Cooling

The cooler is similar to the one used in RADEON HD 5870, but has a longer heatsink. The turbine drives air through the heatsink inside the long plastic housing and out of the PC enclosure. As I have already mentioned, due to cooler dimensions, such cards occupy two expansion slots.

Traditionally, we monitored temperatures using RivaTuner.

ATI RADEON HD 5970

The core temperature doesn't exceed 85°C, which is nice. The cooler is slightly noisy at such a temperature, but you have to understand that there are no powerful, dual-GPU cards with noiseless coolers. Well, there actually was that customized noiseless GeForce GTX 295 which had both cores on the same PCB, but that edition was quite limited.

Bundles

A basic bundle should include the following items: a user manual, a software CD, a DVI-to-VGA (or a DVI-to-HDMI) adapter, a Mini-DisplayPort adapter, a CrossFire adapter, and an external power splitter. Now let's see what other accessories are bundled with each card.

Gigabyte RADEON HD 5970 2x1024MB
The basic bundle plus Colin McRae: Dirt 2.
HIS RADEON HD 5970 2x1024MB
The similar bundle plus Colin McRae: Dirt 2 and a mini tool set.
Sapphire RADEON HD 5970 Overclocked 2x1024MB
The basic bundle plus Colin McRae: Dirt 2 and BattleForge.

Boxes

Gigabyte RADEON HD 5970 2x1024MB
The stylish jacketed box. The bundled accessories are stowed into compartments, the card itself is securely stowed into a polyurethane foam compartment. Comparing to previous products, the design has changed, and the box has become uneven to the touch.
HIS RADEON HD 5970 2x1024MB
The company has radically changed the packaging. The jacket is now vertical and quite stylish. The graphics card is securely stowed into its compartment.
Sapphire RADEON HD 5970 Overclocked 2x1024MB
This is a new box as well. The card is stowed into a papier-mache compartment while the rest of the bundle is inside a smaller box under the card. Finally, the jacket has become nice.

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