ATi 5850/5870 review thread

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: Red Irish

Originally posted by: Cookie Monster
Sneak peek at the Vapor-X HD5870

As I get older, my tolerance of noise seems to be decreasing, so that has aroused my interest. Presumably they will also release a vapor-x version of the 5850, which I would find hard to resist.

There isn't much that can be done short of watercooling as these cards become more mammoth each gen. They are powerful, hot, and need serious airflow to keep temps down.
If keeping your card for a long while, water cooling might be worth the investment. If you're the type to buy every six months when a refresh comes around, then an investment in the proper water kit for your particular card might be short term over expenditure. Depends on if you can resell the whole package and get a good chunck of your money back.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Originally posted by: Keysplayr

Originally posted by: dguy6789
What would the you guys be happier with, a 5870 that costs $600-700+ that was faster than the GTX295 or the $379 5870 that is almost as fast as the $480+ GTX295? While the former might be nice for a handful of people and look nice on paper, it really doesn't get into the hands of most people. How many of you would have bought it if it was $700 but the fastest card on the market? What was actually released is a much more reasonable product that is within the grasp of way more people.

Why the arbitrary $700 figure? If it was faster than the GTX295 I'd wager that people would expect it to cost more money than the GTX295. All Nvidia should do now is adjust pricing. They don't even need to release their new line yet, at least until 5870x2 arrives.

Part of me thought the 5870 would have been more than what it seems to be. Another part thought it would at least be constantly as fast as a 4870x2, even faster because there would be no CF overhead. I thought it should be as fast as 4890's in CF with 100% scaling in all games. But, that doesn't seem to be happening. The bright side is, it is the fastest single core GPU around now. And in CF, two 5870's mostly dominate. And the power savings at idle is a vast improvement over the 4xxx series. Well done AMD.

The beta driver thingy really doesn't hold much water though. This isn't a new architecture. It's a doubling of everything the 4890 was/is with the same 256 bit bus. Expect the standard performance improvements that the last few Catalyst drivers provided for the 4xxx series with the next driver updates. They should have went 512 bit IMHO. But, they wanted to keep their dies as small as possible. So, they made the tradeoff.

Picture AMD making a 128-bit GDDR5 4890. Double it. You get a 256-bit GDDR5 5870.
This card is starving IMHO. They should have just went for the gold and saved the 256-bit bus for their mainstream cards. 5770 or the like.

IMHO

If they did that the card would probably cost another $100 and probably only give us 10% improvement in performance. From a business perspective they had already wanted to keep the established price points of $199 and $299 they established with the 4800s, and they already broke that with the chip alone, beefing up the memory interface would have just been way too much.

 

[dguy6789]

Originally posted by: Keysplayr

Originally posted by: dguy6789
What would the you guys be happier with, a 5870 that costs $600-700+ that was faster than the GTX295 or the $379 5870 that is almost as fast as the $480+ GTX295? While the former might be nice for a handful of people and look nice on paper, it really doesn't get into the hands of most people. How many of you would have bought it if it was $700 but the fastest card on the market? What was actually released is a much more reasonable product that is within the grasp of way more people.

Why the arbitrary $700 figure? If it was faster than the GTX295 I'd wager that people would expect it to cost more money than the GTX295. All Nvidia should do now is adjust pricing. They don't even need to release their new line yet, at least until 5870x2 arrives.

Part of me thought the 5870 would have been more than what it seems to be. Another part thought it would at least be constantly as fast as a 4870x2, even faster because there would be no CF overhead. I thought it should be as fast as 4890's in CF with 100% scaling in all games. But, that doesn't seem to be happening. The bright side is, it is the fastest single core GPU around now. And in CF, two 5870's mostly dominate. And the power savings at idle is a vast improvement over the 4xxx series. Well done AMD.

The beta driver thingy really doesn't hold much water though. This isn't a new architecture. It's a doubling of everything the 4890 was/is with the same 256 bit bus. Expect the standard performance improvements that the last few Catalyst drivers provided for the 4xxx series with the next driver updates. They should have went 512 bit IMHO. But, they wanted to keep their dies as small as possible. So, they made the tradeoff.

Picture AMD making a 128-bit GDDR5 4890. Double it. You get a 256-bit GDDR5 5870.
This card is starving IMHO. They should have just went for the gold and saved the 256-bit bus for their mainstream cards. 5770 or the like.

IMHO

It's just a random number thrown out there. I'm not saying it would have necessarily been that much. The GTX 280 was $650 at launch wasn't it? Considering the GTX 280 even at that price still didn't quite beat the 9800GX2 soundly, I think it's pretty nice for a $379 next gen card to be in a similar position now.

Indeed the 5870 seems to very clearly be bandwidth starved.

I don't doubt that they looked over the performance gains from increasing the memory bus width. They probably decided that the increased costs weren't worth it. Looking at history, Nvidia was pretty quick to get away from their at the time ambitious 384 bit memory bus with the 8800 GTX.(The 9800s were all 256 bit) ATI's biggest failure of a card was the ultra expensive HD 2900 that was sporting a 512 bit bus. It took a very long time for mid-range and value cards to have a 256 bit memory bus when looking at history. Many value cards today still have 128 bit buses. This all seems to point to the idea that having such a wide bus is very expensive. I don't make graphics cards so I don't know for sure.

 

[nemesismk2]

Originally posted by: Qbah
See what causes mayhem in a market? A R300/G80 type of launch - those two were breaking points for both companies. Something ATi could really use right now as they're still recovering from the R600 fiasco imo. And something the HD5870 won't most definitely bring.

I disagree with you about ATI still recovering from the R600 because when the RV770 was released then ATI was still recovering from the R600. Right now ATI are sitting pretty and Nvidia have nothing which is DX11 or even DX10.1. When the 5870 X2 is released it will be game over for Nvidia unless the GTX 300 is something very special.

 

[ShadowOfMyself]

The problem is, there isnt any reason to buy this right now... The 4890 still has a better price/performance and runs almost anything smoothly, and since there are no DX11 games out to show off what the 5870 can do, its better to just wait and see what Nvidia has to offer

And unless the GT300 is a flop, it will easily outperform this card

Hopefully part of it is just early driver issues, and by the time the nv cards launch itll be about 10% faster overall

 

[SlowSpyder]

The 5850 and 5870 look good to me... I think too many people were expecting revolutionary results, this is very much an evolutionary part. AMD improved some areas there were lacking, added some nifty new features, and have pretty potent cards and decent prices.

 

[Red Irish]

Originally posted by: ShadowOfMyself
The problem is, there isnt any reason to buy this right now... The 4890 still has a better price/performance and runs almost anything smoothly, and since there are no DX11 games out to show off what the 5870 can do, its better to just wait and see what Nvidia has to offer

And unless the GT300 is a flop, it will easily outperform this card

Hopefully part of it is just early driver issues, and by the time the nv cards launch itll be about 10% faster overall

Part of what? Are you disappointed with the reported performance figures?

 

[Genx87]

Lump me in with the meh crowd. I was a bit underwhelmed by its performance based around the leaks. So I cant fault the card, just the people leaking information. It is definately not a must have card right now. Ill wait to see what the GT300 does. I have a feeling it should perform at or better than the 295. SO we will have the same situation we had last generation. Should be interesting to see where Nvidia's pricing is forced to go due to it.

Maybe I am getting old or have been spoiled by large increases in performance. But the i5\i7 release was a disappointment and I have a feeling this generation of GPU's from both manufacturers will be as well

 

[Gikaseixas]

Originally posted by: ShadowOfMyself
The problem is, there isnt any reason to buy this right now... The 4890 still has a better price/performance and runs almost anything smoothly, and since there are no DX11 games out to show off what the 5870 can do, its better to just wait and see what Nvidia has to offer

And unless the GT300 is a flop, it will easily outperform this card

Hopefully part of it is just early driver issues, and by the time the nv cards launch itll be about 10% faster overall

There is no problem here, why is it releasing a better product and charging more for it a problem?
Is there any reason to buy the GTX 285 over a GTX 260??? Ofcourse there is and it's called more performance overall. Same scenario here. If you want higher performance you have to pay for it. I can also say that a GTX 260 runs games smoothly but that won't create problems for Nvidia's top card.

Any added performance is welcome, it certainly performs much better than a 4870 or 4890 period. If you're so concerned about price/performance then don't read high end card reviews, wait for mainstream.

 

[Gikaseixas]

Originally posted by: Genx87
Lump me in with the meh crowd. I was a bit underwhelmed by its performance based around the leaks. So I cant fault the card, just the people leaking information. It is definately not a must have card right now. Ill wait to see what the GT300 does. I have a feeling it should perform at or better than the 295. SO we will have the same situation we had last generation. Should be interesting to see where Nvidia's pricing is forced to go due to it.

Maybe I am getting old or have been spoiled by large increases in performance. But the i5\i7 release was a disappointment and I have a feeling this generation of GPU's from both manufacturers will be as well

C2D fault and HD4000 fault, great performance, small price

 

[Red Irish]

Originally posted by: Keysplayr

Originally posted by: Red Irish

Originally posted by: Cookie Monster
Sneak peek at the Vapor-X HD5870

As I get older, my tolerance of noise seems to be decreasing, so that has aroused my interest. Presumably they will also release a vapor-x version of the 5850, which I would find hard to resist.

There isn't much that can be done short of watercooling as these cards become more mammoth each gen. They are powerful, hot, and need serious airflow to keep temps down.
If keeping your card for a long while, water cooling might be worth the investment. If you're the type to buy every six months when a refresh comes around, then an investment in the proper water kit for your particular card might be short term over expenditure. Depends on if you can resell the whole package and get a good chunck of your money back.

My Club 3d 4850's have a factory fitted zerotherm cooler and I can certainly live with the noise they produce (quietest card I've "heard"), so if I can find a 5850 with a similar cooling solution it will probably be on my next shopping list. The vapour-x series may well be just what I was looking for, but I am in no rush to upgrade at the minute, I think I'll wait a few months and see how the gaming market and prices evolve.

 

[Creig]

Originally posted by: ShadowOfMyself
And unless the GT300 is a flop, it will easily outperform this card

What exactly are you basing this assertion on? I haven't read anything yet that I would say is reliable information regarding the GT300.

 

[TheSlamma]

5850 delayed till October according to this site.

 

[Keysplayr]

I think he means that he has higher hopes that GT300 will not dissappoint. I also share this sentiment.
Who wouldn't?

 

[ShadowOfMyself]

Originally posted by: Creig

Originally posted by: ShadowOfMyself
And unless the GT300 is a flop, it will easily outperform this card

What exactly are you basing this assertion on? I haven't read anything yet that I would say is reliable information regarding the GT300.

I think you just need common sense here

Looking at the computerbase charts which do all the number crunching for us, the 5870 is 30% faster than the GTX285 on average

Its a given that the GT300 will be around 50% faster than the 285 at least, and probably more than that... I cant remember a non-refresh launch where we got less than 50% increase in performance of last gen

 

[videogames101]

Has anyone found Frankenfire benchmarks anywhere? Ala 4870 + 5870?


I really, really, want to see some.

 

[Gikaseixas]

Originally posted by: Keysplayr
I think he means that he has higher hopes that GT300 will not dissappoint. I also share this sentiment.
Who wouldn't?

i think the GT300 will out-perform this card but i also think ATI will extract some more out of this and reach higher levels of performance once GT300 is released (5890 maybe?). With that said besides the 5800 Ultra, Nvidia is usually very good out of the gate.

 

[videogames101]

Originally posted by: Genx87
Lump me in with the meh crowd. I was a bit underwhelmed by its performance based around the leaks. So I cant fault the card, just the people leaking information. It is definately not a must have card right now. Ill wait to see what the GT300 does. I have a feeling it should perform at or better than the 295. SO we will have the same situation we had last generation. Should be interesting to see where Nvidia's pricing is forced to go due to it.

Maybe I am getting old or have been spoiled by large increases in performance. But the i5\i7 release was a disappointment and I have a feeling this generation of GPU's from both manufacturers will be as well

The problem is ATI had no competition at all for this card, so price was set accordingly. I have a feeling as soon as Nvidia responds with the GT300, ATI will show us it's true hand, by way of price cuts on the 58xx series.

 

[Tempered81]

Originally posted by: GaiaHunter

Originally posted by: happy medium

Originally posted by: dguy6789

Originally posted by: Extelleron

Originally posted by: dguy6789
It's cheaper than a GTX295 and GTX 280 sli....

It's about $100 cheaper than the GTX 295, which is a good value, but it's not mindblowing in any sense. That's the issue, the 5870 is a good card, but it isn't really going to get anyone excited like RV770 or G80. It's the best card at its pricepoint, but it isn't better or even equal to more expensive parts. It doesn't change the marketplace in any way. nVidia will not have to respond to the 5800 series in any way if it doesn't want to. The only thing they need to do is lower the price of the 285 to $299 or less.

Anyway you have to be a bit concerned about how RV870 will compete with nVidia's next generation part. Of course who knows what GT300 will be like, it could be a flop, but it won't take much to beat RV870. If they improve GTX 285 performance by 50% or so they will easily have the fastest card.

Anandtech:

Crysis Warhead:

GTX 295: 25.5FPS
Radeon HD 5870: 24.9FPS

FarCry 2:

GTX 295: 58.2FPS
Radeon HD 5870: 58.4FPS

Battleforge:

GTX 295: 48.5FPS
Radeon HD 5870: 39FPS

World of Warcraft:

GTX295: 68.9FPS
Radeon HD 5870: 73FPS

Hawkx:

GTX295: 79FPS
Radeon HD 5870: 68FPS

Dawn of War II:

GTX 295: 49.2FPS
Radeon HD 5870: 55.6FPS

Resident Evil 5:

GTX 295: 84.1FPS
Radeon HD 5870: 72.9FPS

Batman Arkham Asylum:

GTX 295: 131FPS
Radeon HD 5870: 102FPS

Left 4 Dead:

GTX 295: 117.1FPS
Radeon HD 5870: 108.7FPS

Yeah, the HD5870 isn't even close to the GTX295 :roll: Yeah Nvidia doesn't have to react at all to the $100 price difference the GTX295 has over the 5870.... Fanboyism at its finest.

Well if you do the math, the gtx295 has a total of 662 fps vs 602 for the 5870. Whats that about 11% faster? The 295 cost 23% more. So the 295 would have to frop about 40$ to to be even. I'd call that close.
Fanboy facts as there finest

Don't forget beta drivers and no DX11 games. Pretty much even most of the current DX10/10.1 games are basically DX9.

It isn't hard to predict that the 5870 will only become stronger vs the 285/295/4890/4870x2.

also GTX295 = $499, dx10, dual gpu

5870 = $379, dx11, single gpu

 

[palladium]

Just finished AT + xbit's review. Definitely an awesome card. Now lets see how GT300 performs. Thanks to this launch by AMD, nV would have to think twice before pricing its flagship, single GPU card at $600 (unless of course the GT300 can significantly outperform the 5870).

 

[darXoul]

Originally posted by: Creig

Originally posted by: ShadowOfMyself
And unless the GT300 is a flop, it will easily outperform this card

What exactly are you basing this assertion on? I haven't read anything yet that I would say is reliable information regarding the GT300.

Originally posted by: Keysplayr
I think he means that he has higher hopes that GT300 will not dissappoint. I also share this sentiment.
Who wouldn't?

I think it's a bit more than just hope.

If we take "reasonable high end settings", i.e. a typical 1920*1200 "Full HD" monitor and decent AA levels, the 5870 outperforms the 285 by approx. 25-30% (4*AA) or 40-45% (8*AA). This is quite a margin but if the GT300 fails to beat it, it will be probably considered a flop.

The 280 was able to beat the 8800 by 45-50% and 75-80% in the aforementioned settings respectively, and it wasn't even considered such a huge success.

At this time, we can only speculate, but If I had to make an educated guess, I'd say the GT300 should outperform the 5870 by around 20% in high settings. If it's more than that and the card also keeps a decent noise/thermal profile, I'll call the launch a clear success, exceeding my expectations.

 

[Tempered81]

people on 22" lcd's and up who like to use AA will be happy:

http://i35.tinypic.com/r7896u.jpg

Originally posted by: darXoul

If we take "reasonable high end settings", i.e. a typical 1920*1200 "Full HD" monitor and decent AA levels, the 5870 outperforms the 285 by approx. 25-30% (4*AA) or 40-45% (8*AA). This is quite a margin but if the GT300 fails to beat it, it will be probably considered a flop.

The 280 was able to beat the 8800 by 45-50% and 75-80% in the aforementioned settings respectively, and it wasn't even considered such a huge success.

At this time, we can only speculate, but If I had to make an educated guess, I'd say the GT300 should outperform the 5870 by around 20% in high settings. If it's more than that and the card also keeps a decent noise/thermal profile, I'll call the launch a clear success, exceeding my expectations.

Wow, excellent points man. I agree 100%.

 

[TheSlamma]

Originally posted by: Tempered81
also GTX295 = $499, dx10, dual gpu

5870 = $379, dx11, single gpu

This seems to be the basic thing people are not getting.

 

[Keysplayr]

They're already happy.

 

[Keysplayr]

What people aren't getting this? What will make you believe that they have seen the pricing, and have understood the pricing? DX11 isn't much of a factor at the moment anymore than DX10.1 was. Windows 7 launch may change this however. We'll see.