DIS/1GD5/V2.


While the model number may seem confusing and excessively long at first, ASUS does this to distinguish each card among its many other offerings. In the 5870 lineup for example, they make no less than seven different variants! What the other letters and numbers translate to is that the card we have for review today features a game bundle, STALKER Call of Pripyat in this case, two DVI connections and DisplayPort capability, 1Gb of GDDR5 video memory and the non-reference "version 2" ASUS designed card cooler. With their Voltage Tweak Technology, ASUS claims performance can be boosted up to 50% over a reference 5870 card, while the larger fan and all-copper GPU sink keeps temperatures 17% lower.

Join us as we take a closer look at the ASUS EAH5870 V2 STALKER Edition.