ATI Radeon HD 5870 1 GB GDDR5

[jmcslob]

Originally Posted by W1zzard

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

I didn't Digg the Maximum Pc review and i must say TPU did a much better review(as always love the graphs)....But I'm not going to Digg any review That doesn't have an AMD Test setup, period..Yes i want to see the Intel test but there is no Brand comparison to go by here..These results only tell me this card rocks in a setup that's not similar to mine. If you do a review with an AMD setup I promise I'll digg it then..
Not to mention it would be nice to see a Stock clock to Oc comparison

[Fatal]

Originally Posted by jmcslob

I didn't Digg the Maximum Pc review and i must say TPU did a much better review(as always love the graphs)....But I'm not going to Digg any review That doesn't have an AMD Test setup, period..Yes i want to see the Intel test but there is no Brand comparison to go by here..These results only tell me this card rocks in a setup that's not similar to mine. If you do a review with an AMD setup I promise I'll digg it then..
Not to mention it would be nice to see a Stock clock to Oc comparison

Would be nice to see what the power of 3 can do See if it really does gel together well.

[D4S4]

QUOTE:
Overclocking the memory on these cards is quite different from any other card so far. Normally you'd expect rendering errors or crashes, but not with these cards. Thanks to the new error correction algorithm in the memory controller, every memory error is just retransmitted until everything is fine. So once you exceed the "stable" clock frequency, memory errors will appear more often, get retransmitted, but the rendered output will still look perfectly fine. The only difference is that performance drops, the further you increase the clocks, the lower the performance gets. As a result a normal "artifact scanning" approach to memory overclocking on the HD 5800 Series will not work. You have to manually increase the clocks and observe the framerate until you find the point where performance drops.



So, you get a card with flawed memory and you don't even know it?

[Benetanegia]

Originally Posted by D4S4

So, you get a card with flawed memory and you don't even know it?

Good catch, I had thought about the card overheating, or getting some current leakage, but I didn't thought about that. Certainly I don't know how would you know if it was working properly without something to compare and what's worse how would you demostrate in the store that is not working at it should in order to have a replacement.

[eidairaman1]

Originally Posted by RejZoR

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.

"Since the release of the 186 ForceWare drivers PhysX hardware acceleration is disabled when a non-NVIDIA graphics card is used. This decision has caused a backlash from the community"

http://www.ngohq.com/graphic-cards/16223-nvidia-disables-physx-when-ati-card-is-present.html

[wolf]

Originally Posted by Benetanegia

Good catch, I had thought about the card overheating, or getting some current leakage, but I didn't thought about that. Certainly I don't know how would you know if it was working properly without something to compare and what's worse how would you demostrate in the store that is not working at it should in order to have a replacement.

you'd hope that is the kind of testing done on each complete card before it is packaged and dispatched.... we can only hope, or consumers will need a standardized test (application) so they know their 5870 is in perfect working order.

[eidairaman1]

it dont matter what card it is, its a matter that usually initial production will have some flaws, they have QA for a reason.

[suraswami]

great review W1z. Thanks.

Question: Is there a way to select say 2 video cards to compare results, like say 4850 and 5850? I will be going from 4850 to 5850 for sure and don't want to keep searching the cards in the ever growing list lol.

[mechtech]

Eagerly awaiting the 5850 review with power consumtion and noise specs.....................zomg hurry

[Thrackan]

Check the 5XXX discussion thread, some review links were posted on the last couple of pages.

[Benetanegia]

Originally Posted by wolf

you'd hope that is the kind of testing done on each complete card before it is packaged and dispatched.... we can only hope, or consumers will need a standardized test (application) so they know their 5870 is in perfect working order.

All the cards are tested, but every now and then someone gets a defective card, with defective memory. That's unavoidable. It's normally easy to spot because you get artifacts when the memory is having errors, but error correction actively corrects those artifacts so you would be unable to discern, unless you knew exactly how a healthy card performed in your PC. It's not a very big problem for overclocking if you pay attention, but if it's bad out of the box...

[RuskiSnajper]

This would be , a general talk so to speak , not a response to anybody here, nor the review author.

I don't think high noise is a big factor for a minus sign , calling the card bad just by the noise and therefore the lower score.

People always seem to expect perfect stuff, but normal logic tells you that at that performance there's surely much heat , and having to have a quieter card with 85C is just not reasonable , first , I am not some fancy reviewer but this is just a standard here, it's not better if it's quieter for everyone , it's just that people are not used to such noise (read> mainstream people) and that the importance of temperatures is far greater than your spoiled ears. As a matter of fact , people who are not used to the noise , isn't it obvious , they're surely not long in the PC and gaming market or been working with it ... I don't know but I hate to see many people around other review sties on the web making this stupid noise buzz such a pain in the butt problem, They need to get used to it.

The biggest mistake is , why is review done with !DEFAULT? sethings , where the manual fan speed is not set , the automatic temp-speed will always not be enough to assure needs of every customer.

I do know there are people who find noise so bad, thus the reviews are pointing out towards this, but again , I don't see those people real PC gamers , maybe something more like weekend players , if they would actually know anything about CONFIGURING.

What is for certain , this noise buzz exploded a few years ago , when a lot of 12-16 year "wannabe gamer" newbies started using PCs in the 21 century. Spoiled children from today can afford a PC very early than I was able. Althought , I don't actually know what caused this noise boom , I am not amused by it definately.
A stupid one would not buy the card for JUST the noise. Noise is something least important in the industry and I don't know who the heck bring this EXCUSE up. Just to call a card bad?




This review , is well , much better than guru3d , and does , to me have very objective approach which is excelent , those noise remarks are okay , minor , a minus sign indeed , I'll comment on that an a few others , the noise mention is fairly reasonable and there seem to be a big deal in the review , the noise buzz and wprrying is far more heavy elsewhere(that's actually what is above about).

Cool , as I said , that minus points(cons) the card received , are well and truly fixable from instant you set your OWN config , but , have to say , I have never seen a review done just that , to explain just this , never mentioned, nor anything similar.
The point is , that cards receive bad points from a lot of SMALL and fixable problems these days, that's just how I feel , for the explanation I will use this review as an example.

So , in this case , we have:

* Not the best price/performance !
* Tends to be noisy under load #
* Not much overclocking potential on our sample !
* Long card, might not fit all cases #
* DirectX 11 won't be relevant for quite a while !
* No support for CUDA / PhysX #

! > are facts, those this are real and are very reasonable, yes DX 11 won't be so important for a while(but the green side was hit anyway :P) , also the "not best price/preformance" is also correct , basics define that you can't give a minus cause of price, better just costs more and it will not be vice versa. The other is also reasonable.

While the # marked are , to me somewhat unnecessary bad points, first of all , CUDA and Physx is Nvidia only , so I think this was , maybe written before it became nvidia-only stuff...
Long Card that might not fit in all cases , that is true and it will not fit into MANY cases afaik , however there is still a way , HECK not a mainstream one(that's the point) , just re-position your HDD higher ,then chop , cut , saw , whatever that part of HDD cage away so the card would fit ; You think I would buy a card , and at home would notice it doesn't fit, return it lol , and wait again, you're kidding , I would definitely make sure about everything blocking Her way. If you are more than mainstream , then you need to know how to improvise.
Noisy at load, yeah it is , it must be , but again , there is a so called ADVANCED way to force the fan to spin how you like , either faster , or slower , you should achieve maximum cooling and blowing your ears(sarcasm) , or maximum quietness deluxe and risk your hardware blowing up(not joke this time)

Hmh , will not blow anything , but what is the definitive fact , that when it's hotter it will always perform less and so is the lifetime. Basics , card won't last as long if being always around 70-80C.




Now ask your self, why would the card have to be warmer, why would they have to satisfy newbies while the hardware would not withstand the circumstances. 85C is a very high temp. I never get beyond 65. and the fan on the HD4870 is only at 35%-40% , crysis for example , I don't even hear the fan while playing , so that busts the "noise problem" right from the first place. The fan on the 5870 would just be even faster ,and it is , thus even louder. What did everybody expect?

Even basics of physics define this ,
More Performance > More power needed
More Power > More Heat
More Heat > More cooling needed
More cooling needed > More noise if Air cooling used
The more noise > those who are noobs , cry , while the gamers play the game.

Well anyways , I explained a whole lot on a small problem hah, but for the sake of it, it's just my opinion ; small like a mouse , but irritating as an elephant.

[Thrackan]

Originally Posted by RuskiSnajper

-big story about fan noise-

For me, fan noise is a downer.
First off, a dual-slot cooler should be plenty enough to cool a card like this.
Second, a dual-slot cooler allows for placement of bigger (in this case thicker) fans than a single-slot cooler, which makes it possible to move more air at the same RPM.
Third, it's not so much the load noise, even though I don't like a jet engine next to me when I'm gaming. It's the noise the fan produces when you're at your desktop, watching a video or listening to music. A PC should be near-quiet in operation when I'm doing that.

Shoving the "blame" for noiseless computing to gamers is absolutely not true. If anything, it's due to the HTPC trend and mainly just people who want to do more with their PC than just game.

Then, you talk about reviews done at default settings. Of course they are done at default settings! Those are the settings each and every buyer of such a card will get when they plug it in and let 'er rip!

Sure, I know how to configure (plus, why would you have to be a "real gamer" to do that?) but still, when I know what the default settings are, I know from where I can start tweaking.

As for the negative points issue, I believe you take them too seriously. These are points someone should take into consideration before buying this card. If you put "good" against "bad", you won't get to a score of 9.5, so that should say something about the importance of those bad points.

[W1zzard]

Originally Posted by Thrackan

As for the negative points issue, I believe you take them too seriously. These are points someone should take into consideration before buying this card. If you put "good" against "bad", you won't get to a score of 9.5, so that should say something about the importance of those bad points.

exactly. the key word is consideration here. if it doesnt matter for you then ignore it.

[Tatty_One]

@ Thracken...... agree totally, lets not forget here, these GPU's are a smaller fabrication process therefore SHOULD run cooler, apart from that, I actually think that ATi/NVidia should not have a "reference" cooler for their GPU's, lets stop card manufacturers charging a premium for decent coolers that they design themselves, let them all contest for sales over the quality of their own hopefully innovated cooling designs, Sapphire manage to do it for it's Atomic, Toxic and VaporX cards and they are fantastic coolers so IMO no need to have these leaf blowing "reference" designs.

[Thrackan]

Originally Posted by Tatty_One

@ Thracken...... agree totally, lets not forget here, these GPU's are a smaller fabrication process therefore SHOULD run cooler, apart from that, I actually think that ATi/NVidia should not have a "reference" cooler for their GPU's, lets stop card manufacturers charging a premium for decent coolers that they design themselves, let them all contest for sales over the quality of their own hopefully innovated cooling designs, Sapphire manage to do it for it's Atomic, Toxic and VaporX cards and they are fantastic coolers so IMO no need to have these leaf blowing "reference" designs.

You have a point there, such a process would be nice and would certainly get some innovative products on the line.
If I remember correctly, at the time I bought my Club3D Geforce 5900XT, there were alot of different coolers on the market on the same card. Memory might fail me though.

But of course it's all about cost. Will you develop your own cooling standard or will you get a quick license from ATI/AMD or nVidia and slap a cooler on there of which you're already sure it will meet the specifications? Too bad that question is holding back several companies to come with better products.

[eidairaman1]

majority of the ref design go into OEM machines, thats why they are produced first, just wait we will have non ref in a few months and TBH these units for the 4890 are good

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010380048%201067 92627%201067947106&bop=And&ActiveSearchResult=True &CompareItemList=N82E16814102852%2CN82E16814150438 %2CN82E16814161299

[RuskiSnajper]

Originally Posted by Thrackan

For me, fan noise is a downer.
First off, a dual-slot cooler should be plenty enough to cool a card like this.
Second, a dual-slot cooler allows for placement of bigger (in this case thicker) fans than a single-slot cooler, which makes it possible to move more air at the same RPM.
Third, it's not so much the load noise, even though I don't like a jet engine next to me when I'm gaming. It's the noise the fan produces when you're at your desktop, watching a video or listening to music. A PC should be near-quiet in operation when I'm doing that.

Shoving the "blame" for noiseless computing to gamers is absolutely not true. If anything, it's due to the HTPC trend and mainly just people who want to do more with their PC than just game.

Then, you talk about reviews done at default settings. Of course they are done at default settings! Those are the settings each and every buyer of such a card will get when they plug it in and let 'er rip!

Sure, I know how to configure (plus, why would you have to be a "real gamer" to do that?) but still, when I know what the default settings are, I know from where I can start tweaking.

As for the negative points issue, I believe you take them too seriously. These are points someone should take into consideration before buying this card. If you put "good" against "bad", you won't get to a score of 9.5, so that should say something about the importance of those bad points.

Originally Posted by W1zzard

exactly. the key word is consideration here. if it doesnt matter for you then ignore it.

Right , my bad.

All right , but I wouldn't be so okay with default cooling , as I experienced my self , I wanted to test just that, I left my HD 3870 at default when I bought it , and it froze with screen corruption within 30 minutes. The game was not even so hard on it. It wasn't crysis i tested , but it was maxed out. Half of the problem is , default doesn't always keep it cool enough.

Indeed , for the noise in this example , we blame the reference cooler. Not that the card is bad , you can always upgrade the cooler or buy a vaporx or whatever upgraded stuff they later manufacture. Because the OEM/reference stuff will never be the best , thus there won't be a card with a score of 10 at release.

I do however agree with the most you proved and that the review is just a consideration , but you have to know , I think that a lot of people buy stuff how they see reviews at glance , this is bad , usually it's the green side who has a little more fps , but that's not the real "decision maker" practically speaking.


I am pleased with the outcome of this "opinion exchange", there is no need for arguing , you see, what happened , they almost banned me at guru when I commented that "I don't care about the noise , just an excuse". And clearly noticed that their reviews were slightly biased anyway , thus a violent reaction did prove just that.

[Thrackan]

Originally Posted by RuskiSnajper

Right , my bad.

All right , but I wouldn't be so okay with default cooling , as I experienced my self , I wanted to test just that, I left my HD 3870 at default when I bought it , and it froze with screen corruption within 30 minutes. The game was not even so hard on it. It wasn't crysis i tested , but it was maxed out. Half of the problem is , default doesn't always keep it cool enough.

If default doesn't keep it cool enough, there's clearly something wrong with the default. Coolers that do not cool well at default are wrong, I agree with you on that 100% and I would return such a card and demand my cash back.

Indeed , for the noise in this example , we blame the reference cooler. Not that the card is bad , you can always upgrade the cooler or buy a vaporx or whatever upgraded stuff they later manufacture. Because the OEM/reference stuff will never be the best , thus there won't be a card with a score of 10 at release.

Exactly!

I do however agree with the most you proved and that the review is just a consideration , but you have to know , I think that a lot of people buy stuff how they see reviews at glance , this is bad , usually it's the green side who has a little more fps , but that's not the real "decision maker" practically speaking.

True, I for one based my choice on power consumption, noise and of course performance.

I am pleased with the outcome of this "opinion exchange", there is no need for arguing , you see, what happened , they almost banned me at guru when I commented that "I don't care about the noise , just an excuse". And clearly noticed that their reviews were slightly biased anyway , thus a violent reaction did prove just that.

[W1zzard]

look at the +- points from a noob perspective, then read the conclusion. that alone should give you a good impression about the product, many points are not mentioned in the conclusion, while some are emphasized. i think it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what one of my reviews means for him if he doesn't care about fan noise.

it is my firm belief that cards have to be tested how they perform out of the box - not after serious tweaking. 99% of users take the card out of the box, install it in the pc, start using it and dont worry about overclocking, fan control, voltage tweaking and often not even about having the latest [any recent] driver version

[RuskiSnajper]

Originally Posted by W1zzard

look at the +- points from a noob perspective, then read the conclusion. that alone should give you a good impression about the product, many points are not mentioned in the conclusion, while some are emphasized. i think it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what one of my reviews means for him if he doesn't care about fan noise.

it is my firm belief that cards have to be tested how they perform out of the box - not after serious tweaking. 99% of users take the card out of the box, install it in the pc, start using it and dont worry about overclocking, fan control, voltage tweaking and often not even about having the latest [any recent] driver version

Hands down.

I can't not to agree. That means I do.

[Benetanegia]

Originally Posted by W1zzard

it is my firm belief that cards have to be tested how they perform out of the box - not after serious tweaking. 85% of users take the card out of the box, install it in the pc, start using it and dont worry about overclocking, fan control, voltage tweaking and often not even about having the latest [any recent] driver version

Sorry but I have to correct you there. That's what 99% of users would do if 22.8% of them didn't have a geek friend.

[handsomerichguy]

I love this card

[Anath]

/agreed

Got this card...best GPU ever...still can't wait to Xfire it...