hardocp: AMD's ATI Radeon HD 5870 Video Card Review

"AMD's ATI Radeon HD 4800 series was successful for AMD, despite many people's worries about AMD's acquisition of ATI and its new "Sweet Spot" strategy. Suffice it to say, those worries were misplaced, as the Radeon HD 4870 512MB competed well for its price point and was eventually upgraded to 1GB of GDDR5 and pulled ahead of the competition at the same price. The Radeon HD 4870 X2 came along after that, and while it was power hungry, it became a powerhouse in shader performance. Finally, ATI improved upon the initial Radeon HD 4870 GPU further by actually going in and tweaking circuit pathways to improve clock rates, making the Radeon HD 4890 capable of hitting 1GHz+ GPU frequencies. While those cards kept the hardcore enthusiasts happy, the more money conscious enthusiast gamers out there found solace in the Radeon HD 4850 and eventually the newer Radeon HD 4770 which introduced AMD's first 40nm GPU. "

Earned a "Gold" Editors Choice Award.

[Nihilism]

a bit disappointing again, i really thought these cards would nail the 30frame average at 2560*1600 on enthusiast.

[Fishy Fingers]

Even if they could, you'd still want to down scale slightly, a 30FPS average is horrible, at some points your going to be looking at 10 or so FPS. 30FPS minimum is what I'd like and I know nothing (single GPU) is going to offer that at such high resolutions.

Still, there are plenty of other PC games that are just, if not more, enjoyable than Crysis that this card would chew through.

[Major_Tom]

This is first gen, single GPU, single slot card, you're over-expecting.

We're not at the stages quite yet where you're going to see maximum yield over actually crossfiring your rig.

[dirthurts]

are based on early drivers.
Wait until some updates come out that really optimize the card. They the numbers should be a bit higher. I remember one update for my 4890 that game me a bit over 20% more performance...just one update.

[champ21]

crossfire scaling looks really good with the 58XX series.

Still with new drivers it looks good. Sure we cant expect a single 58XX to completely out do a previous gen dual gpu card.

i am more concerned about how hot these cards are getting or the noise output (well that can be taken care with quieter 3rd party fans)

[dirthurts]

for gaming cards anyways. But then again, I've never complained about my 4890. Can't even hear it...over the other 4 fans. : P

[Nihilism]

like i've said before, it's disappointing because early benchmaks suggested that this card would perform almost 50% better ( and as they only perform about 30% better than the gtx285, that wouldn't have been too much to expect)

the gt200 series was more than a 50% gain over the previous gen, as was the 8 series cards, this card has failed to live up to my expectations, if you think a new card, dx11 and all should only be 30% better then I don't know what your basing that on, each previous gen has had a better increase, yes the performance is the best single gpu, but it should have been even better, 30% increase is like ati isn't even trying

[Major_Tom]

Again, This is a single GPU card. I don't think you're understanding all of this information being given to you.

[Guwapo77]

To clear it up further.

GTX 295 is Nvidia's top offering at this time. This video card is a dual-gpu card. Meaning to GPUs on one PCB. It's direct competition is the "X2" cards from ATi.

The HD5870 is 30% faster and it's a single gpu card. This is a huge jump. Apples to Apples would be HD5870x2 vs GTX385 (or whatever Nvidia will call it).

[Johnny_Cojones]

"Only 30% better" at launch against a fantastic Nvidia card, previously the most powerful single GPU solution on the market, that has had several performance improving drivers updates, at a significantly lower launch e-price sounds pretty great to me.

Once games that truly take advantage of the new capabilities of this card are released, it'll likely leave the 285 in the dust.

I love my 285, but I intend to put one(possibly 2)of these babies in the rig I'm building right now.

[z1ck]

30% without any drivers released for this card