Connectivity on the Sapphire HD 5870 comes in the form of two DUSL link DVI ports as well as a single DisplayPort and HDMI port. With ATI's EyeFinity Multimonitor technology it looks as though DisplayPort has found a permanent home as a standard. The back end end of the HD5870 features two intakes for the blower fan assembly and with the racing stripe down the center of the card could be mistaken for the front end of a car!

The HD5870 is Crossfire capable with the addition of a second HD5870 and motherboard that supports Crossfire technology. Power is routed to the Sapphire HD5870 via two 6-pin PCI-E connections on the top of the board rather than on the end of the PCB. The HD5870 is said to use 188 watts of power under load and a miserly 27 watts at idle. One thing I did notice was that the GPU core clock dropped to 150MHz when in an idle state versus the 300MHz seen on the HD4890. Lower clock speeds equate to lower power consumption.

Let's see if this baby lives up to the promise of doubled performance!

A Look at the ATI 5000-series

As you can probably tell by the chart above, both the HD 5870 and the HD 5850 fit perfectly into ATI’s current lineup. In essence, The HD 5870 takes the place of the expensive-to-produce and comparably inefficient dual GPU HD 4870X2 as the top dog for the time being. Judging from paper specifications alone, the HD 5870 is a technological marvel considering it packs all of the rendering potential of ATI’s past flagship card and then some while not being saddled by an inefficient dual processor design. The fact that this new card could effectively double the performance of a HD 4890 just a few months after that card’s release is nothing short of stunning.