HD5870 and HD5850 Reviews

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Originally Posted by omega1alpha

"The fact of the matter is that most poor performance scenarios for today’s GPUs are the fault of poorly coded games rather than a lack of processing horsepower." - HardewareCanucks

I've been saying the same crap for years now. It's like smashing an ant with a sledgehammer. You know, don't fix the code, just add another card via sli and you'll be happy. Oh well, the 5800 series looks solid for the price and the power consumption is fantastic at those performance levels, but I really don't see a reason to upgrade if you have a last generation card and game at 1900x1200 or lower. For those of you that do, it's your money and I'm sure you'll enjoy the new toy...

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Totally agree about the game programming (and driver) thing. Slightly different algorithm, a few different instructions, or different order can make HUGE differences in performance. You need a BILLION transistors to get that 20% improvement with 5870. Slightly modified code can get 500% improvement.

But, I'm getting worried about recent popularity of .NET and such... how it will affect game programming performance efficiency.

When you have something like TNT2 (for those of you who remember) under the hood:
- Cant use extra triangles, that will be too slow, cant use too many textures, not enough memory - I got it, we'll use SPRITES! Explosions or other special effects... we'll just draw some texture and "pretend" that's the explosion. Afterall, gamers have to use imagination.

When you have X800:
- Yay triangles everywhere. Oh but wait, gotta make sure to use registers efficiently. And have limits in shaders. Oh and gotta be careful to limit branches.

When you have 8800GTX:
- Shaders shaders everywhere. But, so few games written so late for DX10. Now you have the resources, but lack skilled programmers...

R800, R900, R1000.
- google "abient occlusion" or "photon mapping". Copy paste code. Done. Optimizations... nah.. its lunch time... besides if I make it too fast, nobody will buy new hardware ;)

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Originally Posted by AndrewZorn

unless games start requiring better graphics cards in the future

you know
later

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True that.
Future games will certainly require better faster hardware.

8800GTX owners were glad they prepared for Crysis.
But, why buy expensive now and wait 1 year for game?

In a year you can buy a '8800GT' DX11 card... which will just so happen to coincide with launch of Crysis 2 or Half Life 3 or whatever...

Unless ofcourse you think Battleforge, an RTS, is the pinaccle of FPS gaming
O_o

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Originally Posted by Calmatory

Though, I guess it's quite broadly agreed that the companies
decisions are to blame, not really the people doing the hard work. Bad happens, poor field to work on. :shrug:

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True, but you get to one of those "Chicken / Egg" scenarios. What comes first: poor coding or publishers pushing too hard wich leads to poor coding? I tend towards blaming the publishers.

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Originally Posted by saaya

and i think 2.4 3.2 and 4.0 would probably be enough, i suspect barely any scaling between 2.4 and 3.2... after you ran the tests 2.8 might make sense to see where it stops scaling... from what i remember even 2.4 to 2.8 should be barely a diference... but then again, high res might be interesting... and CF and SLI need more cpu power... def interesting! :)

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For me it is more about seeing where the law of diminishing returns starts taking effect.

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Originally Posted by flippin_waffles

. I've completely lost interest in seeing how big of a number I can get, and the number of people in my category seems to be growing fast. I'd rather see how new hardware would affect ME not live vicariously through a select few on the internet. Or come up with something new, be innovative. [H] tried, but they failed miserably, but at least they tried. Sticking to the same method that's been used in reviews for the last decade is failing.

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People are visual creatures and they love pretty looking charts. Seriously, suggest something and I am all ears since trying to put a positive spin on the difference between 100 and 200 FPS is driving me to distraction...

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Originally Posted by clayton

Techpowerup's review shows that PCI-E x4, x8, x16 doesn't have much difference in performance.

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to be fair.. a pcie x4 (gen2) is actually a pcie 8x (gen1) so even on older mobo's with support your only losing between 1~5% depending on the res and if its 8x and not 16x

I am hoping drivers will improve the performance of the cards slightly, however I think that Crossfire is yet again a cause for concern, unless the X2 is the highly touted "MultiCore" card which "Le Fud", "Teh Inq" and "SemiAccurate" have been touting the HD5870X2 is going to be the most buggy GPU we have seen for sometime. (7800GX2 ring any bells?)
Having said that I am pretty sure ATi will have their drivers sorted out for AAA titles and the applications/games reviewers usually use in time for launch.

Reading the comments above, it suggests that unless the GT300 is ~10% or so faster than the GTX295 it is an "Epic Fail"!
John

Hahaha this will be a great new card for me. Great single card perfomance which is matching dual cards, IQ, low wattage, eyefinity and great price ~350€ here in germany. Should be cheaper in 1 month.

One more to add: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...870_CrossFire/

(it will include HD 5850 CrossFire and HD 5870 CrossFire @ PCI-E 2.0 x8 in a while).

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Originally Posted by clayton

Techpowerup's review shows that PCI-E x4, x8, x16 doesn't have much difference in performance.

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It shows a single card gimped on an x58 - PCI-e 2.0. Not quite the same thing as two cards sharing the controller on a Lynnfield.

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Originally Posted by Jamesrt2004

to be fair.. a pcie x4 (gen2) is actually a pcie 8x (gen1) so even on older mobo's with support your only losing between 1~5% depending on the res and if its 8x and not 16x

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It matters quite much if the FPS drop is most significant in min FPS, rather than in avg or max FPS. 5% drop in avg FPS could mean 50 % in min FPS, and that would matter, alot. Hopefully not so.

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Originally Posted by saaya

1. crysis and crysis warhead are the same, its like calling hl2 ep1 and ep2 diferent games :P

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not quite, Crysis Warhead is tougher on your GFX:)

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Originally Posted by Calmatory

It matters quite much if the FPS drop is most significant in min FPS, rather than in avg or max FPS. 5% drop in avg FPS could mean 50 % in min FPS, and that would matter, alot. Hopefully not so.

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Exactly. That's where the 5870 seems to absolutely demolish the gtx 295. The minimum FPS.

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Originally Posted by vardirox

PC Per Eyefinity Video Review:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujf6P...e=channel_page

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eghSP..._embedded#t=14

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:eek:
Wow, that is awesome! Thanks.

Overall, I think AMD did a good job with this chip. If you've got a 24 inch monitor, the HD 5870 offers great performance in practically every title; even Crysis and Stalker CS.

However, I'm disappointed with the 2560x1600 results, but I cannot say this was unexpected. As powerful as this card may be, it has less bandwidth than my overclocked GTX 285, so my dream of playing Crysis at 30 FPS @ 2560x1600 maxed out settings will have to wait until either the 5870x2 or the GT300..

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Originally Posted by Carfax

Overall, I think AMD did a good job with this chip. If you've got a 24 inch monitor, the HD 5870 offers great performance in practically every title; even Crysis and Stalker CS.

However, I'm disappointed with the 2560x1600 results, but I cannot say this was unexpected. As powerful as this card may be, it has less bandwidth than my overclocked GTX 285, so my dream of playing Crysis at 30 FPS @ 2560x1600 maxed out settings will have to wait until either the 5870x2 or the GT300..

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im waiting to see how the 2gb variant fairs, what monitor do you have?

edit:nvm Samsung 305t

Looks like a nice card. Sadly I am stuck with NV after winning a 3d vision set which I cant live without now! Is GT300 expected before Christmas? Wiki says Q3 2010 but that has to be wroung

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Originally Posted by Andrea deluxe

http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/2565/cattura.png

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is that a black PCB i see?

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Originally Posted by Bodkin

Looks like a nice card. Sadly I am stuck with NV after winning a 3d vision set which I cant live without now! Is GT300 expected before Christmas? Wiki says Q3 2010 but that has to be wroung

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wiki is fail lol all the stuff on there is wrong, general consesus seems to be just before xmas at the VERY least and thats lookign unlikely so more Q1 im hoping for before Feb but we will see :/

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Originally Posted by Manicdan

is that a black PCB i see?

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yes!

reference pcb

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Originally Posted by Jamesrt2004

wiki is fail lol all the stuff on there is wrong, general consesus seems to be just before xmas at the VERY least and thats lookign unlikely so more Q1 im hoping for before Feb but we will see :/

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Damn, hate having to save money from Christmas :(

AMD Radeon HD 5870 1 GB @ Bjorn3D – AMD Radeon HD 5870 1 GB @ DriverHeaven – AMD Radeon HD 5870 1 GB @ Guru3d.com – Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 1GB @ HardwareCanucks – AMD Radeon HD 5870 1 GB @ Hardwareluxx (de) – AMD Radeon HD 5870 1 GB @ Hexus – Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 1GB CrossFireX @ Hexus – AMD Radeon HD 5870 1 GB @ HotHardware – AMD Radeon HD 5870 1 GB vs. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 @ InsideHW – AMD Radeon HD 5870 1 GB @ LegitReviews – AMD Radeon HD 5870 1 GB @ Overclock3D.net – AMD Radeon HD 5870 1 GB @ Tech Report – AMD Radeon HD 5870 1 GB and Radeon HD 5850 Performance @ techPowerUp! – AMD Radeon HD 5870 PCI-Express Performance Scaling @ techPowerUp! – AMD Radeon HD 5870 1 GB @ TechSpot – Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 1GB @ Tweaktown – Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 1GB CrossFireX @ Tweaktown

what the hell .. every one is testing 5870 :) ...

No doubt AMD did "good" job with 5870. Afterall, its here and it works.
But, to reiterate anandtech and echo what others are saying... its just not enough to push GTX and 4890 owners to upgrade - rather, the games to make it happen aren't here yet.

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Originally Posted by Wesker

Again I bring up RV770. The only known feature about that chip (just before and during launch) was its 2.5x increase in ALU count. Impressive in its own right, however it brought more than a 2.5x performance increase over R600 and RV670.

Also I was comparing the jump from R700 (2xRV770) not 2xRV790. In this light (2xRV790), Cypress looks even more unimpressive, with an average 1.6x increase over RV790 (they share the same core clocks, so it's quite fair to compare the two architectures).

Somehow, a 40% theoretical performance advantage was lost during the 100% increase in specifications count.

As I said in my original drivers, it could just be the beta drivers not showing Cypress' fullest potential. But given that R600, RV770 and Cypress share the same underlying base architecture, I don't think there's too much to be squeezed out of new drivers. Still, I could be surprised...

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To be fair, the 4870 over the 3870 wasn't exactly 2x the performance at release. Drivers improved performance greatly.

Add on the fact that a lot of those "2.5x" were with AA on... which if we can remember, the 38xx's were HORRIBLE with AA.

It appears that the 58xx's have already maxed out possible AA performance + AF performance so if the rest of the card isn't being utilized (shaders), then of course u won't see that performance boost.

Not to mention that they changed its scheduler and how shaders are ordered, so driver/programming changes will affect how the card works.

IMO, check back in a few months with new titles and drivers, and I bet u will see a huge difference. Heck, look at [H]'s Arma II section.... the game actually was able to utilize the card fully.

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Originally Posted by ***Deimos***

No doubt AMD did "good" job with 5870. Afterall, its here and it works.
But, to reiterate anandtech and echo what others are saying... its just not enough to push GTX and 4890 owners to upgrade - rather, the games to make it happen aren't here yet.

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To some there might be something worth considering and that's Eyefinity. If they get CF to work with it I'm definitely on it and I just recently bought my first TFT... With CF the performance should be there to run it decently at 3x1680x1050 at least.

The most impressive thing about these cards is the power consumption (idle power is particularly impressive), IMO. It's nice to see that AMD is considering the amount of performance per watt on these cards.

My 4870X2 has earned quite a few months lifetime... :)

Thanks ATI... :D