With all the hoopla over the GTX 460 going on we are taking the time to look at a GPU that is not really new, but is still worthy of some headlines. Although the AMD Radeon HD5870 is fast approaching its first birthday it is no surprise that it is still a big seller. But we wondered if it is the reference GPUs that are making the 5870 fly off the shelves or if it is products like the Asus EAH5870 S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat edition (which we will just call Stalker COP moving forward) This is Asus’ V2 HD5870 with a voltage tweak option for great overclocking potential. As you might have guessed the box also contains the Stalker COP game as part of the bundle. So let’s try out this bundle and see if it is worth the $500 or so you will shell out for it.
Value -Although we could not find this exact card for sale on the common e-tailers. We were able find just the GPU on NewEgg.com. Just the EAH5870 V2 without the Game bundle will run you about $450 we imagine the game will add another $30 or so (at the very least) so you are back up around $500. This is still less than many of the GXT 480 cards that are on the market and much less than the HD5970s (if you can find one). Is it worth $500? Well that is again a subjective thing; to someone that does not game this amount will be extravagant and outrageous. But to a gamer, or an overclocker, $500 to get the most FPs from their games or get that extra couple of MHz on the core or memory is going to be worth it. Again I hit up a few friends to get their opinions. From my budget minded friend I got the very predictable “rip-off” and “waste of money”. Then again, this guy buys bargain everything so I would not expect him to think of $500 on a single component as a good buy. My gamer/overclocker friend was quite excited about this GPU after I showed him the performance and overclocking results. The price was not much to shell out for what he felt was great potential for overclocking and gaming.
Conclusion -Gaming and the associated pieces and parts that go to make up the hardware needed to do this are very subjective. There are games that I cannot stand that others simply love. This is the same way with GPUs, what I like in image quality you might not. This is one of the reasons why we use a large number of games and synthetics to give a numeric performance line. The problem with that is, all the hardware is very evenly matched. You will still have Card a or b out in front by a handful of FPS or 3DMarks, but in the end they are close enough that in actual use you would never be able to tell them apart. So we end up looking at the features that the OEMs put into them. With that in mind let’s take a look at what we got with the EAH5870 Stalker COP edition. The first thing we get is the Stalker COP game. Although I am not a fan of the Stalker series, to many this is a great game and one they would love to get their hands on. Having it bundled with a GPU that can handle the extra work load of the game engine is a great idea.Next up on the plate is the custom cooling, PCB, and components. While ancillary they help provide the backbone for the performance you can get out of this product. As an example the GPUs used are speed binned (not as much as the EAH TOP series) this means you are much more likely to get a GPU with some overclocking head room than if you picked up a reference GPU. On top of that Asus gives you some good (although not very good looking) tools to allow you to explore this head room. For the part that we tested we were very impressed with the real world performance after a somewhat shaly start with some of the synthetic tests. We can certainly recommend this card to the avid gamer or overclocker; I mean 1GHz Core and 5.2GHz memory is very good on this already overclocked card. This would not be possible without the almost invisible design and component choices we talked about above.
