AMD Radeon HD 5870 1 GB GDDR5

[Thrackan]

Bottom line is that the 5870 is 17% faster than NVidia's top single GPU, however it is 22% more expensive (priced at newegg) so arent NVidia now in the unfamiliar marketing realm of ATI.... "yes our GPU may be slower but proportionally it's cheaper"...... AKA better bang for buck? As I said on the previous page, currrently ATI's greatest strength and NVidia's greatest fear should be the 5850, it's faster AND cheaper than the 285.

5850 will be a scare, but also the 5870 will be a scare soon enough... The 285 isn't on launch pricing level anymore, the 5870 is and will thus drop in price. I suspect the pricing plans of ATi to be competitive in the very near future.

 

[Reefer86]

I personally have a 4890 and seeing the benchy's here and on a few other sites im not that overly impressed with the performance increase that the hype of the release was dictating.
BUT i am really impressed with the new features that the card brings and it is beating the 285 in most benchys and pricing, dx11 and a feature rich card is quite impressive overall. Tbh i write off the 295 as it is a dual core GPU card so i dont take this into my view.

I think alot of people got eaten up by the hype (and me a little) that it would be a shark in a sea on minnows, I was very sceptical about the performance increase's closer to the release date that the 5800 series would bring, we have all seen the hype surrounding many card releases in the past and been disappointed.

I have a 4890 so i wont be rushing out to get a 5870 but i am impressed with the 5800 feature rich series.

Also i agree with Agility that more and more people are looking to Performance vs Price as the market moves faster and faster due to Nvidia and Ati competing.

Weather you are an ATI owner or and Nvidia owner, we all should be glad that this brings competition to the market, which in turn means price drops and more demand for performance from cards.

I personally bought a ******* card for £350 and within months it was outdated by a card that was cheeper and better performance, so these days i take bang for buck and performance values very seriously.

I dont have £450 - £500 (and tbh would never spend that on one card) but i could maybe push £300 for a very competitive feature rich high performance card. That's how i see it any ways. Im sure if we had all the money in the world we would have 2 nvidia 295's in SLI, but we all don't!

I do own a ATI card now but i had an Nvidia card before that, im no fan boy i just go with whats good for money/performance at the time of my upgrade. Although i always spend a big amount of money to some people so allways go highend.

For me a new system builder should detonately consider this as an option and i doubt they would be disappointed.

That's my ten cent's anyways

Thanks Reefer

 

[WarEagleAU]

Fastest single gpu card. Cannot wait to see how the GT300 compares and if they finally moved from GDDR3. I was really hoping ATI would go with Shader clocks on this version. Very impressed and lived up to everything I expected and more. Crossfire its the shit, and alone its the shit. Im loving it.

One more thing as Pinchy and a couple others said, driver issues were happening before the launch and they did use an older set. I expect better performance in the next few months. Same thing goes with Nvidia cards. Their performance gets better with the release of newer drivers.

 

[lemonadesoda]

nVidia WINS with ASUS Mars.

Now we know why nV was pushing to get the Mars out before the 5xxx series launch.

Shame the MARS performance stats arent in the table:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_285_MARS/29.html. You could still add them in?

MARS wins on outright performance but STRUGGLES on performance per $ LOL

 

[Nick89]

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/ati_radeon_5870_fastest_videocard_ever_ps_its_380

Why does maximumPC get 500+ diggs but TPU does a better review and gets 10.....

1250 digg's now...

 

[W1zzard]

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/ati_radeon_5870_fastest_videocard_ever_ps_its_380

Why does maximumPC get 500+ diggs but TPU does a better review and gets 10.....

because they have trained hordes of people to digg their stuff .. nobody does it for tpu

 

[Thrackan]

At least those 10 diggs are from the heart.

 

[PVTCaboose1337]

This is ridiculous. You can't use a future win to say who "wins."

What happens when ATI releases a new card that trashes the G300? This all starts all over again.

There is no "long term winner" -- only short term winners.

...unless you want to say the long term winner is "the consumer," which would usually be true. But then, nobody gets to stroke their e-penii.

There is always a long term winner... long term is not forever though. Long term is defined as more than average, short term as less than average. Therefore, since ATI will rule for less than average time, then it is a short term winner.

 

[Steevo]

I dig for GTA4........



much love long time.

 

[PVTCaboose1337]

I could not resist. (If you saw this picture you must push the Digg button on the first page!)

 

[Benetanegia]

because they have trained hordes of people to digg their stuff .. nobody does it for tpu

Dugg.

Anyway, I think that the digg it icon placement has a lot to do too. I didn't even know it was there...

 

[El Fiendo]

because they have trained hordes of people to digg their stuff .. nobody does it for tpu

I'll go register on digg specifically to become the first of your legion of trainees.

Btw, excellent work getting 3 reviews done for today. Thanks.

 

[troyrae360]

i've regersterd and dugg

 

[scope54]

Battleforge was updated to DX11 maybe update the review with the newest patch (if using win7 to bench)?
And it seems MSI has newer ATI drivers RC7: http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33952980

 

[imperialreign]

I'm curious, as this kinda just dawned on me . . .

For the STALKER: Clear Sky benchmarks - are those performed in DX9 or DX10(.1) render?

Y'know, if it's not too much of an issue, I'd recommend benching new hardware in such games in both DX renders, as there's usually a major performance difference between the two. CS is notorious for this performance hit, as well as Crysis.

Just a suggestion I'd throw out.

Otherwise, another excellent review, w1zz! I'm quite shocked by these new beasts from ATI's den, and defi looking forward to the reviews of the 70x2s!

 

[wolf]

But (at least for now) AMD has done away with calling their GPUs by the Ryxxx codenames

RVxxx methinks?

In any case dude kickass review.

Price performance is skewed but they will try and sell as many of these cards for as much as possible before Nvidia have a chance to fight back.

and good on them!

 

[ArmoredCavalry]

Dang, I have to say I am pretty impressed by the 5850 benchmarks. Especially since it is selling for $260-$280.

Also, after looking at the size comparison (very helpful ty W1zzard), I know the 5870 will not be fitting in my case.

So, as soon as newegg gets some Sapphire 5850's in stock, I think I know what I will be buying. (maybe)

 

[DeeJay]

Does anyone know if the cooler on this card has a detachable core? My 4780 has a cooler which allows the copper with the heatpipes to be removed. I installed a watercooler instead. I am just using the metal frame of the cooler to passively cool the memory and some other parts. I want to do the same with this one.

 

[wolf]

Does anyone know if the cooler on this card has a detachable core? My 4780 has a cooler which allows the copper with the heatpipes to be removed. I installed a watercooler instead. I am just using the metal frame of the cooler to passively cool the memory and some other parts. I want to do the same with this one.

I did the exact same on my 4870, worked a treat, no idea bout this card tho.

 

[Thrackan]

Does anyone know if the cooler on this card has a detachable core? My 4780 has a cooler which allows the copper with the heatpipes to be removed. I installed a watercooler instead. I am just using the metal frame of the cooler to passively cool the memory and some other parts. I want to do the same with this one.

I did that with my 4850, but that required dremeling

 

[Milky]

I am very impressed particularly by power consumption which is important for me, but @ that price i think i might just get another 4870 instead....

 

[DeeJay]

The 4870 and 4850 are based off the same design as the 4780. But since the 5870 is a completely new design I am afraid I have to dig through all the reviews hoping that one of them says something about this.

 

[Makaveli]

I don't agree with everyone complaining about the performance. This card is using very early drivers. And I think it 3-4 months with driver updates it will beat the 4870X2 on a regular and will either close the gap or tie the 295 in the benchmarks it lost and continue to beat it on the ones it was already winning.

My only concern with this card is its length and what will happen with aftermarket coolers. Overall I think its a great product and the price is good considering. Those of you expecting it to be released at a 250-300 price point were seriously mistaken, and I think its current price is fine. If I had to choose between this card and the 4870x2 I will take a single card over Xfire or SLI anyday!!!

 

[DeeJay]

I will take a single card over Xfire or SLI anyday!!!

I agree. It saves a PCI-e slot an a lot of power.

 

[RejZoR]

No support for CUDA / PhysX

This is hardly an AMD fault. It's propertiary technology and as such we cannot blame AMD for not supporting it. It would be like blaming NVIDIA back then for not supporting 3dfx Glide. They just can't because NVIDIA doesn't want them to support it. They want it to be exclusive to GeForce cards.