HD5870 and HD5850 Reviews

[gumballguy]

All these people saying its less than they expected.... are already running 4870x2's and 295's!

Well DUH. Of course that means it's not a worthy upgrade (with no dx11 titles yet, assuming you don't want multi monitor).

But I don't think for anyone who has an older card that there is a more sensible option.. given you can crossfire later (who's going to run 2x295's? :p)

5870 = 4870x2 is huge. Maybe you're all at the bleeding edge and its nothing to you, but I'm not. I've got a 7000 series in the server and a 2600 in my laptop.... if you were me, looking for a grand upgrade, what would you buy? :p

[zerazax]

God reading through the Anandtech review, I had no idea how many things got added into DX11 and I'm sure the HTPC users will be happy to know that we can use protected audio through it *finally*!

[Machinus]

This is pretty good news for ATI:

- Fastest single-card solution (likely to be comparable to GT300 even if slower).
- By far the best energy performance of any card. This adds significant value to the card, making it quieter and cheaper to run over the long term (lower khws drawn for computing and A/C).
- Drivers will likely increase the performance of the card a substantial amount over time.
- DX11 games will increase the gap between 5870 and 295. (This does make the comparison with GT300 more important.)

In sum, this is the best product you can currently buy. GT300 can potentially best it in FPS, but ATI has created a serious competitor that is signficantly faster, more efficient, and reasonably priced AT LAUNCH, which is guaranteed to become cheaper and faster due to drivers over time...nVidia is going to have a hell of a time competing here.

[dasa]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/vid...on-hd5870.html
nice low power use
14.7 idle
25.8 2d
107 3dm06
161.3 futurmark

[villa1n]

This is pretty good news for ATI:

- Fastest single-card solution (likely to be comparable to GT300 even if slower).
- By far the best energy performance of any card. This adds significant value to the card, making it quieter and cheaper to run over the long term (lower khws drawn for computing and A/C).
- Drivers will likely increase the performance of the card a substantial amount over time.
- DX11 games will increase the gap between 5870 and 295. (This does make the comparison with GT300 more important.)

In sum, this is the best product you can currently buy. GT300 can potentially best it in FPS, but ATI has created a serious competitor that is signficantly faster, more efficient, and reasonably priced AT LAUNCH, which is guaranteed to become cheaper and faster due to drivers over time...nVidia is going to have a hell of a time competing here.

LoL exactly, I m not sure what people were expecting, especially with Launch Drivers... I see big potential still, you have it beating the x2 in most cases and the 295gtx in many... doing it quieter, and as a single card solution.. pretty impressive.

[Utnorris]

Id wait for XFX, Sapphire's support and warranty sucks.

Zipzoomfly has it at $399.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Produc...tCode=10011222

Sold out while I was writing this though. With bing cashback puts it at $388 shipped.

[Chickenfeed]

The XFX model is in stock at NCIX in Canada for $429CND ($20 instant rebate) If I were to get one, this would be the one I'd get. I just can't justify spending upwards of 400 dollars on a card that is slower in many cases just for the sake of power usage and noise.

For those looking to upgrade a card that is more than a generation old however, they look to be quite nice. As has been mentioned in a few of the reviews, it still remains to be seen how DX11 and OpenCL will fair. I personally expect DX11 to outperform DX10 if its done right but we shall see.

[astrallite]

I will correct you, it's not. It's just 2 times the shaders of the 4870/4890, so people assumed it was a dual core GPU...

Well let's see when pcgh provides a microstutter review sometime in the future and debunk the myth.

[postumus]

are ppl forgetting the 9800gx2 beat the ati 4870 and gtx 280 pretty handily when they came out..
dunno what ppl were expecting, I think the performance of this card is blazing, the price is good, the features are great.

[Daveburt714]

I've been a computer nerd since the Vic20 back in 1983!

I really find it hard to believe people are knocking this card, it's frikken awesome and ~$150 less than what the GTX295 was yesterday...

FWIW, I learned my lesson about staying on the cutting edge of video cards, it's a really expensive proposition!

I love the 5870!! I bought a 4870 Saturday for $129...

I'm a Happy Camper.

[tajoh111]

LoL exactly, I m not sure what people were expecting, especially with Launch Drivers... I see big potential still, you have it beating the x2 in most cases and the 295gtx in many... doing it quieter, and as a single card solution.. pretty impressive.

I see this launch as an opportunity for NV, the door is left really wide open because the gap is not nearly big enough.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3643&p=17

If you ignore resident evil(37%) and Dawn of war II(loses by 4%), the gap between CF 5870 and GTX 285 SLI is between 10-20% ahead for the 5870cf.

This is all speculations but..

If the GTX 380 is indeed 510 shaders vs 240 and higher clocks than the gtx 285 and they improve the AA algorithm which has been long overdue for the company and other things coming with the new architechture(since it is said to be new), I can see a GTX 380 possibly being as fast as a CF 5870 or a 5870x2. If this happens(and it is a big if), NV will be able to charge as much as they want for the gtx 380. And similarly a gtx 395 will be untouchable. I know its the halo, and people don't spend the most money there(volume), but its enough to make the 5870 crumble in price which is a good thing. It also gives NV room to attack the 5870 in its own home, with scaled down versions of the gtx 380.

I think waiting for the gtx 380 whatever flavor you go, because I can't see the gtx 380 not having an effect on the price of the 5870.

[kl0012]

Really liked Guru3D Conclusion

Talking about transcoding, it surely didn't suck to see how fast the transcoding process was handled by the Radeon HD 5870, leading performance and nothing less.

Actually I'm a little bit dissapointed with perf in video transcoding. With almost 2 TFLOPs of perf HD5870 should be at least 10 times faster then 3.8GHz Nehalem (120 GFLOPs) not just by 16%.
But the power consumption is really impressive for such a powerful card.

[villa1n]

I see this launch as an opportunity for NV, the door is left really wide open because the gap is not nearly big enough.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3643&p=17

If you ignore resident evil(37%) and Dawn of war II(loses by 4%), the gap between CF 5870 and GTX 285 SLI is between 10-20% ahead for the 5870cf.

This is all speculations but..

If the GTX 380 is indeed 510 shaders vs 240 and higher clocks than the gtx 285 and they improve the AA algorithm which has been long overdue for the company and other things coming with the new architechture(since it is said to be new), I can see a GTX 380 possibly being as fast as a CF 5870 or a 5870x2. If this happens(and it is a big if), NV will be able to charge as much as they want for the gtx 380. And similarly a gtx 395 will be untouchable. I know its the halo, and people don't spend the most money there(volume), but its enough to make the 5870 crumble in price which is a good thing. It also gives NV room to attack the 5870 in its own home, with scaled down versions of the gtx 380.

I think waiting for the gtx 380 whatever flavor you go, because I can't see the gtx 380 not having an effect on the price of the 5870.

I d be skeptical of any sli vs CF comparisons with immature drivers... I would only take single card results for the moment, as the yare probably more representative of the performance so the margin between a 285 vs 5870... probably accurately reflects the performance diff, versus the CF / SLI comparison at the moment, as scaling will most likely improve substantially from launch numbers.

To better illustrate...

Compare the scaling of a 4870 to a 4870x2 .. versus a 5870 to 5870x2... now unless there is some architectural abnormality with 58xx series, the scaling should come close to mirroring what the 4870 achieved, granting there is no bottlenecking to prevent that via pci-e or cpu, etc.

On top of that, I m sure these clock speeds aren't set in stone, as the process matures, we ll have what equates to 4890's appearing as well i m sure, that and the fact nvidia to the best of our knowledge isn't ready to launch anything for 4months yet... So we ll see, I think this will drop 4870x2's like a rock, and 285's and 295's as well, which will allow me to cheaply trifire a 4870x2 with my 48701gb while i wait and let the smoke settle in q1 2010 ^^ Plus, it remains to be seen if the lynnfield will suffer at high res from the pci-e lanes..at 8x ** that answers that! lol.

[Bail_w]

Awesome, amazing idle power consumption.

[strange|ife]

I like the techpower up review. They compare various pcie x lanes by taping off the conductors. testing 1x 4x 8x and 16x

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...caling/25.html

[kl0012]

I like the techpower up review. They compare various pcie x lanes by taping off the conductors. testing 1x 4x 8x and 16x

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...caling/25.html

Thanks for drawing attention to this article. Indeed very useful info.

[STEvil]

No 2gb 6 cards yet

[Aleki]

NCIXUS has the XFX5870 for $388

[eleeter]

This is all speculations but..

If the GTX 380 is indeed 510 shaders vs 240 and higher clocks than the gtx 285 and they improve the AA algorithm which has been long overdue for the company and other things coming with the new architechture(since it is said to be new), I can see a GTX 380 possibly being as fast as a CF 5870 or a 5870x2. If this happens(and it is a big if), NV will be able to charge as much as they want for the gtx 380.

I think you are being wildly optimistic here. For this to happen, Nvidia has to best their current single GPU performance by at least 3X.

I also don't think the 5870 is really stretching its legs yet with current games. Looking at the various reviews, yea it's easy to be a bit underwhelmed, but I don't think we have seen exactly what a 5870 is really capable of. Kinda reminds me of the first 9700 reviews. Performance was great, but not astounding compared to previous gen stuff in many games.

[STEvil]

I think you are being wildly optimistic here. For this to happen, Nvidia has to best their current single GPU performance by at least 3X.

I also don't think the 5870 is really stretching its legs yet with current games. Looking at the various reviews, yea it's easy to be a bit underwhelmed, but I don't think we have seen exactly what a 5870 is really capable of. Kinda reminds me of the first 9700 reviews. Performance was great, but not astounding compared to previous gen stuff in many games.

ATI Kicked up the AA mode... more than a notch.

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,6...eviews/?page=6

[tajoh111]

I d be skeptical of any sli vs CF comparisons with immature drivers... I would only take single card results for the moment, as the yare probably more representative of the performance so the margin between a 285 vs 5870... probably accurately reflects the performance diff, versus the CF / SLI comparison at the moment, as scaling will most likely improve substantially from launch numbers.

Compare the scaling of a 4870 to a 4870x2 .. versus a 5870 to 5870x2... now unless there is some architectural abnormality with 58xx series, the scaling should come close to mirroring what the 4870 achieved, granting there is no bottlenecking to prevent that via pci-e or cpu, etc.

On top of that, I m sure these clock speeds aren't set in stone, as the process matures, we ll have what equates to 4890's appearing as well i m sure, that and the fact nvidia to the best of our knowledge isn't ready to launch anything for 4months yet... So we ll see, I think this will drop 4870x2's like a rock, and 285's and 295's as well, which will allow me to cheaply trifire a 4870x2 with my 48701gb while i wait and let the smoke settle in q1 2010 ^^ Plus, it remains to be seen if the lynnfield will suffer at high res from the pci-e lanes..at 8x ** that answers that! lol.

One more thing to look at it for me is the TFLOPs, the GTX 285 has about 1.06tflops of performance vs 2.08flops of performance of the 5850.

Although it is nearly double the tflops, the 5850 is only 5% faster according to tech powerup. The next GTX 380 is supposed to be 2.5 tflops. If we do indeed get this many tflops from the gtx 380, than forget about it just be competitive with the 5870, its going to start getting competitive with the 5870 x2.

The specs of the gtx 380 might seem outlandish at this point, but considering the size of the gtx 380, which is guaranteed to be huge and NV won't fool around considering how much marketshare AMD has gained for NV being conservative the last time around, I expect them to make a crazy card this time around.

Eleeter, I don't think they need to increase their performance by so much 3x overall, more so a little over 100% over a gt200 will do it because I think because of scaling issues in regards to tflops in regards to 5xxx series cards (e.g 1.2 tflops 4870 -> 2.7 tflops 5870 does not yield close to the theoretical amount), the 5870x2 might be only 50-70% faster than a 5870.

If we want to look this in terms of math, a 5870 is 40% faster than a gtx 285, if the 5870x2 is 50% faster than the 5870, which is typically what we see in the anandtech review, then the 5870x2 offers 2.1 times the performance of the gtx 285(math is 140%*50% = 210%). So if the gtx 380 offers a little over double, it can be competitive with the 5870x2. Based on rumors, considering NV has increase the tflop performance by 2.3 or so and has changed the architecture to something new(and AA is something NV can definitely increase because of how bad the old AA algorithms are on their cards), I can see with high AA and high resolution, NV more than doubling the performance.

When NV went to 7900gtx -> 8800gtx they doubled the amount of gflops(255gflops->510gflops) plus they made a new architecture and we got 100% + boost in high AA and resolution conditions.

This time if NV didn't fool around and the rumors are true(the increase of 2.3-2.4 in shader flops and they are changing to a new architecture), I can see a jump like we saw when the 8800gtx happened. If this happens and it is a big if, the 5870x2 will have similar performance to the 380gtx.

[JohnZS]

I am waiting for 2GB customised overclocked and custom cooled versions of the 5870 to appear.
For now you can purchase a 1GB (IMHO should be 2GB) 5870 in the UK for £298.99 inc VAT that is a little bit cheaper than a GTX 295
John

[vietthanhpro]

waiting 5870 2GB GDRAM5 benchmark.................

[Nomadsoul]

Interested in 5850, any review ? :S:

[villa1n]

One more thing to look at it for me is the TFLOPs, the GTX 285 has about 1.06tflops of performance vs 2.08flops of performance of the 5850.

Although it is nearly double the tflops, the 5850 is only 5% faster according to tech powerup. The next GTX 380 is supposed to be 2.5 tflops. If we do indeed get this many tflops from the gtx 380, than forget about it just be competitive with the 5870, its going to start getting competitive with the 5870 x2.

The specs of the gtx 380 might seem outlandish at this point, but considering the size of the gtx 380, which is guaranteed to be huge and NV won't fool around considering how much marketshare AMD has gained for NV being conservative the last time around, I expect them to make a crazy card this time around.

Xfire for 5870 in Farcry2 as seen in my post 28% increase vs single card...
Xfire for 4870 vs 4870x2 91% increase.. near perfect scaling... I think the scaling for the profiles of the 5870 have a long way to go... even if they dont reach as high it will still be a substantial fps increase.

As for the Tflops, the 5870 is at 2.7? .. And again, look at the drivers, the performance is from launch drivers, that havent harnessed the power yet, and from old games, I think there is more in store with dx11. As well the speculation on the gtx380 is just that, I m sure the numbers will edge out the 5870, but who knows by how much, we could argue either way, and it wont make a difference until some real numbers are released, so for now, we should focus on what we know.. which is the 5870 is a powerful card and given the scaling and performance in games, seems like it has a lot of room to mature with drivers.