Thoughts on ATI/NVidia, 5850/5870....

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: Extrem1st

Originally posted by: flexy
*) early benchmarks look impressive, but tell me the number of people who run 2560x 8AA 16AF....respective the nr. of people who own displays who can even take such a resolution...

*) $399 is actually surprisingly cheap....wonder how much NV wants for their DX11 cards

*) DX11 is not getting interesting for a few months ----> expect even more price drops. Dont tell me graphics cards get more expensive....usually they DONT

*) You will laugh, but i really started to <3 CUDA on my 275, and together with lack of "3d Vision" i think the lack of CUDA seriously sucks for the ATI cards.

I just encoded a few videos to H264 with 60-70 FPS, about 20x speed of normal CPU based encoding..it just fricking rocks. There is still potential since CUDA development/support is still in early stages...would just hate to get a new DX11 ATI card and not have CUDA ;(

(I know there is an ATI equivalent...but i dont know how many codecs/apps support this)

F.

$399 is not cheap, it was suppose to be $299, but AMD wanted to price gouge, screw you AMD.

no, $600 for gtx 280 was gouging. quadrupling the price of lumber after a hurricane is gouging. bumping your price up 25 % because you're at or near the top in performance, you have a low supply, and your competition is fiddling with physix is just good business. If you want to see gouging wait for nvidia's next 8800gtx-type release.

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: lopri
I was initially disappointed at the pricing, but now that the review is out and the details are known I think the price of 5870 is very fair. As a matter of fact it is the lowest MSRP I can remember for an indisputable performance leader, which also sport a major next gen API and has fixed almost all short-comings of previous gen products.

From $379 it may go up or down depending on supply and demand. Let's hope the supply will improve and price will come down sooner or later. Compare this to, say, Intel's CPU pricing ($300, $500, $1000) which doesn't move regardless of demand, and I am glad that we have a strong competition in GPU market.

yes, if either ati or nvidia were to ever attain the type of 2 year lead that intel currently enjoys we'd all be paying (or probably NOT paying) exorbitant gpu prices, too.

 

[jimhsu]

This launch does suggest that the days of $600/GPU launches should be over. In 2006, it was possible, but then we were worried about gas prices, "subprime" was a good word, and people actually liked bank CEOs. Times are different now ... adapt or die I guess.

 

[tdcarrol]

If there were games that would properly utilize all the power of this card, it might be worth 600$. As it is everything is multi-platform, and works fine on older cards. That combined with vista's low penetration, leaving everyone targeting primarily directX 9, and it's a great card without any good reason to be purchased.

 

[Zenoth]

I admit I haven't followed the development and stories about the latest graphics technologies from ATi/AMD, so I need to ask, is that new HD 5xxx series going to feature something à-la CUDA/NVIDIA PhysX? I'm not exactly sure but if I remember correctly I think I read something about ATi working with Havok during the HD 4xxx series when it just came out?

 

[lopri]

Originally posted by: Imported
With the cards with 1xHDMI, 2xDVI, 1xDisplayPort.. could I theoretically run 4 screens? I'd love to be able to run three 24" LCDs and also connect a 42" LCDTV.

If I understood the reviews correctly, the answer is no. A standard 5870 can drive up to 3 displays, via two DVIs and the DisplayPort. My understanding is that you cannot use two DVIs and the HDMI at the same time.

In order to drive 3 x DVIs, you'll need to use a DisplayPort-to-DVI converter and there is only one such product out there - from Apple, at cool $109.

I heard that AMD was working w/ cable manufacturers (hopefully not Monster Cables) to get more affordable converters out to market.

 

[lopri]

Originally posted by: Zenoth
I admit I haven't followed the development and stories about the latest graphics technologies from ATi/AMD, so I need to ask, is that new HD 5xxx series going to feature something à-la CUDA/NVIDIA PhysX? I'm not exactly sure but if I remember correctly I think I read something about ATi working with Havok during the HD 4xxx series when it just came out?

Wrapping things up, one of the last GPGPU projects AMD presented at their press event was a GPU implementation of Bullet Physics, an open source physics simulation library. Although they?ll never admit it, AMD is probably getting tired of being beaten over the head by NVIDIA and PhysX; Bullet Physics is AMD?s proof that they can do physics too. However we don?t expect it to go anywhere given its very low penetration in existing games and the amount of trouble NVIDIA has had in getting developers to use anything besides Havok. Our expectations for GPGPU physics remains the same: the unification will come from a middleware vendor selling a commercial physics package. If it?s not Havok, then it will be someone else.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3643&p=8

For all intents and purposes, I think this is just a joke.

 

[alcoholbob]

Regarding Crysis (comparing a XFX 5870 and GTX285 which I both have). Both tested on clean installs of Windows 7 64 (reinstalled for each test) with nothing installed except the latest video drivers, i7 @ 3.8ghz, intel x25-e hard drive. The test atm favors ATI since right now their cards run the fastest on Windows 7.

The median low framerate is significantly improved. On levels where the 285 starts jittering (down to 17-18fps), the 5870 remains steady (26+ fps). On average it's probably 40% faster than the 285 with Crysis (I'm approximating because the SSC is about 8%+ faster than stock 285).

However, the "maximum" (if there is such a thing) minimum framerates are significantly worse on the HD5870 than on the GTX285. In several points during GPU_bench and during cutscenes, transition scenes, and new levels, the HD5870 "hard locks" for as long as half a second (sometimes repeatedly over time) whereas the GTX285 does not have these problems. So while most of the playing experience has gotten better with the HD5870, there are some pretty glaring gameplay problems right now.

 

[imported_Shaq]

Less than $500? That must be the 5850 X2 they are talking about but it says the 5870 X2.

http://www.dvhardware.net/article38055.html

AMD Demos Dual Cypress--Hemlock

http://vr-zone.com/articles/am.../7718.html?doc=7718[/L

 

[T2k]

There's my baby, the 5850X2 2GB, under $400, here I come!

My current 4850X2 2GB for ~$270 (after MiR) around the end of last year was one of the best purchases I've ever made - and my first new VGA was a VLB S3 (can't recall its model#)...

 

[flexy]

Originally posted by: tdcarrol
If there were games that would properly utilize all the power of this card, it might be worth 600$. As it is everything is multi-platform, and works fine on older cards. That combined with vista's low penetration, leaving everyone targeting primarily directX 9, and it's a great card without any good reason to be purchased.

there are rarely games which utilize a just released card 100%, right away.
Buying a card the very first days when it comes out is always a little bit insane - but dont blame me because i am doing the same thing, occasionally, that's an enthusiast's forum, after all

 

[exar333]

I am worried about the DX9/DX11 issues myself. With the console companies formly staying with DX9, it feels that a lot of the games we will receive will be really DX9 games with a "DX11 mode".

Face it, a lot of PC games right now are console ports, but maybe if the console market drags down the development enough, PC gaming can resurge again. This happened about ten years ago when everyone was playing on the PS/N64 for consoles, the Geforce came out, and PC gaming was doing great with the technology advantage.

Here is to hope.

 

[KeithP]

In regards to the fit issue, in my case, my initial impression was wrong. A 5870 should be able to squeeze in, and a 5850 won't be a problem. Of course, I am probably the only one that cares about that this turn of events.

On a related note, am I the only one doesn't think the 5870 is worth the extra cost for most situations? I am not saying it is a bad card or overpriced or anything like that. It just seems like the 5850 wins the bang for your buck award on this release by a very large margin.

-KeithP

 

[Imported]

Originally posted by: lopri

Originally posted by: Imported
With the cards with 1xHDMI, 2xDVI, 1xDisplayPort.. could I theoretically run 4 screens? I'd love to be able to run three 24" LCDs and also connect a 42" LCDTV.

If I understood the reviews correctly, the answer is no. A standard 5870 can drive up to 3 displays, via two DVIs and the DisplayPort. My understanding is that you cannot use two DVIs and the HDMI at the same time.

In order to drive 3 x DVIs, you'll need to use a DisplayPort-to-DVI converter and there is only one such product out there - from Apple, at cool $109.

I heard that AMD was working w/ cable manufacturers (hopefully not Monster Cables) to get more affordable converters out to market.

That's a bummer. Guessing I'd have to wait for the Eyevision models (or whatever card has the 6 HDMI inputs) to run more than 3 screens..

 

[aka1nas]

The "Six" card has six mini-DisplayPorts, not HDMI.

 

[lopri]

Originally posted by: Imported
That's a bummer. Guessing I'd have to wait for the Eyevision models (or whatever card has the 6 HDMI inputs) to run more than 3 screens..

I learned a little bit more about this. The 5870 has 3 clock generators for displays, and while the 'legacy' DVI/HDMI ports need to be driven by individual clock generators, multiple DisplayPorts can be run off of a single clock generator.

So you have to choose two among available DVI/HDMI ports. One clock generator is reserved for DisplayPort(s).

 

[zod96]

I have the exact opposite effect in crysis. My GTX285 sutters for a second in the hard more graphics areas from time to time. Which is why I'm hoping my new 5870 wouldn't do that..