The ATI Radeon 5XXX Thread

[jfromeo]

wow what the heck? amd outperforming intel using tom's hardware graphs?

I guess it's more 4890 CF outperforming 4870 CF.

[Astennu]

Hmm. So I can just get a 5870 and get another if I feel like it, instead of waiting for 5870x2.

We dont know what the X2 will be at this point. With the HD3870 X2 you got a higher clock speed then the HD3870 Single.

With the HD4870 X2 we had the sideport that was never used. Because it did not boost performance enough and did use extra power.

There is a chance that the HD5870 X2 will have something that would make it more interesting then a HD5870 CF setup. But we wont know for sure until its out.

The fastest way to get the best performance is to go for a HD5870 CF setup.

The X2 come after the HD5870 Single. Could be one or two months later. And AMD does not need if the leaked results are right. The HD5870 will stand ground VS the GTX295. The best that nVidia has for now....


And i'm not gonna do any conclusions about the cooler. Yes its not optimal to have a smaller duct. But it could still cool good enough. I hope AMD is no idiot and its will not make more noise then a HD4890.

[HKPolice]

5870x2 will be bottlenecked because each GPU will only be getting 8x PCIe. 5870 CF will be faster unless ATi can pull some magic with the sideport + PCIe switch chip.

[astrallite]

Regarding microstuttering: None on the 4870X2. For the most part it seems, ATI fixed the issues the 38xx series had so take that for what its worth



Now Stalker is a legitimately poorly coded game. If a company can't even fix obvious bugs in its code, what hope do we have that they optimize the game?

No doubt, Stalker looks like a very average game in comparison to Crysis yet it runs about 80% as fast when there's sun lighting. The rest of the game runs much smoother than Crysis although that's not saying much considering the graphical quality it presents.

Regarding microstuttering, whether it exists or not, I feel X2 solutions are not efficient because it does not scale linearly all the time--when the combat gets really congested (which is where you need performance the most), like dual-cores scaling, work is not load balanced and a single overclocked card might surpass the dual card in that situation. You see this particularly during per-frame, minimum framerate graphs.

OK, there you go 1920x1200:

...

Not only are the cards not the same (the 4890 is faster than the 4870), the 955 is a 3.2GHz CPU running against a 2.66ghz CPU. The 920 also takes zero effort to overclock as you can hit as high as 3.8ghz without even tweaking the voltages. But sure, if you are the casual gamer, the AMD will be slightly faster. Although casual gamers probably won't have the best hardware out there anyway, so the framerate differences are moot...they aren't gonna be able to max settings like the enthusiast.

[Astennu]

5870x2 will be bottlenecked because each GPU will only be getting 8x PCIe. 5870 CF will be faster unless ATi can pull some magic with the sideport + PCIe switch chip.

We dont know that for sure. We dont know what kind of bandwith a single HD5870 will need. And we dont know what AMD does to minimize the overhead.

What about CF / SLI setups that work on 8x config's. Like the P55 boards ? They should have the same problems then of not bigger.

We cant say anything about it untill the cards are out. Then we can do tests by overclocking the PCI-E bus so see if you get big performance gains. I think the PCI-E bandwith wont be a problem on 2560x1600. Especially with AA en AF. Then you can use all the horsepower you can get.

[HKPolice]

Yes we already do know this for sure. Read the P55 reviews, they're already suffering 5-10% hit when using CF/SLI setups vs the X58. 5870 will only use MORE PCIe bandwidth not less, so the hit while using 8x PCIe will only be higher.

X58 + 5870 CF is the best setup because that is the only way to provide 16x PCIe to both cards while having the fastest CPU to fully utilize both cards.

We dont know that for sure. We dont know what kind of bandwith a single HD5870 will need. And we dont know what AMD does to minimize the overhead.

What about CF / SLI setups that work on 8x config's. Like the P55 boards ? They should have the same problems then of not bigger.

We cant say anything about it untill the cards are out. Then we can do tests by overclocking the PCI-E bus so see if you get big performance gains. I think the PCI-E bandwith wont be a problem on 2560x1600. Especially with AA en AF. Then you can use all the horsepower you can get.

[LordEC911]

Yes we already do know this for sure. Read the P55 reviews, they're already suffering 5-10% hit when using CF/SLI setups vs the X58. 5870 will only use MORE PCIe bandwidth not less, so the hit while using 8x PCIe will only be higher.

X58 + 5870 CF is the best setup because that is the only way to provide 16x PCIe to both cards while having the fastest CPU to fully utilize both cards.

Not sure exactly what you are talking about HK...
4870x2 had a PEX8647 which has 3 ports and 48 pci-e 2.0 lanes...
16 lanes per GPU to the switch and 16 lanes from the switch to the pci-e connector.

Seeing as only one card will actually need to output the frames, it will still perform roughly the same.

[ajaidev]

I have not idea why people are bad mouthing a card when it delivers about the same performance as 4870 x2. I expect the GT300 to do better than the GTX 295 "a whole better"

Lets take this example most likely GT380 will go against 5870 X2, the GT360 will go against 5870 but GTX 390 "2xGT300" and 5850 will be a league of their own.... This is wht i think may happen, the GT300 is rumored to be a beast with 512 SU's now that's more that GTX 295 and its performance in double PP most likely will surpass the 5870 but not the 5870 x2.

[Final8ty]

Hot trouble

We've heard that ATI is working on an X2 version of Radeon HD 5870 card but the biggest obstacle is the power and how to cool such a card.


We’ve learned that the current TDP for X2 is 376W and that the company is working on this issue, as apparently they will have to slow down the GPUs down by quite a lot to get rid of the heat.

Even if they use downclocked Radeon 5850 cores that run at 725MHz, the power goes down by only 36W (2x170W) to 340W. The hottest card from ATI so far was HD 4870 X2 that had TDP of 286W. To release a Radeon HD 5870 X2 card ATI should go down at least to 300W, especially due to thermal issues, but who knows, maybe ATI will launch 300W+ card.

We might be looking at the dawn of graphics cards with three or even four power connectors, as two might not be enough this time.

http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/15499/1/

[SubZero.it]

http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/15499/1/

Mmm...I've read it 5min ago, but you know...that's from fud!! I would like to see any experts seeing this. Because I cannot explain my self how two 5870 chips toghether needs so much power while the single chip uses less power than the current generation. If someone has the answer...(don't tell me that is fud, I know that!)

[rozzyroz]

im a little worried that nvidia's offering wont be as strong as once thought after reading this http://www.gurufocus.com/news.php?id=69204 .

selling off 781k shares of stock since 6/18/09 with over 260k of those being sold the day after the prerelease of the 5XXX cant be a good sign...

ill still wait to see what the nvidia part brings to the table before i buy though.

[Final8ty]

Mmm...I've read it 5min ago, but you know...that's from fud!! I would like to see any experts seeing this. Because I cannot explain my self how two 5870 chips toghether needs so much power while the single chip uses less power than the current generation. If someone has the answer...(don't tell me that is fud, I know that!)

I was thinking the same.

[kgk]

Can you all stop thread crapping about Phenom and i7. Nedjo works for AMD, so whatever you type you are wasting your time. He will always find a graph where Phenom looks phenomenal.


THIS THREAD IS ABOUT 5870!

So, as some may already pointed out: 5870 CF might be bottlenecked even by the best i7 CPUs. So, an OC-ed i7 CPU would be required or you are going to waste money buying two or three 5870. Since i7 can be OC-ed to 4~4.4GHz with a good water cooling for a 24/7 work, a question comes to my mind: Will it be enough to run three 5870 in CF?

I'm not familiar enough with either the upcoming cards or the i7 that much.

Can you explain how a 3+Ghz i7 would be bottlenecked by a 5870CF setup?

[Humminn55]

im a little worried that nvidia's offering wont be as strong as once thought after reading this http://www.gurufocus.com/news.php?id=69204 .

selling off 781k shares of stock since 6/18/09 with over 260k of those being sold the day after the prerelease of the 5XXX cant be a good sign...

ill still wait to see what the nvidia part brings to the table before i buy though.

Start worrying about things you understand and less about things of which you have no idea how they work.

The fact of the matter is, when a CEO of a publicly owned and traded company wants to sell any of his/her stock of that company, he/she has to file an intent to exercise his/her option to sell that stock with the SEC months before the sale is to be completed. The sales being hysterically reported by all the "news" sites were put into motion probably two quarters ago.....like around January '09. And the timing of the sale is NOT up to the CEO, either. That's carried out by a third party with no ties to the stock's owner.

The sky is not falling. Sorry.

[Mr. K6]

http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/15499/1/

I don't believe it. 188W(single 5870 TDP)x2 = 376W; that's waaaay too convenient. I mean really, he's saying they didn't save a single watt making a combined card? Anyway, IIRC, TDP will have to be under 300W if they want it to be PCIe 1.1 compatible.

Start worrying about things you understand and less about things of which you have no idea how they work.

The fact of the matter is, when a CEO of a publicly owned and traded company wants to sell any of his/her stock of that company, he/she has to file an intent to exercise his/her option to sell that stock with the SEC months before the sale is to be completed. The sales being hysterically reported by all the "news" sites were put into motion probably two quarters ago.....like around January '09. And the timing of the sale is NOT up to the CEO, either. That's carried out by a third party with no ties to the stock's owner.

The sky is not falling. Sorry.

Except that months ago he still knew where his company was heading . Simple fact of the matter is that a company CEO selling off that kind of volume of stock usually isn't a good sign.

[geo]

I don't believe it. 188W(single 5870 TDP)x2 = 376W; that's waaaay too convenient. I mean really, he's saying they didn't save a single watt making a combined card? Anyway, IIRC, TDP will have to be under 300W if they want it to be PCIe 1.1 compatible.

Except that months ago he still knew where his company was heading . Simple fact of the matter is that a company CEO selling off that kind of volume of stock usually isn't a good sign.

or may be hes shorting it

[kgk]

or may be hes shorting it

How would that be any better? That's just another indication that he expects bad news that will tank the stock price.

[geo]

How would that be any better? That's just another indication that he expects bad news that will tank the stock price.

he may expect the price to go lower for a while (where he buys again - on ATI only rumors) and then higher

[wickedld9]

I don't understand the NVIDA stock news report that is floating around. All that is mentioned is that they sold stock, they don't mention that they also bought stock at the time...

http://www.reuters.com/finance/stock...?symbol=NVDA.O

LOL at all the drama coming from those who know nothing about the market and have made the sale of some stock as the sign of NVIDIA's demise. I know f' all about the market but have the common sense to at least do some research.

edit: The report indicates he sold 520,947....out of 20,234,002 that he owns. Yep, he is clearly bailing out...

[villa1n]

Mmm...I've read it 5min ago, but you know...that's from fud!! I would like to see any experts seeing this. Because I cannot explain my self how two 5870 chips toghether needs so much power while the single chip uses less power than the current generation. If someone has the answer...(don't tell me that is fud, I know that!)

On top of that FUDs solution is to use downclocked 5850 cores... highly unlikely since the cores are shader neutered this time around... I think FUD is adding numbers together and making up some news for hits because aside those leaked benches info is sparse.

[Jowy Atreides]

Today is the 15th, are we REALLY not going to have any reviews before release?

So early consumers will be blind buying?

[Xoulz]

Start worrying about things you understand and less about things of which you have no idea how they work.

The fact of the matter is, when a CEO of a publicly owned and traded company wants to sell any of his/her stock of that company, he/she has to file an intent to exercise his/her option to sell that stock with the SEC months before the sale is to be completed. The sales being hysterically reported by all the "news" sites were put into motion probably two quarters ago.....like around January '09. And the timing of the sale is NOT up to the CEO, either. That's carried out by a third party with no ties to the stock's owner.

The sky is not falling. Sorry.

Please...

Are you saying he didn't know in July that ATi had some really nice hardware up their sleeve? He knew the release date as much as we did. Just because it can take 60 days, doesn't mean it always does.

We know how this crap works, it suppose to look innocent, but it's all too obvious.

If nVidia doesn't have a card under $299 they are doomed!

[rozzyroz]

The sky is not falling. Sorry.

well, you are right... i have little knowledge of stock trading, but when someone sees that the ceo sells off nearly $10 million in stock (without knowing that he has nearly $300 million in stock total) one may view it as a bad sign

maybe it's not, but the timming is bad for it to have made the news.

[SubZero.it]

I don't believe it. 188W(single 5870 TDP)x2 = 376W; that's waaaay too convenient. I mean really, he's saying they didn't save a single watt making a combined card? Anyway, IIRC, TDP will have to be under 300W if they want it to be PCIe 1.1 compatible.

Except that months ago he still knew where his company was heading . Simple fact of the matter is that a company CEO selling off that kind of volume of stock usually isn't a good sign.

I understood, but mu question was...if 5870 is more efficient than the current genereation, how could be that the double chip uses more power instead??Or fudzilla is joking as always (that could really be), or they made a crappy power regulation that supplies the card...I mean...I don't know

[Kimi]

I am thinking to buy a 5870 or 5850 for gaming instead of upgrading to a 1156 platform. Right now i have an E8400 E0 and a HD4870 512 MB. How much should I OC my E8400 so it won't bottleneck a 5870 or 5850? I use my PC for gaming, Internet browsing and watching movies. No program that require the power of a Quad.

*I use 1920x1080 resolution.