5870 unleashed

check out the reviews at tom'shardware *I skipped the first 4 pages of technical mumbo jumbo, for the majority of you who could care less and just want to see game benchmarks*

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/radeon...w-31685-5.html

My thoughts were that the single 5870 is good, very good indeed, but not quite as good as all the hoopla leading up to it has indicated. however the 5870 x2 in Crossfire scales amazingly well, and even with AA & AF turned up obiliterates everything else out there, amazing performance if you have $760 and the appropriate PSU/mobo etc.

I don't think that I'll be buying one right away, but I wouldn't complain to find one under the Xmas tree either

anyone else have thoughts on the new release from ATI?

A single 5870 , not bad at all for the price.

5870 in Crossfire , amazing , those Crysis results are very good , but you need two card

Overall , I think the 5870 is the best option right now , considering the price and the performance.

I want to see the review of the 5870 x2 2GB , that one will rock I believe.

the card is good... but not quite as good as the hype suggested it to be. nevertheless, it is THE card to get right now. i'm gonna wait for better driver optimizations and the 5850 before i pass judgement on it.

It's a good card, no doubts... but, the hype was Halo3 level on almost every forum I went to, and suffice to say, it far from lives up to any of that.

Unfortunately, for ATi, they won't hold a candle to GT300 in any performance category. However, that said, they do have a nice edge on release timing and yields, so that is a plus for them.

One thing that I found very disappointing was that Z process was moved to a lower priority and after the rasterizers (instead of synchronous) in the pipeline. I have a feeling that may impact DX11 performance a bit more than ATi seems to think. However, the increased L1 bandwidth may alleviate some of this. Despite that, I still anticipate at least a 10% performance decrease under DX11 when compared to DX10, based solely on the fact that DX11 thrives on Z buffering to boost efficiency early on. I've got a feeling that will slow poly render down by 25%+, but I haven't really looked full on at the architecture to make that prediction with full confidence.

However! Their authoring and tesselator are beautiful. It is fast, precise, and requires very few passes to do its work. I believe that will be their strongest playing card when it comes to DX11 games (provided they make extensive use of tessellation), and should offer them nice performance gains to make up for the Z buffer fiasco.

I do see one huge caveat with their new texture engine though. Because it is, for all intents and purposes, unrestricted (16K x 16K is silly....), I see driver texture mapping management cropping up as a real reason for slowdowns or even driver crashes. Judging from their focus on Anti Aliasing, this very well may plague their newest Catalyst drivers for quite some time after DX11 games release. You simply don't need that kind of overhead; use the KISS principle whenever possible.

Now, one big feature that I think will be a boon into other customer segments (mainly audiophile) if it works out as intended, is the audio bitstreaming of Dolby DTS-MA and TrueHD. This is a huge boon, considering the state of the audio card market, and complete lack of support via chipsets or decently priced add on cards. Kudos for this feature being thought of, though I think it may not work quite as well as intended, that is normal for a first generation product feature.

In closing, to avoid wall'o'text style, I will say that I am both impressed and disappointed by this launch. The pricing of the HD5870 is decent, and its 5850 little brother is amazingly priced. However, ATi will not take any performance crowns this generation, that I say with certainty. They will do well in the OEM and mainstream market, as well as the budget market. The enthusiast and extreme market, they will fall flat on their face. Don't expect this to be ATi's big ticket to gobbling up market share, but at the same time, don't expect this to be another x800 series in regards to market performance. I'm guessing after GT300 releases, this launch will sit between the HD3000 and HD4000 series launches in success.

Is there a rough estimate for the GT300 release date?

considering that nvidia doesn't even have parts to demo with, i'd say early next year at the very earliest.

Yeah, true. I read on another forum that nvidia is having a conference next week and could possibly release some much awaited info on the new cards but who knows. It would be nice to hear something other than the rumors of only like 2% yields and such.

Always the case with new tech. I was rather pleased with the results, realistically it's what I expected and the price really isn't to shabby either. Across most forums/review sites there seems to be this tone of the 5870 being a let down, seriously what were people expecting? 3x performance over last gen?

In my eyes the 5870 series has fixed the problems of the older tech with real low idle power consumption, easy multi-display, HD audio, and just look at any of those benchmarks specially THE MINIMUM FRAMES obtained over last gen, the min/fps of the 5870 really was something special in my eyes, all on a single GPU.


The thing that will be more interesting and better benefit the consumer or average person is how well the 5850 performs based on cost/power/heat and minimum fps obtained over last gen GPU, this will impact price wars with Nvidia more than anything, flagship top of the line cards don't as that segment is so minute.

I also enjoy reading all of the comments relating to Nvidia's next GEN as an excuse for not being overjoyed with ATI's offering RIGHT NOW. As if the mainstream populous is going to have the cash for Nvidia's new GPU's at launch, and believe me both offering will be>450$ you pay for what you get. Again I see a repeat of what happened in the last year, once Nvidia releases its offering AMD will follow suit and slash prices, in the end for the average consumer it's always going to come down to price/performance.

Spot on Eco Man - I've been reading some other reviews on the intrawebz, and I'd say that ATI/AMD have nothing at all to be ashamed of with the 5870, it's a hell of a card. It's not their fault that rumours floating around prior to release had it at "50% greater performance than anything previously seen!!!", & able to stop speeding trains and divert bullets mid flight as well as perform open heart surgery blindfolded with a teach spoon ... blah blah blah.

Seriously though, it's significantly more powerful than the GTX 285 and even beats out the GTX 295 (a DUAL Card GPU peeps!) in some cases. What's not to like there, toss in Eyefinity, which has me drooling and wishing I was a richer man, DX11, can't wait to see TES V with tesselation technology!!!, Direct Compute sounds really cool too.... nothing not to like and the price is pretty danged sweet for what you get out of it. I too want to see how powerful the 5850 is, "rumour" has it as close to the 5870 and porjected price of $259.99 is CHEAP, like the dirt under your toenails cheap my friends.

I'm tipping my hat to ATI right now, and I'm not a fan boy, I go with price/performance every time (whether NIVIDIA, ATI, MAxtor, VooDoo, whatever) and ATI right now is winning that.

@ Elder III

This card is good for what it does for that price (as a single GPU) , but poeple were expecting more, come on , the Radeon 5870 cannot max (including AA8x) Crysis , and Crysis was released on Q4 2007 lol , 2 years and no card can run a fluid 60fps with AA4x/AA8x on Crysis on a high resolution , so this time, I guess that people were hoping to get the magic card that is able to do that. Now lets see how the 5870x2 does, I love Crysis for the visual , I am a visual maniac and still waiting for that magic card ^^

But yes, I must say the 5870 (single GPU version) is doing great , and for the price , comparing to nvidia prices , this is the best option at the moment.

Haha, have you seen the size of this beast so far?

yeah well, crysis turned out to be a poorly optimized POS. in two years, graphic card performance have more than doubled. quadrupled, in the case of the 5870, and we haven't been getting 2x performance in crysis.

we need a new benchmark. i'd say we use Stalker: Call of Pripyat.

yeah, I wonder if we will ever see a card that can sustain 60FPS in Crysis on a 30" LCD with all eye candy on.... frankly considering the fairly small improvement made in the lst 2 yrs with drivers and optimization etc... I wonder if the graphics card manufacturers will just forget about Crysis and focus on the other games out there. I know eventually the will be a GPU that has the pure muscle to do as it pleases with Crysis, but it's just one game and other than the visuals isn't that much fun anyway.... imo at least.

[QUOTE='Ec]-[oMaN;4870941']Haha, have you seen the size of this beast so far?



It's only 1/2" longer than NVIDIA's 200 series..... which was a tight fit in many cases, so I think there will be quite a few upgrading to a Full Tower soon.... hehe


**Moriz, since STALKER: Call of Prypat isn't out yet can we just use STALKER: Clear Sky? It's one of the most consistently challenging games out there when it comes to putting a video card through it's paces. Another game that most GPUs can't max out is HAWX, but that's kind of a sub genre and we may not want to go there....

I may be wrong just guessing but the x2 looks like a 12 inch or longer card to me. For the regular 5870 1gb its a 10.5" but because of the vents at the end which are said to serve no purpose treat it as an 11 inch card to be safe.

that card looks to be a foot long, judging by that picture. that's pretty scary... it's as long as the subway sandwich i had for lunch+dinner yesterday.

yeah I have a fairly roomy case (for mid tower) and there's no way that will ever fit in mine... not that a case upgrade is bad... wife

if i want to fit that thing into my case, i'll have to destroy the hard drive rack directly behind it.

btw, i chose call of pripyat because it's one of the few games that will use DX11. these are DX11 cards, so we might as well exploit that.

Anyone know when the 5850s are gunna be released?

they are supposed to be available before Win 7 is released. so I'd say in 2 weeks or 4 perhaps.....?

they'll be here next week.

The 5870 is a nice Graphic Card, I will get a new PC soon, but i wont take the 5870 because of my budget. I will grab the 5850 instead, is a great card either.

HD5870 is a nice card.
the thing i really like is that you can connect 6 sceens max
only 6 screens are expensive, and i dont have space for that.
and my HD4870*2 is fast enough for a while.
i would like to see the temperatures of the HD5870*2 hmm 100 degrees celc anyone XD

i hope that nvidea can shop the gt300 chip in 2009, even if its a lot faster than the HD5870, ati got directX11 and nvidia got nothing.
and when the GT300 gets launched, prices of ATI will go down, and thats always nice

nVidia has DX11 on the GT300.

let me say that better
ati got directx11 working, and selling VGA cards with it.
nvidia is not shipping any directx11 cards.
so all people who want to have directx11 when it launches are going to get an ati card becouse nvidia havent launced there directx11 card.
and nvidia launcing that thing before 22 october, yeah, dont think they make it.

well, it's not like there's a slew of DX11 games coming out right away, in fact there's hardly any. As long as NVIDIA doesn't take too long to get their DX11 cards on the market they shouldn't lose that much, but if it's spring of 2010 as some rumours have it I expect they will indeed take abit of a hit. IMO it depends more on the DX11 games and how fast they can be /are developed.

the 5850 is also here:
http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/17652

... and as expected, it soundly beats the geforce GTX285, all the while having better power consumption than a 4850. runs cooler too... and not to mention, cheaper.

can't wait to see the crossfire numbers on these things.

It seems that 2 5850 (crossfire) is a very good option , cheap and a very good performance. check this out;

Radeon HD 5850: Knocking Down GTX 295 In CrossFire
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/radeon...iew-31692.html

That may be true, but people who want to have Dx11 when any programs/games actually uses it, will have lots of choice.

looks good, really good indeed

personally though I'm sticking with my 4850's CrossfireX until I need more GPU muscle, other than Crysis (which is years ahead of it's time) they can handle anything I've thrown at them so far... of course I can always dream about dual 5850s or 5870s and 6 30" LCDs..... that would take up the entire wall here lol

TBH, you guys are going to shit bricks when you see the GT300 performance numbers vs price... but alas, I cannot show them to you!

Though, the HD5850 is a great card for the money, hands down. An excellent buy, especially if you plan to run 2 in Crossfire! Big kudos to AMD for the 5850, and a golf clap for the 5870.

Damn you and your NDAs, Rahja - damn your eyes.

he can't tell us, because nvidia does not have working silicon.

even if the new geforce turn out to be awesome, there isn't much point in upgrading to it. for instance, dual 5850 have shown to turn an overclocked core i7 965EE system into a CPU BOUND platform, at 2560x1600! just think about it: the fastest desktop processor in the world, a CPU bottleneck... at 2560x1600.

we're at the point where GPU performance have gone beyond the extreme and into the realm of ridiculousness. even if the GTX380 turns out to be better, it still wouldn't matter. it's just going to create CPU bottlenecks in practically every game at practically every resolution.

We have working silicon... trust me. Yield issues are starting to fade too, which is good. Though, I only have 22 days left with the company until I move on to my new job.

Exciting times for real.

With a wonderful technology race like this, it doesn't matter which company you support - they take it in turns for the lead. I'm quite happy to stick with nVidia, mind you I'm totally skint so it's academic ^_^

Congrats on the new job! I really hope it is by your choice and with more pay!

I thought that you were going to be moving on sometime soon..... you are at least staying in the same field, right? It's nice to get info from the "horses' mouth" so to speak. hehe

All I want to know is will Nvidia have a dx11 part in the 250-299$ price point before Xmas

nvidia will be lucky to even have a sample board before christmas.

there's also the rumor that nvidia will rely on DX10.1 parts for their mainstream/budget segment. why? i have no clue. however, given that they are spinning the "DX11 doesn't matter" line, this is not particularly surprising.

We have many, many fully functional in house cards. You can expect a launch late this year or early 2010. GT300 will be quite a show stopper, I assure you.

And what is this DX11 doesn't matter business? GT300 and all mainstream plans for the chip are DX11 capable, and you will find that prices will be far better than the GT200 launch.

Case in point, say hello to GT300...