AMD Radeon HD 5970 Specs Surface

[DanishDevil]

59xx is dual GPU. If you want trifire with 2 cards, you pair a 5970 with a 5870.

I find it interesting that after the die shrink, they still had to underclock the cards to get them to run cool enough. ATi is feeling the heat (from their own cards).

 

[W1zzard]

I find it interesting that after the die shrink, they still had to underclock the cards to get them to run cool enough. ATi is feeling the heat (from their own cards).

wildest speculation, no evidence. maybe ati wants to keep some room for a higher clock version? wait for my reviews before you decide to believe something like that

 

[ToTTenTranz]

The amount of memory on the card cannot exceed the amount in the system, thus 4GB+ would be necessary in the system, which could only be utilised by a 64-bit system.

And why is that?

59xx is dual GPU. If you want trifire with 2 cards, you pair a 5970 with a 5870.

I find it interesting that after the die shrink, they still had to underclock the cards to get them to run cool enough. ATi is feeling the heat (from their own cards).

Hey, these are 2.15billion transistor behemoths. I'm sure it's not a task that easy for a second-gen 40nm process.

 

[wolf]

He's talking about the rename from die shrink of nv 8series to call it 9series & blatant rename of 9800GTX+ to GTS250.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_9800_gtx_plus_us.html

http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_gts_250_us.html

Funny, I could have sworn there were differences.... PCB, pci-e power requirements, cooler... In any case I really don't want to get into this here, its hardly the thread, Wanna start one about it?

 

[JrRacinFan]

59xx is dual GPU. If you want trifire with 2 cards, you pair a 5970 with a 5870.

But last we known you can't crossfire from different families. eg 58XX with 58XX, 48XX with 48XX ....

unless I am missing something here.

 

[1Kurgan1]

Not as exciting as I would have hoped, but it's also a good sign. While the clock speeds on this are less than stellar, it's overkill either way. Yes 2x 5870's will be faster, but thats a big deal right now. ATI has said they have that "ace in the hole" for when GT300 lands, which is exactly what they need, and my bet is, when GT300 is announced, ATI will announce 5890 and a 5990.

 

[devguy]

But last we known you can't crossfire from different families. eg 58XX with 58XX, 48XX with 48XX ....

unless I am missing something here.

Yeah, the family of the chip is not as important as the core of the chip. I would believe one could crossfire any cards that contain the RV870 pro or xt cores. Since R800 is just 2xRV870, then it should be fine with the HD 58xx series.

 

[aj28]

I find it interesting that after the die shrink, they still had to underclock the cards to get them to run cool enough. ATi is feeling the heat (from their own cards).

Die shrink and double the stream processors. The "underclock" still leaves them at 4870 speeds, which is pretty impressive if you ask me.

 

[1Kurgan1]

Die shrink and double the stream processors. The "underclock" still leaves them at 4870 speeds, which is pretty impressive if you ask me.

Not to mention that when you get a 4870 or especially a 4870x2 there isnt a ton of headroom. The 5870's have a ton though, heck even 5850's I'm seeing a ton of people with them over 1000mhz on the core, dual GPU cards are just heat monsters.

 

[Soylent Joe]

Wow, this thing is going to be badass, and probably close to a grand.

 

[eidairaman1]

I hope its overwhelmingly fast, and have certain techniques that make it faster for games that do not support crossfire etc. Apparently a gaming buddy of mine has a 4870X2, apparently MS had a flaw with the OS that was problematic with detecting video cards in Multicard config or even dual chip cards, They Fixed it and His performance jumped considerably.

 

[hv43082]

More importantly, HOW MUCH???

 

[Kenshai]

More importantly, HOW MUCH???

Expect slightly over the price over 2 5870's at launch but slightly cheaper than 2 5870's at it's settle price.

This is a guess, but it's what the previous generation did. I assume ATI's going to go with the same thing.

 

[jaredpace]

More importantly, HOW MUCH???

 

[Tatsumaru]

Damn, A monster not a card ! for its power and its fantastic length.
This thing will kick the crap out of even the strongest fermi single chip card ,that still has a very long way to get in the market

 

[AsRock]

Not as exciting as I would have hoped, but it's also a good sign. While the clock speeds on this are less than stellar, it's overkill either way. Yes 2x 5870's will be faster, but thats a big deal right now. ATI has said they have that "ace in the hole" for when GT300 lands, which is exactly what they need, and my bet is, when GT300 is announced, ATI will announce 5890 and a 5990.

But if CF is not supporte3d by the game it's going run worse than a single 5870 ?.

 

[Lazzer408]

5970 = 5870x2?

call it the hd5870x2, stop changing the naming schemes, dont follow in nvidias footsteps! lol

Agreed.

 

[newconroer]

4GB. hmm,... most PCs have that amount of RAM. a lot of memory on that card. should be good for playing games at max for the next 3years.

Maybe, but isn't the architecture still the same? The cards don't technically have access to 4gb in real time, it's 2gb/2gb instead?

 

[Animalpak]

Man that thing will be heavy.

 

[eidairaman1]

they may have looked at how the 4870X2 accesses the ram and actually improved on it or changed the technique to make it work better overall.

 

[Kenshai]

they may have looked at how the 4870X2 accesses the ram and actually improved on it or changed the technique to make it work better overall.

All it's doing is crossfire on a single card, it should work as crossfire does on two cards.

 

[Lazzer408]

All it's doing is crossfire on a single card, it should work as crossfire does on two cards.

I had 5-10% better performance using 2x3870s vs. 1 3870x2 fwiw.

 

[Kenshai]

I had 5-10% better performance using 2x3870s vs. 1 3870x2 fwiw.

Was referring to the memory, not overall performance.

 

[W1zzard]

i just got an answer regarding "4 GB card requires 64-bit OS".

This is not the case. Any such cards will work fine in a 32-bit OS. Once the texture is created in system memory (which you have to do in any case) the GPU is tasked with copying it to video memory without any CPU interaction (DMA transfer). In other words, the GPU is told: "copy 16 MB of texture from main memory address X into GPU memory". Done.

 

[extrasalty]

I had 5-10% better performance using 2x3870s vs. 1 3870x2 fwiw.

3870X2 had PCIe 1.1 bridge chip.