ATI 5970? The wait is over?

[Kanzy]

Guys, check this out.

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/ati_radeon_hd_5970_undisputed_performance_champ

looks like its named 5970 rather than 5870x2, should I still wait for the NV 300?

[Kenjiwing]

I just ordered the HIS from newegg before it went out of stock.

[Blkout]

The 5970 is a dissapoinment. It's slower than two 5850's even with more shaders and it seems to have throttling issues preventing any major overclocking.

Go with two 5850's or two 5870's and you can't go wrong. The 5970 just doesn't make any sense at all.

[Exeodus]

Agreed. After seeing the reviews, and I am glad I went with a 5850 crossfire setup.

[Darxide]

I guess the 5970 makes sense for anyone who only wants a single card setup, but is it really worse than 2 5850's? If so, that sucks, because on paper, it should be better.

[Mungri]

It should be better than two 5850s, but worse than two 5870s due to the clock speeds.

[Blkout]

I guess the 5970 makes sense for anyone who only wants a single card setup, but is it really worse than 2 5850's? If so, that sucks, because on paper, it should be better.

It's not a great deal slower than two 5850's because of the extra shaders compared to the 5850's, but the 5970 is slightly crippled by the two 8x PCI-E lanes that bridge the two GPU's. A crossfire 5850 setup has the advantage of using two 16x PCI-E lanes. It's not a huge difference but it does show itself in a few games at high resolutions.

What's really bizarre is that the CCC OC limits have been raised for the 5970 above the 5850 or 5870 limits but the card won't overclock that far before it starts throttling.

There are ONLY three reasons I could see to buy the 5970:

1. Dual GPU, single PCI-E slot solution.

2. Crossfire works somewhat with Eyefinity although ATI has promised to make it work with crossfire 5850's and 5870's later.

3. Dual 5970's for bench queens although I would imagine the scaling is not that great.

[Blkout]

It should be better than two 5850s, but worse than two 5870s due to the clock speeds.


It's not, possible known reason is dual 8x PCI-E lanes compared to dual 16x PCI-E lanes for a 5850 or 8570 crossfire setup.

[Kanzy]

um, looks like its still worth the wait until the nv300 come out, I do want a single GPU card and for the 620 price tag, better be like 500 when nv 300 is out.

[Paxi]

5970 is still the fastest single card and therefore the best decision for anybody who is into benching . Gaming performance is very nice as well.. Most reviews only used an i7 @ ~3Ghz, which is way to low from my point of view to get the full performance possible with such a strong card. Get the CPU @ 4,4-4,6 and make some tests again. To be honest i didn´t know that the 5970 only uses 8x PCI-E lanes to bridge the two GPU's but overall performance with a decent CPU should be better than 2 5850 in gaming anyway.

[emertX]

Is the card anywhere available?

[Paxi]

It was available @ Alternate on Tuesday but is already sold out again. I ordered one from Ditech and should get it next week. I think it shouldn´t take very long till the card is available again since the demand should´t be that high because of the price tag.

[emertX]

I'll wait until it's available at Neweeg. Can get it from a good friend there...

[Blkout]

To be honest i didn´t know that the 5970 only uses 8x PCI-E lanes to bridge the two GPU's but overall performance with a decent CPU should be better than 2 5850 in gaming anyway.



It's very close to the 5850's in crossfire, but falls behind in a few games.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3679&p=8

[cowie]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814129141
300 for the 5850 get it while you can

i got two 5970's yesterday myself but i got 2 different brands

[roller11]

=Blkout;

What's really bizarre is that the CCC OC limits have been raised for the 5970 above the 5850 or 5870 limits but the card won't overclock that far before it starts throttling.



exactly. In fact, same prob with the 5850. I flashed the ASUS bios that eliminates the OC restriction, but it did no good cause it throttles before I can hit my max OC. The throttle clock needs to be higher, or, someone needs to change the throttle down clock from 550 to, say, 1000.

[Blkout]

exactly. In fact, same prob with the 5850. I flashed the ASUS bios that eliminates the OC restriction, but it did no good cause it throttles before I can hit my max OC. The throttle clock needs to be higher, or, someone needs to change the throttle down clock from 550 to, say, 1000.

Really? My XFX 5850's don't throttle at all up to 1000/1250 which is as far as I've tested them. They do require a voltage increase to run at those speeds, but no throttling here. The 5970 seems to be throttling before it even breaks the 850Mhz barrier.

[Blkout]

Just ordered 2 Visiontek 5850's for 260$ a piece :shocked: Newegg is 50-60$ over priced per card!!

That's because ATI raised prices due to high demand and lack of supply for the 5850. If you got them for $260 you did great. That was the launch price.

[Blkout]

i got two 5890's yesterday myself but i got 2 different brands


5890? :confused:

[Glow9]

That's because ATI raised prices due to high demand and lack of supply for the 5850. If you got them for $260 you did great. That was the launch price.

Yeah I don't think AMD did. Shops are taking advantage of the low supply. Its better for AMD to sell 100 cards at 260 rather than 50 at 300. Keeping consumers, vendors, and card manufacturers happy with a large in demand supply. The more they can push out when Nvidia has no real competition is the best thing they can do I really can't see them trying to pull one over on anyone.

I have a feeling like with all AMD/ATI cards these are just suffering from crappy drivers as per usual. Unfortunately it seems to take 4-6 months for them to get their stuff together these days. 4870x2 kinda lacking from the get go. Initial 4890 reviews lacking from the get go. Later they all came wellll into their own.

[zalbard]

Sure it's not over. Not like these are in stock anywhere. :p:

[cowie]

5890? :confused:
sry fixed :p:

[flopper]

I have a feeling like with all AMD/ATI cards these are just suffering from crappy drivers as per usual. Unfortunately it seems to take 4-6 months for them to get their stuff together these days.

sli for 8800gtx took a year for nvidia on vista.
drivers takes time to write and test run.

Happy with my 5850.
eyefinity rocks

[Blkout]

Yeah I don't think AMD did. Shops are taking advantage of the low supply. Its better for AMD to sell 100 cards at 260 rather than 50 at 300. Keeping consumers, vendors, and card manufacturers happy with a large in demand supply. The more they can push out when Nvidia has no real competition is the best thing they can do I really can't see them trying to pull one over on anyone.

I have a feeling like with all AMD/ATI cards these are just suffering from crappy drivers as per usual. Unfortunately it seems to take 4-6 months for them to get their stuff together these days. 4870x2 kinda lacking from the get go. Initial 4890 reviews lacking from the get go. Later they all came wellll into their own.

AMD did raise prices officially. However, vendors are raising prices even further since supply is so low.

[pr@$r1g]

has any one bought this over larged monster < 5970 yet.......................

[roller11]

Really? My XFX 5850's don't throttle at all up to 1000/1250 which is as far as I've tested them. They do require a voltage increase to run at those speeds, but no throttling here. The 5970 seems to be throttling before it even breaks the 850Mhz barrier.

The throttle kicks in at a fixed temperature, about 91C. To get higher clocks, one must raise the voltage, but that results in higher temps/downthrottling to 550. So in effect, the throttle causes the same prob as the OC restriction. Whereas the ASUS and MSI bios fix the OC restriction, they don't fix the downthrottling.
I've never seen a company try so hard to get rid of those pesky customers. First, ATI cripples performance by restricting the clocks to 775. When that didn't work (MSI and ASUS bios), they cripple the clocks with temperature based downthrottling. Apparently, ATI wants people to buy nvidia cards instead of ATI. Nvidia has no clock restrictions and no artificially low thermal downclocking. I'll be more than happy to oblige ATI if I can't fix the throttling problem, I've got till Jan. 31 to return this card to Best Buy.

[Blkout]

The throttle kicks in at a fixed temperature, about 91C. To get higher clocks, one must raise the voltage, but that results in higher temps/downthrottling to 550. So in effect, the throttle causes the same prob as the OC restriction. Whereas the ASUS and MSI bios fix the OC restriction, they don't fix the downthrottling.
I've never seen a company try so hard to get rid of those pesky customers. First, ATI cripples performance by restricting the clocks to 775. When that didn't work (MSI and ASUS bios), they cripple the clocks with temperature based downthrottling. Apparently, ATI wants people to buy nvidia cards instead of ATI. Nvidia has no clock restrictions and no artificially low thermal downclocking. I'll be more than happy to oblige ATI if I can't fix the throttling problem, I've got till Jan. 31 to return this card to Best Buy.

Interesting. Mine never saw 91c even with the stock cooler. I believe the highest mine ever reached was in the mid 80's. Mine are watercooled now and never exceed 42c.

[cowie]

has any one bought this over larged monster < 5970 yet.......................
i started playing with one of mine for an hour or so a gigbyte model.even with volts and good temps its not clocking over 800 in 3d benchmarks :shakes: i'll try somemore cus it might just be me
diamond up next.....

[roller11]

The thermal Down Clock makes sense because they don't want it to over heat :

It's not so much that ATI has a thermal downclock as it is the implementation, 91C is anal. A GPU will show signs of pixel corruption, lockups well before permanent damage is a concern, so no need for a downclock at all. Nvidia's thermal downclock kicks in at 105C, that is at least reasonable if not necessary.

[Levesque]

Yes, the wait is over, since I got my Sapphire 5970 yesterday. :D

Now I will OC this beast and pair it with a 5870 for Tri-Crossfire goodness. :)

[pr@$r1g]

^^^ there may be a decrease in performance , bcos of all the clock difference ...............

[Mungri]

The problem is that 5800s and 5970 are still out of stock everywhere.

5770s are much easier to buy and far far cheaper for how much performance two of them give :)

[roller11]

Blkout,

Have you run the Heaven demo? I'm extremely impressed as to the difference that tessalation makes, but that dx11 capability comes at a steep performance price, so I'm think of going xfire with 2x 5850, especially since fermi has been delayed five months. What kind of fps improvement do you see in Heaven w/tessalation, 1x 5850 vs 2x 5850?

[Levesque]

^^^ there may be a decrease in performance , bcos of all the clock difference ...............

Just read my post again. I'm OCing the 5970. So no clock difference. ;)

[Blkout]

Blkout,

Have you run the Heaven demo? I'm extremely impressed as to the difference that tessalation makes, but that dx11 capability comes at a steep performance price, so I'm think of going xfire with 2x 5850, especially since fermi has been delayed five months. What kind of fps improvement do you see in Heaven w/tessalation, 1x 5850 vs 2x 5850?

Are you running an Intel i7 CPU? If so, tell me what speed you're using and I'll clock mine the same and post my crossfire 5850 numbers. Also, what settings did you use on Heaven?

[roller11]

Interesting. Mine never saw 91c even with the stock cooler. I believe the highest mine ever reached was in the mid 80's. .

Sure, with the stock cooler on auto you won't see downthrottling, but that doesn't mean downthrottling isn't a problem. The noise one must endure to stay out of downthrottling is horrendous, so you will pay for the gay downthrottling one way or the other.

[roller11]

Are you running an Intel i7 CPU? If so, tell me what speed you're using and I'll clock mine the same and post my crossfire 5850 numbers. Also, what settings did you use on Heaven?

i7 920 at 4169Mhz (21x198.5) w/hyperthreading.
dx11, 1920x1200 full screen, tessalation enabled, high shaders, fsaa/anisotropic = 4x / 8x, ...thanks :)

[Ch3ck5um]

I have been playing around with this sapphire 5970 for a few days now and can say it definitely needs a water block :)

I don't think much of the cooler as it reaches 80c - 85c within seconds of starting up a game.

A very impressive piece of kit though if only they could get some good stable drivers out. (Beta 5's are a bit flaky)

Soon as this thing hits water its gonna fly!

[Dude_Person]

I'll be receiving my XFX 5970 tomorrow and I'm gonna throw it under water. I'll post up some results when I find time. It'll be CPU bound though. Only got a Q6600 at 3.85ghz.

[Grandpaq]

I'll be receiving my XFX 5970 tomorrow and I'm gonna throw it under water. I'll post up some results when I find time. It'll be CPU bound though. Only got a Q6600 at 3.85ghz.

Where did you get a water cooler kit for that card?

[Dude_Person]

No kit. Just using 2 MCW-60s and some copper ram sinks. I'm not a fan of full cover blocks. Too expensive for a single use IMO.

[safan80]

No kit. Just using 2 MCW-60s and some copper ram sinks. I'm not a fan of full cover blocks. Too expensive for a single use IMO.

The VRms on my 4870x2 used to get very hot it needed the full cover block. What temps do the VRMs get up to?

[lutjens]

I have a Sapphire 5970 on the way...I'm trying hard to scare up a second one to go along with it...:D

The damn things are like hen's teeth ATM...;)

[Dude_Person]

I haven't finished rebuilding my loop yet and won't for a couple days so I don't know yet. They will be warm, but I think the temps should be tolerable (ie. < 90c). There VRMs are in two different places on the PCB. I will be using a cut up and modified Pentium 2 heatsink. Its the same thing I used on my two old HD2900XT (OC'd to 870mhz), and the temps stayed sub 90 and those things were power suckers. I had an extra fan in my case blowing on it though. Doing the same thing this time.