Introduction

First seen at Computex this year, PowerColor has designed a unique HD 6870 card with the HD 6870 X2. It unites two Barts processor on a single graphics card running in a CrossFire configuration. This approach enables the PowerColor HD 6870 X2 to end up being classified as high-end graphics card, delivering performance catered to 2560x1600 resolutions or multi-screen setups.



Since the HD 6870 X2 is not an official AMD product, PowerColor could not rely on any AMD reference design as base for their card. This means that PowerColor had to come up with a solution on their own, for example they replaced the PLX/AMD PCI-Express bridge with a chip provided by Lucid. In terms of clock speeds the card follows the frequencies set out by the HD 6870 reference design - just with two GPUs crammed onto a single PCB.

First online listings for the PowerColor HD 6870 X2 suggest a quite high retail price of $520, in this review we'll see whether the card can justify that cost.