Today we're going to be unboxing something very exciting from AMD. And
actually, it's funny that I should say from AMD because right here you can see
they've actually changed the branding. Finally. AMD acquired ATI way long time
ago, but now finally instead of ATI Radeon graphics, it is now officially
AMD Radeon Grai Graphics as of the 6000
series. So this is the Radeon 6870 which
is one of the first two Radeon 6000 series graphics cards. It supports up to
four displays in AMD iinity. So that's
an increase of up of one more display from the 5870 series. Okay. So that
means you can run two off of the DisplayPort. So those are two mini DisplayPort
and then two off of DVI or HDMI. So you've got a total of three connectors
there. Let's turn this over and we'll have a look at what it's got to say
about itself on the box. So, this is an MSI card. That means they've got a lot
on here about MSI Afterburner, which allows you to overclock and uh do
optimal fan profiles, all that good stuff. After Burner is an awesome piece
of software. You've probably seen me use it on my blog a lot of times. It's got
solid caps, which means up to 10 years of lifetime. They actually calculated
out to 12 years, assuming you're actually gaming 24/7 for all 12 years.
Here's a couple of highlighted features which I guess I'll sort of I'll talk
about that briefly while I open the box and we'll have a look at this card right
away because to be perfectly honest with you. I have not seen this. I have never
seen one of these cards. This is going to be my first time just like you. Oo,
nice sticker actually. Okay, so there it is. That is the Radeon HD 6870.
So, let's get it undone here and then I'm just going to lay this
out for you to sort of for cameraman to look at while I tell you a little bit
more about it. So, in terms of we
already talked about the displays out. So, we have support for AMD Avivo.
That's their HD video and display technology. We've got Crossfire X. Okay.
We've got only one Crossfire finger up there. So, that means we've only got
two-way Crossfire, not three-way Crossfire. We have iinity technology
with support for up
to three displays. Hold on a minute.
Pause the video. Blu-ray movie acceleration. By
the way, that looks like a typo on the features of the box cuz it does support
four displays. It's compliant with DirectX11, which we already have come to
expect. And it is designed for direct compute 5.0 and Open CL. Windows 7
support is a given. and it can accelerate Office 2010 applications. It
supports HDMI 1.4A, which means that you do have support for Blu-ray 3D playback
with the appropriate software. So, let's start moving this card around and have a
look at it. So, as I mentioned before, we've got one Crossfire finger up here
at the top for up to two-way Crossfire. So, you can run two 6870s in a Crossfire
configuration. You got a really slick looking shroud on here. So, this part is
actually metal. So, what I'm going to go ahead and speculate actually here, maybe
I can see through there. Um, no, I can't
really can't really see in there, but I would speculate that this piece of metal
is actually cooling some of the RAM chips on the front of the card, and then
it turns into plastic at this seam right here, as far as I can tell. And so,
that's just a plastic fan shroud. You've got two six pin PCI Express connectors.
And then moving around to the back of the card, you've got a continuation of that pattern that's just going to look
really, really sharp in your case. Whether you have uh a case with that
where the graphics cards are installed this way or one where you've got your motherboard tray on the other side and
it installs this way. It just looks really good. All right, so let's move
around to the business end of the card where we have two DVI connectors, one
HDMI connector. Now, just like the 50 uh 5000 series, you can only use two of
these at a time. If you want four displays, that means that two of them
will be powered by the mini DisplayPort connectors, which you find here. Much
like the 5870, it has only a half exhaust
uh at the back of the IO panel. So, that means that all of the air will have to
be exhausted out that small hole. With the 5000 series, it didn't have a huge
impact on the cooling performance. So, I wouldn't worry too much about it for
this one because I'd say based on the overall weight of the card, the
dimensions of the cooler, the size of the fan, it's probably got pretty
similar thermal characteristics to the last generation card. On the back, we
find a slick black PCB. Now, one thing that might seem like it's missing from a
6870 card is like a shroud on the back,
but you got to remember the 6800 series
is not the equivalent of the 5800 series
in terms of where it belongs in the AMD lineup. This is actually going to be a
performance uh like a performance card,
but not an extreme card. This isn't the highest end series. So, let's go ahead
and put this down and let's take out
what we have in here in terms of accessories. So, first we have a quick
users guide. Then we have a driver disc,
which you may actually need to use depending on uh when AMD releases the
drivers on their site. Okay, driver and utility. Then we have a mini display
port to DisplayPort adapter. So, that'll allow you to at least run uh
iffinity with three displays if you don't have any mini DisplayPort
monitors or adapters. Then you've got two Molex to PCIe six pin power
connectors. You've got one Crossfire bridge, which is all you will need. Then
you have a DVI to VGA adapter if you are still using a VGA monitor. Last but not
least, we've got a 6800
series. Well, another quick start guide by the look of things. Shows you how to
update your drivers using their live update. So, there you have it. The 6800
or 6800 series 6870 from MSI. And we're
going to be doing a ton of videos about this guy, power consumption, length,
review, all that good stuff. So stay tuned.