HD5970 Reviews

[SKYMTL]

ammm... you were talking about stock voltage and max clock, they talk about max voltage max clock and the impact of this on the VRM's...

You concluded AMD lied and 5870 freq are not achievable they said 5970 can achive 5870 speeds but better accurate voltage tool is required.

No. The Dnet client can begin throttling at STOCK. It doesn't take much (as Ryan noted) to push the VRMs up that additional 19°C. It bodes extremely ill for other GPGPU apps which may push things beyond what DNet does.

Part of their conclusion:

but based on how the 5970 was promoted and presented the fact of the matter is that the card can’t meet its advertised capabilities

This has been my point for the last few pages...

[Manicdan]

if only they build the stock cooler a little different, they wouldnt have had this issue

[Monstru]

Advertised??? Advertised to whom? Do they have banner on the net "buy this, it clocks like hell?" Do they write on the box "super OC-able board inside"? Where is the ADVERTISING? Are we confusing marketing BS fed to press with advertising? Oh boy, oh boy...

[SKYMTL]

Advertised??? Advertised to whom? Do they have banner on the net "buy this, it clocks like hell?" Do they write on the box "super OC-able board inside"? Where is the ADVERTISING? Are we confusing marketing BS fed to press with advertising? Oh boy, oh boy...

You're splitting hairs. Anything marketing can also be considered advertising. In a way, reviews are an advertisement for a product since they are giving said product face time in the public's eye. As such, what companies comminicate to reviewers, they expect will be comminucated to the public in some form. In this case, it was communicated and then later debunked. THAT is a reviewer's job: to communicate information and then look into the claims and refute them if necessary.


As for advertisement:

[Monstru]

advertising - A paid, mediated, form of communication from an identifiable source, designed to persuade the receiver to take some action, now or in the future.

Did they transmited the information directly to the buyers? NO
Did they offer to pay you to transmit that information to the buyers? I like to think not.


Advertising is not the same thing with PR actions, like press conferences. Period.

As for advertisement

Woaaa...great, so it says it had headroom...Well, it does. How much? it does not say that. Anyway, please start bashing all hardware companies for their banners then, everybody is marketing overclocking this days, with much more aggresive selling lines then that in the banner above. Why aren't you upset with Asus or Gigabyte or Nvidia or any other manufacturer for their banners?

In a way, reviews are an advertisement for a product since they are giving said product face time in the public's eye. As such, what companies comminicate to reviewers, they expect will be comminucated to the public in some form. In this case, it was communicated and then later debunked. THAT is a reviewer's job: to communicate information and then look into the claims and refute them if necessary.

A....sorry...the can expect whatever they will, but a reviewer's job is to test the product, to analize it, and then report what he found. A review is NOT advertising, since it can very well be negative. A review is putting the product to the test and reporting findings, be them bad or good. Otherwise, just give the public the PR PDF, and your job is done...

[SKYMTL]

Did they transmited the information directly to the buyers? NO

YES.

http://www.amd.com/us/products/deskt...-overview.aspx

Unlocked, this graphics card has massive headroom so you can take control and push your hardware to its full potential!

[ajaidev]

YES.

http://www.amd.com/us/products/deskt...-overview.aspx

With a custom heat-sink the card can be pushed forward, hell just using a full face water panel may unlock the card to its full potential.

[Monstru]

What a nasty claim, I have never seen any hardware manufacturer lying like that, almost without shame...

But wait, YOU can take control and push it to the max. Which brings us to the very beginning of the conversation - it does not overclock itself

[postumus]

You can't buy the card directly from AMD anyway, I see no Buy it now button. Joe blow won't be purchasing this card anyway, they'll be purchasing the newly released 310 GT from Nvidia

[tajoh111]

What a nasty claim, I have never seen any hardware manufacturer lying like that, almost without shame...

But wait, YOU can take control and push it to the max. Which brings us to the very beginning of the conversation - it does not overclock itself

I think your giving AMD too much benefit of the doubt.

If you think these marketing slides were only meant be be seen by the press, I don't think you are giving the public enough credit.

Reviewers, websites are the most likely to see through the BS, however, alot of reviewers will post these slides which will also be seen by readers.

Additionally people are naive, there are plenty of people that take AMD mouth, as word for word accurate and advertise to others, that this card has plenty of overclocking headroom.

The overclocking headroom has been particularly stressed with this card. It's why there are so many websites disproving, bigs ones like anandtech, because there is real controversy here. I haven't seen a card particular stressed for its overclocking potential by the GPU manufacturer as much as this card. And the opposite is happening, we are getting worse overclocking potential than most cards in general on stock voltages.

It overclocks a bit better with higher volts, but as anandtech noted, with certain applications, said overclocks are useless when the card throttles down.

Not to mention overvolting a card, voids the warranty if anything goes wrong with most if not all manufacturers.

How AMD is advertising the overclocking ability of this card, its seems like its idiot proof and you got massive headroom. This clearly isn't the case. It involves finding an overvolting tool, requires tweaking of your fan profile to possibly impractical levels.

Secondly, its this type of debugging that might sway people to buy 5850CF over this solution. Its cheaper and more overclockable.

[SKYMTL]

But wait, YOU can take control and push it to the max. Which brings us to the very beginning of the conversation - it does not overclock itself

Excuses excuses. You say that it can overclock safely without issues. I called shens. Anandtech and LH have said the same. It throttles performance due to VRM temps once clock speeds / voltage is increased and that has now been proven. As such, it was NOT meant to have "massive overclocking headroom".

You asked for proof ATI claiming this card has massive overclocking headroom. I showed you just that.

It doesn't matter what the end user does. What matters is that ATI is CLAIMING their card can do something that it CAN'T because of current cooling limitations. That isn't me BSing you or anything else; it is written as plain as day on the ATI website. It is those same statements that AIBs take and write directly onto their packaging and send out as information to be posted as a product description on Newegg, NCIX, etc. Marketing, advertising, it doesn't matter because in the end it will be filtered down to consumers who don't know it is false information.

[eleeter]

SKYMTL=Anti-AMD crusade lately for some reason.

[eric66]

i saw several 5970's reaching 1000 ghz so this conversation starts to bore me yawn

[SKYMTL]

SKYMTL=Anti-AMD crusade lately for some reason.

Not at all. When there are compliments to be made, I make them. I wrote VERY highly of all the other 5-series cards.

Ironically, the second someone says something contrary to the pro AMD crusade, they are anti ATI / AMD.

[Monstru]

I think your giving AMD too much benefit of the doubt.

If you think these marketing slides were only meant be be seen by the press, I don't think you are giving the public enough credit.

Reviewers, websites are the most likely to see through the BS, however, alot of reviewers will post these slides which will also be seen by readers.

Well, have you seen any Nvidia, Gigabyte or MSI slides lately? I've seen. Maaan there are some interesting claims there. Why don't I see nobody bashing them?

The overclocking headroom has been particularly stressed with this card. It's why there are so many websites disproving, bigs ones like anandtech, because there is real controversy here. I haven't seen a card particular stressed for its overclocking potential by the GPU manufacturer as much as this card. And the opposite is happening, we are getting worse overclocking potential than most cards in general on stock voltages. It overclocks a bit better with higher volts, but as anandtech noted, with certain applications, said overclocks are useless when the card throttles down.

Big sites like Anandtech said that high VTT will kill your Wolfdales and they were wrong. Yes, people are naive indeed

Not to mention overvolting a card, voids the warranty if anything goes wrong with most if not all manufacturers.

How AMD is advertising the overclocking ability of this card, its seems like its idiot proof and you got massive headroom. This clearly isn't the case. It involves finding an overvolting tool, requires tweaking of your fan profile to possibly impractical levels.

Overclocking is not idiot proof, it has never been and it will never be. The amount of overclocking is not guaranteed by the manufacturer. Overclocking to high clocks is not at hand for everybody. If it were, we would all be kingpin now

Secondly, its this type of debugging that might sway people to buy 5850CF over this solution. Its cheaper and more overclockable.

That is not a bad ideea at all. But the difference is not that big. Let's end this conversation and see what we are actually talking about. Of course, keep in mind that these data is based on the samples I have, this does not represent the overall OC potential of any of the cards.


So, HD 5870 is by far the best of them all. Rightfully, this should have had no limits in CCC and it should have been marketed as the VGA with massive OC headroom. However, the BBA only gave me 925MHz GPU with stock volts. The study bellow is done with an Asus HD5870.



This is the HD 5870's VRM, by far the best of the three cards.


The HD 5850 I used was the reference sample from ATI. It shows pretty good voltage scaling. The vGPu is lower then HD 5870's, but higher then HD 5970's.



This is HD 5850's VRM.

I have tested 3 HD 5970 in overclocking, one HIS and two BBA's. The all clock within 10-20 MHz range. This is done with one of the BBA's. As you can see, the HD 5970 has the lowest vGPU.



Of course, as we all know, this is how HD 5970 looks naked.


Now, taking into consideration we have a two full Cypress GPU's on a PCB, with all 1600 stream procesors and all that, and we have the lowest vGPU, does it clock bad? No, it seems normal to me and it seems in line with what her sisters are getting. HD 5850 has a little bit simpler GPU and a higher vGPU, while HD 5870 goes way in front due to it's strong VRM design. Is there anything wrong here? No, this looks normal to me.


Now, did ATI do a smart thing by marketing the HD5970 as the unlocked board with Oc headroom? No, this is marketing BS, the HD 5870 should have had unlocked CCC and should have been marketed like this. Are they lying to the buyers? No, it is just every day marketing BS that we see in all the slides and presentations, from all manufacturer. The just wanted to add some value to the product using this claim.

So yeah, marketing HD 5970 as the "fierce overclocker" is not a very bright ideea, but it just falls under the marketing BS category we see everyday, it is not something to get that excited about.



Some last few words. The data above is from an article I am working on, about overclocking on HD 5xxx series. That is "work in progress" data, since I did not go with all the cards to the same max voltage, I did not use the same stepts, and so on. Also, this is just the part about air-cooling using software to adjust the voltaje, the cards will also be vmodded to find their tru max. Of course that will happen on LN2. So, this is work in progress stuff, i know it's not apples to apples comparison since the values for vGPU are different between the 3 cards.

Excuses excuses. You say that it can overclock safely without issues. I called shens. Anandtech and LH have said the same.

Sorry bro, but somebody is looking for excuses, and it is not me. I am happy, fine and dandy about how HD 5xxx overclock, and I have screenies to proove that. If id does not work for you, it does not mean is bad

[SKYMTL]

Well, have you seen any Nvidia, Gigabyte or MSI slides lately? I've seen. Maaan there are some interesting claims there. Why don't I see nobody bashing them?

Don't get me started on the claims of mobo manufacturers. That's a whole different conversation.

As for NVIDIA, Charlie does so much bashing that there's really nothing left unsaid.

[eleeter]

Not at all. When there are compliments to be made, I make them. I wrote VERY highly of all the other 5-series cards.

I'm not going to drag up your post history, but you have a clear anti-AMD bias going on. I have no problem with that, but don't expect some people to believe otherwise.

You spoke highly of Batman and PhysX, but downplayed Eyefinity. You said that AMD doesn't have to do anything when it comes to the open standard community, and just "sit back" and let the community do everything. You didn't have anything good to say about the C3 steppings, stated that hardware tessellation "isn't needed", stated that any DX11 lead AMD gets would be"washed away in no time", then said that AMD is "spinning their wheels" as Fermi "gets close", then said that days of supply problems can "turn into months", then said all Nvidia has to do is leak some info, and people will just completely forget about ATI cards and wait.

Need I go on? Okay I will...

You also said the sales of the 57xx cards are weak, even though you admitted it was "circumstantial evidence", then in a what I thought was a very bizarre statement, you said the 5970 probably has a "2x128-bit memory interface" which defied logic.

Maybe you don't realize it, but you most often have a downbeat tone when you talk about AMD, not so much with Nvidia. On the other hand. Hardwarecanucks.com is an excellent site and that tone doesn't translate into the articles from what I've seen, props for that.

[Monstru]

SKYTML - Yeah man, I know, that is exactly what I am talking about. We see so much marketing BS lately that we just have to ignore it, no matter who it comes from. I really do not care about their claims, I just run wy own tests and that is that. GTX 295 was the absolute king of VGA's for almost an year, and I had no problem with that (man I love that board). Now HD 5970 is the mother and father of them all, and I am happy to play with it and I love it too. If GT 300 will be the next big thing, I will also be happy. For me it's about toys more and more powerfull, and I like them all. Who has the best product at the moment is my favourite for that moment. But BS I ignore from all of them since I am sick of it.

And believe me, I am not praising ATi or AMD. I just love the HD 5970 for what it is. ATI and AMD got enough bashing from me when i was not happy with HD 5870 sampling and availability, straight on the site, a full page of it

eleeter -

[SKYMTL]

Telling the truth isn't the same as bias. Unlike many other people in my place, I dont' strive to be politically correct since it doesn't benefit anyone if I was. I hate glossing over things. However, I have no issue at all with AMD or ATI.

You spoke highly of Batman and PhysX, but downplayed Eyefinity.

Guilty. Proudly so. The PhysX effects in B:AA are amazing. However, I don't speak highly about PhysX. Rather, I avoid it altogether. Hence why you never saw an article about it from us. And probably never will other than some testing of the EVGA Co-Op.

You said that AMD doesn't have to do anything when it comes to the open standard community, and just "sit back" and let the community do everything.

And they do. Which is a good thing and is what the Open Source community is all about. I mentioned that as well. Plus, you're going to tell me Stream has actually come a long way since its inception? That ATI talks alot about DirectCompute, OpenCL, etc and has actually made a huge investment in any of these areas when it comes to development? Heck, one of their main talking points in the last few months was of the Bullet Physics library...which is being developed with the help of Nvidia.

This isn't an issue of not wanting to do something. Rather I have always felt it is due to a lack of funding on AMD's part. That's the truth...as I see it.

You didn't have anything good to say about the C3 steppings

My comments were regarding overclocking in general. How no two chips overclock the same. My posts in this thread have stated the exact same thing in reference to HD 5970 cards.

stated that hardware tessellation "isn't needed"

This I will ask for a link to. Must have been a REALLY bad day or something.

stated that any DX11 lead AMD gets would be"washed away in no time"then said that AMD is "spinning their wheels" as Fermi "gets close",

No, I said they COULD be washed away if the supply problems continue. Once again: the truth.

then said that days of supply problems can "turn into months",

And they have, haven't they? Try to find STABLE stock of HD 5800 series. I dare ya.

then said all Nvidia has to do is leak some info, and people will just completely forget about ATI cards and wait.

Truth again. Nature of people's buying habits and all of that. Did it myself when I was waiting for a Mazda Protege and the Mazda 3 was announced.

You also said the sales of the 57xx cards are weak, even though you admitted it was "circumstantial evidence"

And I hold by this. 100%. Heck 110%.

you said the 5970 probably has a "2x128-bit memory interface" which defied logic.

No. People in the thread were commenting about lackluster performance at certain resolutions and all sorts of idea were thrown around. Nothing was stated for a fact. Monstru and I were publically hashing out ideas.


As you said: Need I go on?

I DO understand where you are coming from and maybe I need a stricter filter on my thoughs but I hate brushing something under the carpet just for the sake of trying to make everyone happy. Around here, I cut loose by talking about the way I see things instead of being politically correct. I'll continue to do that since I don't think you guys deserve to have stuff sugar coated. This has nothing to do with Nvidia, ATI, AMD, Intel or any other company since I compliment what I think is right for consumers. So. when something comes up that I think is trying to pull the wool over your eyes, I say so.

Yeah, I am sure my posts would look so much better if I was playing nice...

[eleeter]

This I will ask for a link to. Must have been a REALLY bad day or something.

Here is it just because you requested it.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...09#post4078209

But we can drop this back and forth it's not really relevant to this thread, agreed?

[SKYMTL]

Here is it just because you requested it.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...09#post4078209

But we can drop this back and forth it's not really relevant to this thread, agreed?

Hardware tessellation isn't needed. Correct. You can do tessellation on the software side. That didn't have anything to do with bashing ATI...

Anyways, yes I can agree to drop the back and forth. It really isn't accomplishing anything anyways.

[ajaidev]

Hardware tessellation isn't needed. Correct. You can do tessellation on the software side. That didn't have anything to do with bashing ATI...

Anyways, yes I can agree to drop the back and forth. It really isn't accomplishing anything anyways.

Yes it can but at cpu's cost, same as phy's the more the tessellation much harder it is for the cpu to handle. Faces and complex objects are tessellation monsters and doing tessellation on them in a 60 fps with high pixel rate is no joke.

This thread has a great code for tess. use

http://www.gamedev.net/community/for...opic_id=531164

Try the code in both software and then a hardware environment. I used RenderMonkey and rewrote the code back when my brother had a 2900 GT and it worked.

[cowie]

you guys are fighting nice but i wanted to say something.

i got two one.... clocks like crap the other is broke so much for all the press reviews...stores are the real world.
i know that dont seem to have anything to do with what your talking about but it really does

[SKYMTL]

i got two one.... clocks like crap the other is broke so much for all the press reviews...stores are the real world.
i know that dont seem to have anything to do with what your talking about but it really does

One of mine is dead so trust me, us press people get buggy cards ALL the time.

[Monstru]

you guys are fighting nice but i wanted to say something.

i got two one.... clocks like crap the other is broke so much for all the press reviews...stores are the real world.
i know that dont seem to have anything to do with what your talking about but it really does

If you say something do it right man. Show us screenies, OC report, all the package. Tis is the only way to build up a common knowledge base, not just saying "ah they clock like crap".