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***The Official ATI Radeon HD 5850 / 5870 Reviews and Discussion Thread***

Thats true but the bottom line is performance and sales, right now the GTX295 holds both and glancing over those charts it not going to be losing a great deal of customers.
 
ThorpedoUK said:
Still getting blasted by the 295, looks like when the 300 comes out the glory will be NVidias once again.
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Yes most likely, but hopefully by that time ATI will come out with a refresh and we can look forward to more price battling between ati/nvidia as on the 4870/GTX 260 4890/275
 
The new cards are impressive, but not quite as dominating as I had expected from the specs. The fact that, at the highest settings, the 5870 loses out to the 4870x2 about as often as it wins is a little surprising, given the higher pixel throughput (of about 20%) and the lack of inter-GPU communication. I guess it goes to show the importance of memory bandwidth at the highest resolutions with AA (where the x2 still has the advantage).

One more point; I'm not sure I agree with anandtech's "always use AA" ethos. To be honest, at 2560*1600 I prefer to play with AA off in FPS games. At this resolution jaggies are virtually invisible anyway, and playing without AA leads to a slightly 'cleaner' and sharper image. I'm sure that for flight sims / racing games good quality AA is essential no matter the resolution, but for FPS I'm not convinced.

Anyway I wasn't planning to buy right away - I'm waiting for the 5870x2 before I open my wallet. Perhaps by then we will have some indication of the performance of nvidia's offering?

Hats off to AMD though, for bringing out a good quality card at a reasonable price, and for being first out of the door for a change!
 
Duff-Man said:
The new cards are impressive, but not quite as dominating as I had expected from the specs. The fact that, at the highest settings, the 5870 loses out to the 4870x2 about as often as it wins is a little surprising, given the higher pixel throughput (of about 20%) and the lack of inter-GPU communication. I guess it goes to show the importance of memory bandwidth at the highest resolutions with AA (where the x2 still has the advantage).
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I would put that down to drivers.
 
The Asgard said:
I here you and I have done it myself but should we have to... No. Running a GTX 260 at the moment and this card is pretty much silent under load. While I appreciate it's a high end card I just wish they would spend some of the R&D money on cooling.
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oh no, we shouldn't have to at all, I've been banging on for years that the vast majority of us use a single card and have all the space in the world underneath our single card in all the mobo slots. They should release crossfire versions with their stupid double slot exhausting coolers, and they should have, uber cool lower failure rate 4 slot massive cooler silent fans versions for the masses. Frankly theres nothing stopping them releasing something with a TT ultra extreme sized cooler on it to hang in all the space 90% of buyers have in their computers, hell, positioned right with a fan blowing backwards just taking your pci slot covers out would exhaust most of the heat anyway.

The thing I can't understand is why gfx people really care about cpu temps, gamers can overclock a cheap cpu loads on a cheap cooler with low temps and not be cpu bound in games, while everyone is gpu bound. Why sacrifice temps, performance and clocks for exhausting when most of us would be happy with a better overclocking(or higher default clocked) card with better cooling and slightly higher cpu temps.

Again blocking up MORE of the exhaust area, which increases the noise so the 3 people in a million who will use 3 screens can use them, while the other 999,997 people have worse temps and higher noise are worse off I don't know.
 
The Asgard said:
I would put that down to drivers.
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Entirely possible. I guess that only time will tell.


Edit - I'm also all for the idea of introducing massive "four-slot" coolers that can run virtually silently, in addition to the more noisy two-slot editions for SLI / x-fire. I don't think it's unreasonable for them to charge a $20-$30 premium for such a model, and I think there would be plenty of takers.
 
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id also say its defineatly driver problems. as they said. they only used early beta drivers to test the card. so im hopefull for the card after a couple of sets of drivers! hopefully by then i can buy a 2GB model from OCUK..wish they had them in stock xD
 
Duff-Man said:
Entirely possible. I guess that only time will tell.


Edit - I'm also ll for the idea of introducing massive "four-slot" coolers that can run virtually silently, in addition to the more noisy two-slot editions for SLI / x-fire. I don't think it's unreasonable for them to charge a $20-$30 premium for such a model, and I think there would be plenty of takers.
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Don't need a 4 slot cooler, just a well designed 2 slot with enough heatpipes.
 
The Asgard said:
I would put that down to drivers.
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I'd agree there, there are PLENTY of games where a 4870x2 has gained a tonne of performance since release, same for the 280gtx/4870/8800gtx/etc.

But I still think the card is rop limited, its got the shader horse power for keeping minimum framerate up, but it just doesn't have the raw ROP's/clockspeed to push those higher area framerates up. However, the minimum framerates are key, the highest framerates being 30% higher doesn't do anything for your gaming experience.

The problem being, designing for low end grunt means better in game experience, but lower averages, designing for high end and not caring about the low end means higher averages and lower minimums. One of those will be better in gaming, one will be better in benchmarks, I know which I prefer, but its a very hard thing to "read" from benchmarks.

As tougher games come out, a card without the raw horsepower will suffer in the low end and the highs won't be as high either, the 5870 will stretch its lead in harder games, almost unquestionably, but thats how it is with every release, why are people surprised?

X1950xt's in CF were faster than 8800gtx at launch, now, they aren't, not a surprise, same will happen with every generation.
 
Duff-Man said:
Entirely possible. I guess that only time will tell.


Edit - I'm also all for the idea of introducing massive "four-slot" coolers that can run virtually silently, in addition to the more noisy two-slot editions for SLI / x-fire. I don't think it's unreasonable for them to charge a $20-$30 premium for such a model, and I think there would be plenty of takers.
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Frankly, there shouldn't be a need for any premium, lower temps even lead to lower failure rates, infact, because space for cooling is less limited they can use less copper and bigger but still cheaper all alu coolers without any real issue. Overall a better cooled card should be cheaper because long term, it will cost them less to support.

Just in reviews you see reviewers list any card without external exhausting down as a massive negative, then high temps for the card as a negative, idiots that they are can't put 1 + 1 together but pigeon hole the manufactures into giving the customer what reviewers have told them they want. :rolleyes:
 
For those who were worried about x8/x8 potentially bottlenecking their P55 you can put that theory to rest now.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_5870_PCI-Express_Scaling/25.html
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Anyone get the idea that this is going to be Virus2k tomorrow waiting for the delivery....

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I can imagine the postman turning up and Virus calmly peering through the letterbox saying "Go away cretin!!! Your not from DPD!!!"
 
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