Sapphire Radeon HD 5970 2 GB DDR5 Dual DVI-I / Mini DP OverClock Edition PCI-Express Graphics Card 100280OCSR

Works great so far would have been nice to have some kind of manual and a little better packaging

I've gone through many video cards over the years and have had experience with a variety of series and brands. I've used a 5200, X800, X850, X1900, X1950XTX, 7800GTX, 8800GTS, 8800GT, GTX260, GTX285, 5850, 5870, and now the 5970. As you can now tell, I'm not partial to either ATI or NVIDIA, but I am a fan of good performance in general. I will usually go for whoever has the king of the crop, whether it be all out performance or money for the dollar. In the case of the 5970, you definitely are not getting cheap performance, but you do get what you pay for in high-end bliss!!I purchased this card a week ago Friday from a local store. I admit I was thoroughly surprised they even had one of these for sale at this place. It's a small, local chain of computer repair/sale shops. Anyway, they were selling the card for $649, so even after the tax I got the card for the same price I would have buying it online. It was a good deal... especially since it always sucks having to wait on shipping.I was using the following rig with this card over my first weekend with it. In case anyone is wondering, I am restricted to using only micro atx motherboards because I went with the Antec Mini P180 micro atx case. I have taken out the bottom hard drive rack (thank god it's removable) in order to fit the past couple cards. This 5970 is definitely the longest I've ever used. Also, the motherboard I owned was NOT built to handle any overclocking whatsoever. I could never get any stable overclocks with the following setup.Intel Q9400 @ stock 2.4ghz settings4GB DDR2-800 memorySapphire 5970 with 10.3 Catalyst (current drivers)Windows 7 64-bit (fresh install)I knew that my system was starting to show its age but I didn't realize by exactly how much. When I started using the 5970 in this setup I noticed a difference in Crysis and Crysis Warhead, but in most of my other games I didn't really see a huge benefit over my GTX285. The framerates were slightly better, but I wasn't getting the framerates that the reviews and benchmarks all over the web were getting. Here's the numbers I was seeing in my tests with this last-gen setup. All tests were taken at 1920x1200 resolution and with maxed out graphics detail with any exceptions listed next to the game. I used FRAPS for the majority of the benchmarking, unless the game had a built-in tool.Crysis Warhead - No AA - 29-41 seemed to be the typical framerate range I was getting here... little lower dips here and there but only for a second or so.Metro 2033 DX10 (DX11 supported but KILLS framerates) - 33-85 was commonly seen. It seems with the highest settings turned on the major lighting REALLY drops the framerates on this title. You can go from 80fps to 24 just by turning a corner and walking into a room with special lighting effects.Counter Strike Source - 255 avg (caps at 300 and I hit 300fps for about 30% of the test)World in Conflict - 21min/43avg/97max - used built-in benchmark testWorld of Warcraft - Dalaran 16-20fps - Zangarmarsh - 44 avgFar Cry 2 - 71min/81avg/120maxUniGine benchmark tool - default settings - 4min/28avg/73max3DMark Vantage - 13300 (rounded to nearest hundred)Needless to say, I was not impressed and not happy with the performance I was getting here after having spent $700 on this card. It didn't seem worth it... and for the price paid, it is NOT. After researching online, I came across a brand new article that showed me what this card could really do if aided with the proper system to run it. Amazon prohibits external links so I will tell you how to get to the article I read. Using the google search engine, search for "Radeon 5870 crossfire cpu scaling" and check out the "Performance Part 2" article there. It is a great one that shows fairly close to what you can expect to get from the 5970, when combined with the proper system to run the card at its true potential.It was because of this article that I decided to step up and order a new motherboard, cpu, and memory to run with this 5970. I ordered these parts and put the setup together last night. I stayed up until 2:30am running a bunch of tests. I simply could not stop until I had finished initial testing. I was hooked, lol. New setup listed below.Intel Core i5 750 quad core OC'd to 3.8ghz4GB DDR3-2000mhz speed memory (huge increase over 800 speed!)Sapphire 5970 (of course)So here are the results from the new setup.Crysis Warhead - No AA - I seemed to average a fairly stable 55fps the majority of the time now. Once in a while I'll see fps dip into the mid-40's but the majority of the time I was getting a solid mid 50's. I would often see highs get into the 60's and even break 70fps. It was incredible! Finally!!! A setup to run this game *well*!World of Warcraft - Dalaran.............. omg........... really!?........... 41-46fps average, even with 50+ people onscreen. This is so cool! Anyone who's played this game and had the misfortune of entering this city knows the frustration it will bring about to any system. I was very inspired that I could handle this. I didn't think anything could at maxed out settings. Zangarmarsh I was seeing about 90fps average now.Counter Strike Source - 296fps... once again... because the benchmark was limited to 300fps in this game, and I now ran the test at 300fps for 97% of the testing time, who knows what the average really would be if it was not limited.Far Cry 2 - didn't change much, was seeing roughly the same framerates. Not sure why this was the case here, but this game ran well anyway, even before.Metro 2033 - My average framerates seemed to stay in the 58-85 range, but I'm still seeing dips into mid 20's in those severe lighting situations (VERY demanding game!!)UniGine - 8min/55avg/150max - big improvements here too3DMark Vantage - 22700 (rounded to nearest hundred)Needless to say, by simply upgrading from my older setup to an overclocked i5 with some fast DDR3 memory, I have seemingly doubled my framerates in most cases. I am stunned at how well this card really dishes out as long as it's given the proper setup. Suggestion here... stick with a 5850 or GTX285 if you are also limited by your cpu and memory. Now in some cases, even an older E8500 OC to 3.6ghz can perform very well with this card, but it's still not going to be as good as an i5. Also, having seen the benchies from that article I see that the i5's are beating the i7's in framerates when run at the same frequencies. Good deal for me... I saved money by going with an i5 instead of the i7... and I didn't have to slouch on the performance.If anyone would like to request any information and has a game they would like me to benchmark... or perhaps run at a lower resolution, I would be happy to do so. I will do my best to support any and all requests. I wrote this review to provide good information to anyone who wants to know what this card can do. I think I really showed how the cards performs both in last-gen and current-gen equipment. I hope you got some good information out of this and hopefully it has pointed you in the right direction. Happy gaming everyone!