Reviews - AMD ATI Radeon HD 5970 2,048MB graphics card: usurper of the throne

[HEXUS]

What do you get when you cobble two Radeon HD 5800-class GPUs on to one board?

Read more.

[danroyle]

god thats expensive.

[sayer]

Okay I was replying to someone else's post, but it doesn't appear when viewing the forum, only the article, perhaps I am using it incorrectly, heres what I wrote anyway...

I gotta say, that having a review of an older game is actually quite useful - perhaps it is a bit specific to certain users though. From me it makes it easier from a comparison perspective, and realistically people do not upgrade on every iteration of a technology, therefore if I wanted to compare my 3870 x2 to the 5970, then having the benchmarks of Quake Wars is very useful!

[aidanjt]

Maybe we should have benchmarks of Quake I while we're at it.

Seriously, if it can run current games at above playable framerates at maximum settings, then obviously any older game is going to be overkill framerate.

[Zak33]

very impressive power draw at "tick over" and even flat out... nVidia must be working very hard to equal that card.... they need to be anyway.

It's a shame the X2 label has been dropped... it was one of the only parts of any graphics card lableing from any manufaturer that made any sense

[GheeTsar]

I think the bang4buck scores are wrong.

Is it really fair to use the HD5850 RRP as £200? ATI put the RRP up since launch, and very cheapest preorder/actual prices online are:

Scan - £220 (preorder)
Novatech - None for sale (PS five 5870s in stock for £385, wow what a bargain!)
eBuyer - None for sale
Dabs - None for sale

And you should see some of the pre-order prices for the 5970!

[Phage]

Maybe we should have benchmarks of Quake I while we're at it.

Seriously, if it can run current games at above playable framerates at maximum settings, then obviously any older game is going to be overkill framerate.

It's the software. QW was the last game under OpenGL.

[scaryjim]

Now, when NVIDIA's Fermi arrives on the scene, we're sure to see super-clocked HD 5970s, made possible by better yields at TSMC

HD 5990, anyone

Presumably, if they can stick 2 5870 GPUs (albeit underclocked) on a single PCB and charge £450, the profit margin on the single 5870 must be huge. I assume that means that, as soon as NVidia launches Fermi, the 5870 will magically drop to ~ £250, providing excellent value for money

We will see sub-$100 5000-series cards in a couple of months' time, codenamed Redwood and Cedar. They will likely replace the current Radeon HD 4600/4700/4830/4850 cards.

In terms of launch day pricing, rather than current pricing, the 5750 / 5770 are pretty much direct replacements for the 4830 / 4850, with 512MB 5750s available for £90 now, and the 1GB 5770 @ £125, the same launch price as the 4850. I would imagine any replacement for the 4770 would be derived from this architecture (640shader 5730?) - the Redwood would be the replacement for 4670 and Cedar the replacement for 4550/4350 (this makes sense if the "die" pictures in the slide are meant to be at least vaguely proportional, as the 2 "new" dies are both significantly smaller than the 57x0 die...)

[borandi]

Two please.

[snootyjim]

very impressive power draw at "tick over" and even flat out... nVidia must be working very hard to equal that card.... they need to be anyway.

It's a shame the X2 label has been dropped... it was one of the only parts of any graphics card lableing from any manufaturer that made any sense

I still think that it was a good idea to drop the X2, at least it's plainly obvious to all that a 5950 is better than a 5870, whereas a 5850 X2 might look worse than a 5870.

[miniyazz]

Hmmm.. checking out those >100 fps benchmarks for the latest games, running at 2560x1600 at high quality settings.. is there actually any reason for ATI/NVIDIA to be bringing out shiny new graphics cards just for the sake of being faster than the last generation? I'm struggling to see a reason for buying it over the 5870, tbh. It's about features now, not grunt, IMO, when it comes to playing games at least - the older cards have enough grunt for everything on max. Apart from to run Crysis, of course

/heretic

ooh shiny

Oh and 294W draw - PCI-e = 75W, 8-pin = 150W, 6-pin = 75W, Σ=300W. Not much overclocking headroom there, surely? Unless PCI-e power supply has increased, or that bit about SKUs means something that went over my head.

[Tarinder]

I think the bang4buck scores are wrong.

Is it really fair to use the HD5850 RRP as £200? ATI put the RRP up since launch, and very cheapest preorder/actual prices online are:

Scan - £220 (preorder)
Novatech - None for sale (PS five 5870s in stock for £385, wow what a bargain!)
eBuyer - None for sale
Dabs - None for sale

And you should see some of the pre-order prices for the 5970!

Thanks for that. Pricing is always a thorny issue, and Dabs has various AMD HD 5800-class cards listed at the quoted prices, albeit with stock in a few days' time.

We'll be taking an average pricing of all in-stock at the end of today and updating the HEXUS.bang4buck accordingly.

[Tarinder]

Hmmm.. checking out those >100 fps benchmarks for the latest games, running at 2560x1600 at high quality settings.. is there actually any reason for ATI/NVIDIA to be bringing out shiny new graphics cards just for the sake of being faster than the last generation? I'm struggling to see a reason for buying it over the 5870, tbh. It's about features now, not grunt, IMO, when it comes to playing games at least - the older cards have enough grunt for everything on max. Apart from to run Crysis, of course

/heretic

ooh shiny

Oh and 294W draw - PCI-e = 75W, 8-pin = 150W, 6-pin = 75W, Σ=300W. Not much overclocking headroom there, surely? Unless PCI-e power supply has increased, or that bit about SKUs means something that went over my head.

Most PCI-Express 2.0 boards can provide more than 75W to the card, so there's room for more than 300W on a standard 6-pin and 8-pin layout.

Also, the quotd TDP is an absolute worst-case scenario, and most users won't be able to hit those numbers with most games.

[david@scan]

<snip> advert removed so my post not relevant

[Syllopsium]

Most PCI-Express 2.0 boards can provide more than 75W to the card, so there's room for more than 300W on a standard 6-pin and 8-pin layout.

Also, the quotd TDP is an absolute worst-case scenario, and most users won't be able to hit those numbers with most games.

Perhaps some PCI-e 2 boards can provide more than 75W, but it still needs to work in PCI-e 1.0 boards!

PK

[snootyjim]

sobol - you need to check the rules regarding adverts on hexus

And anybody responding probably needs their head checking...