The new card arrived today in a weird X shaped box that will take even the best of us a good five minutes to figure out how the bloody thing opens without reading instructions, which lets face it no body does anymore.
After removing it from the box, and getting a slight workout while doing so, due to the cards horrendous size and weight, I realised that this probably wouldn't fit in my Antec 900. No worries, move half internals of the computer about and that's the size issue of it sorted. If you've got a small case I'd recommend you buy another, as this will overheat and fill up more space than a whale in a small hatchback.
So, whats the new card like? Well the current range of drivers aren't that bad, after all the new 9.12 drivers have sorted out some of the bugs of the card.
If you'd want one of these you'd have to pay £100 more than the RRP of the thing, and no one has them in, go, look on a site, I can virtually guarantee you that no one has one (at the time of writing).
So, whats the performance like of the card I hear you ask. Well on the winSAT- windows benchtest, it scores 7.7 / 7.9 on stock clocks. I'd assume you could get 7.8 7.9 overclocked but if you want to do that, then may i suggest you buy a 5970 instead, and jam a nicely sized spike into your head if all you do is play on farmville.
I've got no idea whether the card is noisy on low fan speeds because, in the 12 hours I've had the thing running the fans been running at 100%, and cooking at around 40-45 degrees C.
The card is fking quick though, running Crysis warhead comfortably at 1680x1050, with 2xAA and everything on enthusiast settings, which is good enough, because lets face it your eyesight probably isn't good enough to notice a difference when your tearing through the jungle at some ridiculous speed.
Should you buy one?
