Reviews - AMD ATI Radeon HD 5870 DX11 graphics-card reviewed and rated

[HEXUS]

Does AMD's ATI Radeon HD 5870 scores a home run when compared with other high-end GPUs?... HEXUS has the answers...

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[DeludedGuy]

I'm impressed with the power consumption and temps but apart from that, its not hugely impressive considering the costs.

DX11 can wait.

[Azza]

OcUK have them listed on their site.

Clicky

[00oceanic]

I am loving the power consumption improvements but price is still alittle too much, hopefully they'll come down as AMD+Nvidia cut prices to make way for the newer generation of cards.

[cptwhite_uk]

OCUK are asking for £300 for the 5870 and £200 for the 5850. If we extrapolate this data it means once they're released you can expect to get one from Scan / Ebuyer or other retailers for about £285 and £190 respectively.

£190 for the 5850 sounds interesting, I will be interested to read it's performance compared to it's bigger brother. I suspect it'll be about 85% of the performance looking at the spec sheets.

[Azza]

Originally Posted by cptwhite_uk

OCUK are asking for £300 for the 5870 and £200 for the 5850. If we extrapolate this data it means once they're released you can expect to get one from Scan / Ebuyer or other retailers for about £285 and £190 respectively.

£190 for the 5850 sounds interesting, I will be interested to read it's performance compared to it's bigger brother. I suspect it'll be about 85% of the performance looking at the spec sheets.

techPowerUp have guesstimated 5850 results in their review of the 5870.

[abigsmurf]

The power consumption figures are great but... Considering it's a new generation of card, the performance for the cost isn't as impressive as it should be.

[alpha channel]

At £300 a bit too rich for my tastes, had it been £250 then there's a good chance I'd have gone for it (mind you at 27cm in length I'm not overly certain that the thing'd fit in my case anyway).

[kingpotnoodle]

Originally Posted by abigsmurf

The power consumption figures are great but... Considering it's a new generation of card, the performance for the cost isn't as impressive as it should be.

That's exactly how I felt...

I thought, OK - they doubled the SPs and so it performs like 4870 X2, so kind of expected (although disappointingly it doesn't look they have improved each SP that much) although it falls behind the X2 in some benches, so perhaps a 2GB memory might have helped some? What impressed me was the peformance given the power draw, particularly at idle...

Still overpriced IMHO, a new generation needs to trump the previous one at a similar price point, not merely X% ££ more for X% performance increase... and as shown the 4890 actually provides more value for money.

IMHO NVidia needs some £20-30 price drops, and the 4890 needs to come down too... hopefully the 5850 can then come in under £200 and actually represent decent value.

[dangel]

Bear in mind this is a single GPU card - i'd compare it like for like to the older generation (i.e. not the X2 version which will get it's equivilent soon anyway).

[kingpotnoodle]

Originally Posted by dangel

Bear in mind this is a single GPU card - i'd compare it like for like to the older generation (i.e. not the X2 version which will get it's equivilent soon anyway).

I think it's valid to compare it to the X2, both single card solutions... and it looks like all they have done with the 5870 is double up on processing but in the same chip rather than 2 chips... and then tack on a few features like DX11.

I've just read a few other reviews, I'm quite underwhelmed really... it just feels like: 4870X2 + DX11 + few minor features + single chip merge - some RAM + much improved power draw = 5870.

If a 5870 and a 4870X2 were the same price it'd be good, but you are paying a premium for the extra features... therefore it's rather unexciting to me...

[dangel]

Originally Posted by kingpotnoodle

I think it's valid to compare it to the X2, both single card solutions... and it looks like all they have done with the 5870 is double up on processing but in the same chip rather than 2 chips... and then tack on a few features like DX11.

So you'd compare the 5870 X2 to what exactly?

I've steered away fro X2/SLI solutions because they eat power by comparison, don't always scale perfectly (or at all in some cases) etc. Sure you can compare peformance but the fact it's on one PCB is neither here nor there in real terms - and this single GPU card is more or less as good as two GPUs working together from the previous generation. Doesn't seem too shabby to me

[Phage]

I'm disappointed with the pricing in the UK. A straight conversion would have been £282.
Why are we seeing £300 to £344 ? Is really just about soaking the early adopters ?

Absolutely no way am I paying those prices for a 40% performance increase. I could get that for ~£150 and a few watts. Next year may be different, we will have the NV answer, and price changes. But waaaayyy too hot for me.

Anyone want to sell their 4890 ?

[shadowmaster]

Just looking at a couple of more reviews now and the 5870 is a very powerful card. However I agree its about as same as a 4870X2 so if you had bought one of those there is little point upgrading to a 5870. Also £300 is a bit pricey, I think £250 will be the sweet spot.

[Hicks12]

Remember though that your comparing launch day pricing! That is totally different, what was the nvidia cards priced at on release? Same with the 4000 series, this is a similar pricing iirc so we could expect it to drop to £250 for it and <£200 for 5850.

It performs nicely, remember games havent really changed and dont take full advantage of gpu's power because they dont spend enough time on a specific model. If it was used in a console it would max every game possible!.

With everything going green i see this as a huge jump, being able to reduce power draw by quite a substantial amount is good in my books and could be worth the premium(not for me, im happy with the 4850 power draw).

[cjs150]

As always launch pricing is too high and availability too low.

My monitor is 1680x1050 for all practical purposes I will see no practical benefit from average frame rates going up from 80-90 fps on my 9800GTX to 120+ on this.

Can someone please explain why (on basis that very few people has 24+ inch monitors) the 5890 range (never mind 5890x2) is actually really a step forward apart from the big power reduction. It seems to me this is a bit like the CPU wars of a few years ago when we got higher and higher power CPUs but the software to use that power lagged several years behind?