Hd5870 - $299

[Baron_Davis]

I think ATI's new cards will make their older cards totally obsolete. And that is good...for us...but not that great for ATI.

And it is sort of funny that ATI/Nvidia keep releasing bigger and better cards when their current cards run all games just fine. Business is hilariously predictable and evil.

[Tim]

I think ATI's new cards will make their older cards totally obsolete. And that is good...for us...but not that great for ATI.

And it is sort of funny that ATI/Nvidia keep releasing bigger and better cards when their current cards run all games just fine. Business is hilariously predictable and evil.

It's been happening for years now, the hardware is so far ahead of software development, even more so since more studios go for consoles hence the hardware envelope isn't pushed as far.

I bet you a buck that the GT300/5870 will play games on (very) high details for 2,5 to 3 years to come as well. No doubt. Crysis is the sole game that can still break hardware into a sweat, but with Yerli's prediction that till 2012 we won't see any major improvements in graphics, I'm certain that this gen will last long as well.

Still rocking my 8800GTX. Works very well still.

[Farinorco]

It's been happening for years now, the hardware is so far ahead of software development, even more so since more studios go for consoles hence the hardware envelope isn't pushed as far.

I bet you a buck that the GT300/5870 will play games on (very) high details for 2,5 to 3 years to come as well. No doubt. Crysis is the sole game that can still break hardware into a sweat, but with Yerli's prediction that till 2012 we won't see any major improvements in graphics, I'm certain that this gen will last long as well.

Still rocking my 8800GTX. Works very well still.

It all depends on when next gen consoles are released. The problem here is that PC hardware is so far ahead of console hardware, that multiplatform games have to be developed to a target hw much less capable than it could if they were PC only (and Crysis is PC only...). Even if PC games (or versions) are usually played at higher resolutions, it's a long time now since PC GPUs can handle console games at Full HD.

As it's nowadays, only games that are really profitable to develope for PC only are multiplayer games (very problematic to hack and pirate), and those tend to target very low hardware requirements because its usefulness (and therefore value) grows exponentially with number of users. So probably the next jump in hw utilization will be when the next gen consoles come to the market.

It's not called laziness. It's called very strict deadlines. You have to get the thing running, then optimize it IF you have time (Which you don't have.).


Btw, Who said anything about 300 k cards at launch?

+1. Like if those poor game programers had time to be lazy...

True, but the GT200 generation was out since the same time the RV770 came out. The GT300 will be here about 2-3 months after the RV870.

ATI does not seem to hint anything that says the 5870 will be THAT MUCH better than the 4890. But then again, I hope ATI is still understating themselves, like when they said that the 4870 was only 50% faster than the 3870, when it's actually closer to 100% faster.

Well, the most reliable piece of info about the new 5800 performance that we have right now is they're going to be "more than 2 TFLOPS" (applied to both HD5850 and HD5870, so supposedly both are going to be 2+ TFLOPS). Given that last generation was the 1 TFLOP gen (to be exact, 1 TFLOP HD4850, 1.2 TFLOPS HD4870, and 1.36 TFLOPS HD4890), that should give a pretty good idea of... theoretical compute/shader power (at least +100% against HD4850, at least ~50% against HD4890, for the HD5850, more for the HD5870). Actual real world performance remains to be seen, though...

[Bo_Fox]

Well, the most reliable piece of info about the new 5800 performance that we have right now is they're going to be "more than 2 TFLOPS" (applied to both HD5850 and HD5870, so supposedly both are going to be 2+ TFLOPS). Given that last generation was the 1 TFLOP gen (to be exact, 1 TFLOP HD4850, 1.2 TFLOPS HD4870, and 1.36 TFLOPS HD4890), that should give a pretty good idea of... theoretical compute/shader power (at least +100% against HD4850, at least ~50% against HD4890, for the HD5850, more for the HD5870). Actual real world performance remains to be seen, though...

Awesome, then I'm so totally looking forward to it!! That would almost 100% accurately translate to a 100% performance increase for me! As the 4870 has nearly double the trannies of a 3870, and a 100% perf. increase, it should be pretty much the same, but since a lot of the trannies will go for the increase in ROP's (from 16 to 32, apparently), it might just be a 90% increase instead of 100% increase..