AMD's ATI Radeon HD 5870 Video Card Review @ [H]

x3sphere said:
yeah, I don't see the point in upgrading to a card that only gives me around 15 % more performance. The only game that is unplayable at 2560x1600 with my 275 is of course Crysis, but the 5870 does not improve this situation by a great deal. I hope Nvidia's next line of cards manages to wow me.. I'd like to see a card with double the performance of the 285. This more or less reminds me of the jump from the Geforce 6xxx to 7xxx series, which was decent but nothing major. The 8xxx series however changed everything, finally making Oblivion for example playable at 1080p with a single card. I'd like to see that happen with Crysis :)



It has happened, the 8800GTX was twice as fast as its predecessor.
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yet you are completely missing the point.. even with the 8 series the 7850 was faster then all the cards except the 8800GTX and the only reason for that was the increased bus speed and ram.. the card was a basicly a freak that nvidia created so that it could claim the 8 series was better then the 7 series because at the time all the other 8 series cards were a complete joke performance wise.. the only thing the 8 series changed was the dx10 support that took 2+ years to actually get used..

and you still dont get it number wise.. if the 5870 was at the same identical settings as the GTX 285 it would of been twice as fast.. but thats not the [H] way of doing a review.. its all about finding the max settings possible while keeping an acceptable game play experience.. and even at 1920x1080 it should still be twice as fast if not more then the GTX 285.. but whats the point in running identical settings as a gtx 285 just to get 60 FPS.. when you can get the same exact frame rate as the GTX 285 while doubling the quality of game.. not to mention you do not need 60fps to play crysis.. the engines designed to run between 25-50fps..
 
well for me I like it since I have had a hd 4870 in my personal system with 512mb of ram, and may be I can finally play crysis with decent framerate. i am sure as time goes on the distance will only increase when dx11 games come out. if the game stresses it enough you will see more than 50% difference over 4890,
here is one example, and yes I cherry picked the game that stressed all the cards the most. and if you have a gtx 295 or similar I dont think you should upgrade either, I am just not a dual gpu kinda guy.

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look at those min fps, three times of hd 4890, please don't tell me that it doesn't matter because it does.
 
Minimum fps is what a review should focus on, that makes the game stable without any hick ups.
If a 5870 has tripple the min fps, you be having a much better enjoyment playing the game.
If I played hawk I would get the 5800 series asap.
Just destroys previous generation.
 
NKD said:
well for me I like it since I have had a hd 4870 in my personal system with 512mb of ram, and may be I can finally play crysis with decent framerate. i am sure as time goes on the distance will only increase when dx11 games come out. if the game stresses it enough you will see more than 50% difference over 4890,
here is one example, and yes I cherry picked the game that stressed all the cards the most. and if you have a gtx 295 or similar I dont think you should upgrade either, I am just not a dual gpu kinda guy.

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look at those min fps, three times of hd 4890, please don't tell me that it doesn't matter because it does.
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Granted you are comparing the cards at 8xAA.. that is rahter overkill at 2560x1600. The difference is not as large with comparing the cards at no AA:

HD5870-60.jpg


or 4xAA

HD5870-61.jpg


It's great that the 5870 can perform well at high levels of AA but for me, anything over 4xAA is beyond the point of diminishing returns, especially at such a high res. So.. in brief, I don't see a huge advantage of the 5870 over the 4870x2 or GTX295 here. Just my opinion though.
 
we can all argue that if the last gen gave you over 60 frames in a game than new gen gives a 100, I don't really think it matters, this is only thing that sucks when you don't have a game other than crysis that will stress it that much at 1080p or 1920x1200 resolution. hope to see games in the future that will stress it enough at 1920x1200 because that is the resolution I game at.
 
it all boils down to what games we play and will play in the future. and our personal preference, I always jump green to red and red to green depends on what fits my wallet.
 
jonneymendoza said:
why is it silly? a dual GPU doesnt mean double the performance ie a 4780x2 is not twice as powerful as a 4870. its only maybe 40-50% more powerful IF the game supports it and so in theory this 5870 is only 50-60% more powerful than a single 4870. sorry but i was expecting double the "performance" of a 4870.
:(
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Nope, if a game supports crossfire you can indeed get 2x the performance. How much you get varies from system to system, game to game, settings to settings.

Might want to get your facts straight before spouting of age old FUD.
 
I have to say the supersampling results confuse me. Why the heck is it making textures more blurry? IT should, in fact, be doing the opposite. The texture is rendered larger, then downsampled as such ends up looking crisper. That's how it works when you do SSAA with a software renderer in a 3D modeler, and also how it worked back on the old GeForce cards when nVidia has it in software.

It confuses me that these cards are different, unless they aren't really doing super sampling. Now I can understand if they are, it takes an epic amount of memory and rendering power. If you do 2x SSAA, you literally double everything. The card renders double the amount of pixels and combines them in to the final output.

Not that it matters much, nobody is going to make much use of it either way since it takes so much power, but it seems that the cards aren't doing it right if they are making textures worse rather than better.
 
Once more there are huge differences between other sites benchmarks. One has the 295 whipping 5870 in tests A, B, C, and along comes site#2 with the 295 taking a position with scores like the 5870 had in the first sites benchmarks, and some sites showing say FC2 being won by 5870, and some showing even the 285 beating it (everything on the same settings)

Can only trust the [H] these days.


e: Techreport's tests spotted Nvidia purposely killing performance when running Radeons in Sacred 2, and then this TWIMTBP problem, where the EU investigators at when you need them?
 
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Just wanted to say thanks for the great in depth specs of the card! Loved it. I may have to sit this generation out though. My 4890 pushes everything I play at 1920x1200 perfectly now. Maybe when I pick up some new games it'll start to struggle, or if I move up to a 30in :cool:

Always good to see the technology moving forward though, now I just need to see what Nvidia can bring to the table.
 
Great review as usual Kyle/Brent, thumbs up. Looks like AMD has a great single GPU solution now.. I'm still gonna pass this round though. I'm waiting for a card that can run every game out like butter at 1920x1200 and it looks like Crysis still brings it to its knees, until then I can't see myself forking out $300-$400 on another video card. Reality is my current card runs just about everything out, minus Crysis, at my native resolution so whats the point? DX11? Perhaps, but I'll wait till a game or two is out to see the benefit.

Awesome card though regardless, multidisplay gaming is VERY enticing.
 
GoldenTiger said:
It's aliiiive! Reading now... EDIT1: Wow, $259 MSRP on the 5850? EDIT2: Interesting how the TWIMTBP games run slower... the 5870 trounces the 285 in ARMA II though :eek:.
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I don't know. I was expecting more this time around. As far as I'm concerned this is more incremental than anything. Most of the scores are so-so improvements really.

Don't get me wrong, incremental is good too, just not good enough for me to consider trading up yet. :(

Oh well, we'll see if Nvidia can go beyond incremental, otherwise I'll hold my money for next, next-gen ;)
 
Well done ATi well done!

If only Nvidia would re-allow Physx to work on a Nvidia / ATi combo and I can see my GeForce 280 becoming a over powered Physx card. :p
 
Hmmm, I'm gonna wait now. I want to see how SLI GT300 compares to Xfire 5870 before I replace my SLI 280s.
 
Nice review.
I have to read it slowly again.....to get the small details.

In the next round of testing, I would think STALKER ClearSky would be a good challenge for this new card. Wadda ya think???
 
How longs anti aliasing been working in ghostbusters? I was under the impresion it didn't work end of story. :confused:
 
Brent_Justice said:
AMD's ATI Radeon HD 5870 Video Card Review - AMD’s ATI Radeon HD 5800 series debuts today and the new ATI Radeon HD 5870 is now available. We will give you all the gritty details of the HD 5800 Series, and show you just how well the new flagship ATI Radeon HD 5870 accelerates games. Can you say, "Twice as much performance in the same power envelope?"
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Really?! twice as much power? I've yet to see 1 review with any one game where the 5870 doubled a 4870 performance let alone the GTX285.
 
That's one hell of a powerful chip - but not quite the performance I was looking for.

I'll wait for their refresh in about a year or so - that extra few percent will shift the price:performance ratio to the extent I desire.

Great review though.
 
Hmm, wonder how long it will be until we see a 5870 X2 ?
Has anyone see any mention of this?
 
it got double the RAW power, look specs and you SEE that guys.

I doubt you will see twice the fps in many games, maybe COD4.

The value is pretty good considering what they've actually put into this card, improved AF support for eyefinity, 3 display support,DX11 way more power than pre-gen single cards, lower idle powerconsumption..

I knew about the performance prior to this review, but many of the additional features i didnt know much about.
Great job from ATI, no doubt!
 
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Awesome review! Very interesting and very enjoyable to read. The HD 5870 is a great card, although I'm especially looking forward to your review about the HD 5850. I wonder if that card is capable of playing Crysis at 1920x1200 on Enthusiast without AA.


Anyway, great job. I value the reviews of Hardocp the most when making a decision for a new card.
 
One thing is for sure.......ATI will cream the NV "whatever" card comes out in power consumption vs. performance...good luck nv fanbois with your new heaters as that new nv core is going to be a monster!
 
Nice review. It would be cool to have some sort of .mp3 or audio over video that compares the noise levels of each of these cards. That would really make your review unique.

What is the db level at idle and load?
 
Xorphious said:
Excellent review, though I wish some other games had been tested off-the-bat.

However, just to clarify...

- 5870 (single PCB) = GTX 295 (dual PCB), basically?

Two other questions I have:

- Does the 256 Bus width hurt it in any way?
- Does it handle true MSAA as well?

I prefer true MSAA over CSAA etc. ...was true MSAA used in the Crysis: Warhead test? It's not mentioned in the review, unless I missed it somewhere.

I've never seen the GTX 285 really "trounce" the GTX 280, but the 5870 runs Crysis: Warhead on Enthusiast settings and gets the same fps as my GTX 280 on Gamer settings.

So essentially, the 5870 trounces the GTX 280?

If so, would that be with true MSAA?

Unless Nvidia comes out with something astounding that's not a "sandwich" card, and depending on the responses here, I'm seriously considering moving from the GTX 280 to the 5870.
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On AMD 2X, 4X and 8X AA are MSAA modes. 12X and 24X CFAA are CFAA modes. CFAA uses the shaders to perform edge antialiasing, no memory bandwidth required, and it does not affect textures or make them blurry, just on polygon edges.

The 256bit bus does not hurt it since they use high speed GDDR5 to keep the bandwidth high.

It handles MSAA well, just like the 4800 series did. I saw very nearly no drop in performance between 2X and 4X AA in NFS: Shift. 8X AA as usual was a lot faster than NV's 8xQ MSAA.

The 5870 trounced the GTX 285 in our tests, so yes, it trounces a GTX 280 which is clocked slower.

heatlesssun said:
I stand corrected. As I said I've not played it with PhysX off as the game runs very well on my sig rig maxed out at 4xAA, averages 55 FPS @ 1920x1200 which is more than fine for this game.

Nonetheless my point was that PhysX for the foreseeable future will be better supported than DX11. Of course that can all change quickly.
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PhysX acceleration only improves Physics performance in Batman, no visual difference exists between PhysX accelerated and non-PhysX accelerated.

Bo_Fox said:
Hey Brent and Kyle, I've been thinking about the blurry-texture problem with SSAA.. perhaps there would be a way to force negative LOD (Level of Detail) on the textures to balance it out? Nvidia's CP allows us to choose "Clamp" instead of "Allow", but Clamp does not allow the LOD to be negative, or to go below 0 (anisostropic filtering takes care of the rest). Rivatuner allows a manual tweaking of the LOD when clamp is chosen, but AF does not allow for negative LOD, right? Anyways, ATI could implement a -2 LOD when 2xSSAA is used, -4 LOD for 4xSSAA and -6 or the maximum negative LOD for 8xSSAA or something like that.

2xSSAA effectively doubles AF, while 4x SSAA gives 4x AF by itself if no AF is being used (or quadruples it anyways). Say, if we choose 16x AF with 2x SSAA, we're actually getting 32x AF as shown in the D3D AF Tester program, but if the textures are being blurred out by the supersampling, then the only logical solution is a much sharper LOD to try to alleviate the problem, no?

I'm looking forward to SSAA because I just cannot stand the shader-aliasing in Unreal3-engine games (Mass Effect, R6Vegas, Bioshock, etc..). It's like as if FSAA is actually "HSAA" or Half-screen AA because only half of the things on the screen are being AA'ed. It was horrible with Lost Planet too!
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It is possible that what we are seeing is a bug, but I have tried it in several games with the same result. I'll be expanding that testing in my follow-up to see how many games exhibit this behavior with SSAA. No way, AFAIK to change LOD manually.

jonneymendoza said:
good review but i feel underwelmed a bit. i was expecting near double the performance on previous gen cards but all i see is a nvidia 295gtx slapped with dx11.

i was wishing games like crysis and arma 2 will be able to play at an average framerate of around 50fps at above 1080p res but it seems this card cant do it just yet.

what will the performance of a 5850 be? the numbers shown on your results are what i would expect from a 5850 not a 5870.

a 5850 should be as fast as the fastest GPU of previous gen if not slightly faster while the 5870 should be a no brainer.
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Crazy, I thought the 5870 was a no brainier, it provided the highest levl of gameplay in our evaluation compared to 4890 and GTX 285 (both the fastest GPUs of the previous generation)

jonneymendoza said:
exactly my point mate. mate plus where are the 5850 benchmarks?
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We don't have a 5850 yet, when we get one, you will have an evaluation.

NKD said:
it all boils down to what games we play and will play in the future. and our personal preference, I always jump green to red and red to green depends on what fits my wallet.
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Exactly, I see people getting caught up on benchmarks and numbers again. It comes down to the gameplay experience delivered, and in every game we tested in this evaluation, including Crysis, the 5870 allowed the BEST and HIGHEST gameplay experience. It allowed much higher settings than the 4890 or GTX 285 in all our games tested.

Sycraft said:
I have to say the supersampling results confuse me. Why the heck is it making textures more blurry? IT should, in fact, be doing the opposite. The texture is rendered larger, then downsampled as such ends up looking crisper. That's how it works when you do SSAA with a software renderer in a 3D modeler, and also how it worked back on the old GeForce cards when nVidia has it in software.

It confuses me that these cards are different, unless they aren't really doing super sampling. Now I can understand if they are, it takes an epic amount of memory and rendering power. If you do 2x SSAA, you literally double everything. The card renders double the amount of pixels and combines them in to the final output.

Not that it matters much, nobody is going to make much use of it either way since it takes so much power, but it seems that the cards aren't doing it right if they are making textures worse rather than better.
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Yep, SSAA should not be blurry, but it is, it could be a bug, or it could be how they have implemented it. I'll be testing it on more games in the follow-up.

magoo said:
Nice review.
I have to read it slowly again.....to get the small details.

In the next round of testing, I would think STALKER ClearSky would be a good challenge for this new card. Wadda ya think???
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Maybe.. I can throw it on there and see what happens.

Chris_B said:
How longs anti aliasing been working in ghostbusters? I was under the impresion it didn't work end of story. :confused:
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Since the Cat 9.8 Hotfix and an earlier NV driver. They both found a way to make control panel forced AA work in Ghostbusters, and it works just fine.
 
Great review, Nice card.

I liked the "Other Hardware Characteristics" section. Those remarks are good in reviews.
 
the only thing I thought was dumb was about the Arma 2 benchmarks is the view distance settings they tested with.

Who the hell runs Arma2 with those sort of viewdistances in real life? The least I run with is 3km and I have an absolutely shite rig, I deal with the performance hit cause running with 2km viewdistance is absolutely horrible...
 
Atech said:
Excuse me?:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GyKCM-Bpuw
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Our information comes straight from NV. We have been in contact with them about these features. We are in the processes of working up a full Batman evaluation, and are diving in to find out if this claim is correct or not. We are taking the time needed to get to the bottom of all this. We hear that the Scarecrow level has the bulk of the PhysX work related in that area.
 
First of all, _Amazing_ review, as always! Thanks A LOT guys, keep up the _Excellent_ work! :D

Back on topic, this card is one sexy beast! Kudos to AMD (secretly an AMD fanboy here) for making such a great card. EyeFinity is the feature I liked the most...

3wayportrait.jpg

OMG! I jizzed my pants.​

I'd like to see what the green team has to offer, with their GT300 series, and how it stacks up against the AMD offerings.

Now all we need from AMD is -like someone said earlier- another "Athlon" in their CPU department, and it'd be a total Win for AMD fans :cool:
 
PyroHoltz said:
Great review guys! Can't wait for an in depth Eyefinity [H]Review now.
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I stayed up till 3AM this morning playing NFS Shift on a 24" Eyefinity 3x1 setup. Man does it friggin rock. 5760 x 1200. Wow. It looks damn near perfect. The extra screen make a BIG difference in this game, it is like being in the car.

Played L4D for about an hour last night as well. It has a big impact, not as big as NFS though, but I will still not want to go without once I have had it.
 
Brent_Justice said:
Our information comes straight from NV. We have been in contact with them about these features. We are in the processes of working up a full Batman evaluation, and are diving in to find out if this claim is correct or not. We are taking the time needed to get to the bottom of all this. We hear that the Scarecrow level has the bulk of the PhysX work related in that area.
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Yea, watch this video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vINH6Z9kqgI. There is alot of visual difference in Batman with PhysX. Not just the scarecrow levels.

That video highlights the differences. PhysX adds a ton to Batman with PhysX.

Keep in mind Physx is also used in Darkest of Days, NFS Shift, Cryostasis with alot of upcoming titles using it as well. Moving to ATI you are losing GPU PhysX and right now that is a huge con to me.

Also, I didnt see the GTX 285 get trounced, if you ask me it was quite close. Commendable performance, ATI finally matched and beat NVidia in single GPU performance... a year later.
 
Brent_Justice said:
Our information comes straight from NV. We have been in contact with them about these features. We are in the processes of working up a full Batman evaluation, and are diving in to find out if this claim is correct or not. We are taking the time needed to get to the bottom of all this. We hear that the Scarecrow level has the bulk of the PhysX work related in that area.
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Well I see the difference ingame(missing effects when hardware Physx is disabled)...and in countless videos (like the one i posted), so I am having a laugh here...no offence.
 
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