After showing it off at the recent Computex show, Powercolor has officially released its HD6870X2, which combines two AMD Radeon HD 6870 high-performance GPUs on a single card. It will compete with other dual-GPU boards like the Radeon HD 6990, Nvidia GeForce GTX 590, and the forthcoming Asus Mars II, though according to Fudzilla, it will undercut their pricing by being offered at $449.
The HD6870X2 runs each GPU at 900MHz, with a total of 4GB of GDDR5 video memory running at 1050MHz. Since it uses the 6870 graphics engine instead of the 6970 like the Radeon HD 6990, you won’t get as high performance (likewise, the GTX 590 uses top-of-the-line GTX 580 GPUs), but it could wind up being faster than any single-GPU card on the market. Powercolor uses a combination heatpipe-and-cooling-fan solution to try to tamp down the inevitable massive heat this configuration will produce.
Of course, the HD6870X2 supports CrossFireX, which means you can combine a pair of them to have four Radeon HD 6870 GPUs in your system for under $1,000. Sure, that’s more than most desktops cost, but there will be deep-pocketed gamers who will see quite a bargain. Others will want to wait until Powercolor rolls out its HD 6970 X2 solution, certain to cost quite a bit more, but using a pair of 6970s.
