have to admit that this week was busier than I thought, the big thing for video cards this week was if we would see any HD 5800 series card that moved away from the normal cooler. While we’ve heard from many companies since the beginning of the year that they had hoped to release a OC version of the HD 5870 or HD 5850, or one with a new cooler before Chinese New Year it seems that most weren’t able to hit the deadline.
Saying that; some companies did manage to get the cards ready, this week we saw a sample from PowerColor who we haven’t seen anything from in ages, they decided to reintroduce themselves in style with the HD 5870 PCS+ which will go online tonight at TweakTown.
The other company that was able to get a modified HD 5800 series card in time was Sapphire with the HD 5850 TOXIC; which is a model I’ve been waiting on for ages with the HD 5870 having already received the TOXIC treatment a bit back.
HIS seemed to want to get a few samples out before the CNY holiday, I received from them alone this week a HD 5450, HD 5570 and HD 5770. These cards will get tested over CNY which should be a fairly quiet week with no one else really getting samples out before the factories closed for the holidays.
The RAM side of things was pretty quiet this week with only a Kingston Hyper-X 2133MHz kit coming in. This gets thrown into a pile of a few other RAM kits that really need to be tested over the coming week.
At the moment I think only the HD 5830 will arrive next week but some other brands might have got something out before the factories and offices shut down.
As for reviews this week I would rechire HD 5570 which is quite a mean little low profile card, while not for everyone it clearly has its market. The other really stand out product would be the HD 5770 HAWK that I mentioned last week, you can see that one here. The overclock on this model was insane; so if you’re looking at a HD 5770 I would highly recommend you check this one out.