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

While the performance is very good, doesn't hit 30 average so I don't see it worth an upgrade over the 285 either. In my experience you need 30 average for a smooth Crysis experience. Better to wait it out and see if Nvidia's next top single GPU solution can hit 30.

Intel_Hydralisk: If you still have a 8800GT, then I'd say this card is worth it.


Dude,look at the minimum fps.Very high settings vs high/normal on GTX285 and 4890

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/09/22/amds_ati_radeon_hd_5870_video_card_review/8
 
GTX285

MIN FPS =7
MAX FPS=25
AVG FPS=17

Ati 5870

MIN FPS=15
MAX FPS=37
AVG FPS=26

Not worth? doubt it imho,but at the end its your money you decide.

Lol@this

A min fps of 7 is really bad and a min of 15 is just plain bad. In the end they both suck imo. I'm referencing the min fps numbers. So ya 15 is double the 7 and is clearly better but is that worth dropping cash on especially on 1 game? Seriously? Its more like the lesser of 2 evils imo. Oh and I know the playability difference. Yes yes fanboys I know 7fps isn't playable and 15 is. Yes yes I know but its still shit performance for a brand new card on a 2 year old game, period.
 
Dude,look at the minimum fps.Very high settings vs high on GTX285 and 4890

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/09/22/amds_ati_radeon_hd_5870_video_card_review/8

I can't argue, the 5870 has a clear advantage here, but it's one game.

Ok no point to continue,guess you all wanted 50 min fps and 100 avg for 380?

If the performance was a bit better in Crysis, say 20 FPS minimum, I'd spring for the 5870. It's just like 30% short of the performance delta I wanted. If the GT300 ends up being a bit more powerful it looks it may get there. Or the 5890 maybe. I'm interested in seeing how 2GB VRAM on these cards affects min FPS.
 
GTX285

MIN FPS =7
MAX FPS=25
AVG FPS=17

Ati 5870

MIN FPS=15
MAX FPS=37
AVG FPS=26

Not worth? doubt it imho,but at the end its your money you decide.

not worth it all. if it were just to pay the difference sure, but those numbers are not worth $300+ in my opinion.
 
Yes yes fanboys I know 7fps isn't playable and 15 is. Yes yes I know but its still shit performance for a brand new card on a 2 year old game, period.

I might be the only one alone in this opinion, but I'd stick with something more on the lines of "This is a shit 2-year-old game, with shit performance on even a brand new card" insted.
 
I might be the only one alone in this opinion, but I'd stick with something more on the lines of "This is a shit 2-year-old game, with shit performance on even a brand new card" insted.

The coding of the game/engine is debatable. What isn't debateable is the performance numbers. Simple as far as I see it. Course if you wanna show the hardware in the best possible light then you take the stance of the game being coded like shit. Meh whatever makes you feel better I guess. Me personally? 2 year old game still not getting slapped around by the latest and greatest hardware? Laughable and not where I spend my money. However I use common sense when I make a purchase decision and I don't succomb to impulse.
 
While I found this review good, I was kind of amazed that "PhysX" was not mentioned at all. With the differences PhysX makes in games visually, I don't get the attraction to this card simply because it is not PhysX capable. I don't understand why someone would spend all that money on a video card that plays games missing things visually. I don't get how the upcoming Batman comparison can be a true comparison between ATI and Nvidia cards because one will have so much more things visually on the screen than the other. I know in the past that Hardocp has downplayed physx but I just don't see how that can continue with what physx is bringing to the screen in games (and it seems to be growing in use, not deminishing). Once you see Batman with the physx effects, playing without it is simply un-acceptable (or it sure is for me). That alone (unless physx goes by the wayside) will keep me from getting an ATI card, I don't care how powerful it is.
 
What you guys are missing with the Crysis obsession is, one, it's just freaking Crysis, let's get over it after two years when 99% of people have already played it, or at least not make it the center of attention.

And two, the scene benchmarked was by far the most graphically intense part of Warhead and not indicative of the entire gameplay experience.
 
It was mentioned in the AMD slides of tech that failed. Brent/Kyle mentioned ATi's Tu-Form as no one is perfect. :D
 
What you guys are missing with the Crysis obsession is, one, it's just freaking Crysis, let's get over it after two years when 99% of people have already played it, or at least not make it the center of attention.

And two, the scene benchmarked was by far the most graphically intense part of Warhead and not indicative of the entire gameplay experience.

Yes, that level is the worst case scenario so its the most important level gpu prowess wise.
 
What you guys are missing with the Crysis obsession is, one, it's just freaking Crysis, let's get over it after two years when 99% of people have already played it, or at least not make it the center of attention.

And two, the scene benchmarked was by far the most graphically intense part of Warhead and not indicative of the entire gameplay experience.

I realize this. Only reason I'm focusing on Crysis is because essentially, it's still the only game my 275 doesn't run well at max settings. Nothing else is really pushing our cards - Arma II yes, but it's more or less CPU limited.

And it looks this way for the foreseeable future too. I don't see any games on the horizon that will push the technology envelope, aside from.. Crysis 2. Games like Modern Warfare 2 and BioShock 2 are going to be console ports meaning they will run similar to their predecessors.

I suppose if there were more demanding games out there, splurging on a 5870 wouldn't be a hard decision. But that's not the case.
 
A lot of talk about upgrading from a GTX280 etc. not being worth it. There a a lot more people running GTX260s, 4850s, and 8800s still and it will be worth it for them. Plus, if you're buying new, the 5870 is pretty much THE card to get right now.
 
A lot of talk about upgrading from a GTX280 etc. not being worth it. There a a lot more people running GTX260s, 4850s, and 8800s still and it will be worth it for them. Plus, if you're buying new, the 5870 is pretty much THE card to get right now.

my 260gtx perfroms just like a 280gtc:rolleyes:
 
After reading this review and Anand's I was left feeling a bit let down by ATi's card. That being said I'm definitely not the target audience of this card; there is no way I'd drop $300 on a card and then another $400 on two more 24" monitors so I can play my games on 3 screens. Besides which it seems like Anand had some real problems getting his games to play properly with Eyefinity, which I'm sure ATi will address asap.

On the other hand this should help drive prices down on other cards and that makes me :)
 
Would it be possible to see the pcb layout of the 4870 and 5870 side? I'm wondering how the holes would line up for a full coverage waterblock.
 
crysis is an awesome game. nothing wrong with the coding, it was designed to push hardware, and honestly it's the only game benchmark worth a damn, since almost every other game is a 360 port which presents almost no challenge to last generations hardware.
 
I have to admit that this is one of those exciting days. A fresh new promising videocard/GPU and a great first review from [H]. :D Thanks!

The 27W idle is incredibly impressive compared to the stupidifying 90W idle of the 4870 and a strong selling point for me. Frame rates are great too, I cant see how you could expect more. Now we need more great games from the devs and fast! Praying that Edios Montreal are among the teams which was fed one of these cards in June.

You ask our thoughts on the filters and AA ie. I happen to agree with your conclusions very much. The trilinear filtering blows all other versions away no doubt, the 16XAF is just jaw dropping! The new implementation looks great. Should prove interesting to see if the green team can deliver even better quality?

The 8XAA of the 4890 on the first GBs screen looks better than the rest. Note the blur on the lower part of the clock in the 5870 screen. Is it some edge detection stretching out too far perhaps?

The supersampling at just kills way too much texture detail for my liking. Local contrast, bumps ie. so much good work lost in a blur, its too bad.

Cant wait for the next article on this card. Keep up the great work!
 
I am work so I didn't get a chance to read the whole article at lunch, but were all the CCC settings set to quality when doing these tests. If not, what were the settings? Thanks.
 
The 27W idle is incredibly impressive compared to the stupidifying 90W idle of the 4870 and a strong selling point for me.

The idle power is a big win for this card. That was actually one of the factors that lead me to get a GTX 280 instead of a 4870. While the GTX uses more power fully spun up, it uses less at idle. Well, since your computer spends a lot of time at idle, that's nice. Idle is also usually when the computer is quietest (no game explosions) so it would be nice if the fan was also quiet.

Since the 5800s have good idle usage now, that makes them a really good choice IMO.
 
A lot of talk about upgrading from a GTX280 etc. not being worth it. There a a lot more people running GTX260s, 4850s, and 8800s still and it will be worth it for them. Plus, if you're buying new, the 5870 is pretty much THE card to get right now.

I've got a 4870x2 where I run games in 1920x1200 resolution and still consider upgrade. Reason is simple: Eyefinity. Old games can be played with more immersion and though TH is out with DP edition, this implementation seems to be less fuzz (though some initial bugs and lack of features with Eyefinity like bezel management needs to be dealt with which TH already have fixed). I have performance enough for games on the marked now, but I don't have eyefinity.

DX11 hardware support for some features I want like:
Tesselation
Directcompute on SM5 (I have support for 4.1 now though)

New feature support in OpenCL 1.1 in future version

Here's a list:
http://pcper.com/article.php?aid=783

I'm considering to buy some cheap 26" (25.5") TN just for added immersion in existing games and a new 5800 series card (preferably X2, since I've grown fond of them and I hope Gainward comes with a custom cooling edition like the one I have).

Looking forward to [H]'s Eyefinity review!
PhysX's little eyecandy was underwelming, but this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujf6P6iGcfc&feature=player_embedded

Now thats adding to the game, even when Eyefinity is in the start phase!

Edit: Nice review as always from [H] btw. Tnx!
 
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Crysis is important because as someone else mentioned its the only non console port that matters to most of us. I think its a worthy benchmark to look at when comparing like cards/systems.

Physx is kind of important too. The fact that arkum asylm with physx on makes such a difference in the gameplay experience makes me question why this review doesn't mention the lack of it. Meaning [H] is so keen on portraying the best gameplay experience and yet physx isn't talked about bat all?

Iknow they have a big in depth review coming on arkum but I still think it should be brought up in a video card review. Considering the overall impact in the gameplay experience it brings to the table from here and going foward.
 
I've made a small comparison between HD5870 and other popular cards of today at both 1920x1080 4xAA and 2560x1200 4xAA resolutions in latest games.
The results are as follows:

HD5870 VS

GTX295 +7%
GTX285 -30%
GTX280 -41%
GTX275 -35%
GTX260 -61% (192SP's)
GTX260 -56% (216SP's)
GTS250 -86%
9800GTX -96%
8800GT -113%
9600GT -130%
8600GTS -236%

HD5870 VS

HD4870X2 -7%
HD4890 -46%
HD4870 -61%
HD4850 -86%
HD4830 -100%
HD4770 -92%
HD4730 -106%
HD4670 -146%
HD4650 -171%
HD3870 -121%
HD3850 -136%
 
Anyone see the 5850 for sale anywhere, or even the 5870 in-stock :eek:?

NewEgg had four different models; all were quickly snagged by the Visigoths (all are on auto-notify), despite their identical $380 pre-tax pricing. However, from TechSpot's review (TechSpot is the only company that comes close to [H] in review believability; I'm reading the [H] review as I type this, it looks like my prediction came true....with frosting.

It looks more and more like HD5850 will actually *match* HD4890 performance, while undercutting it on price.

[H]'s review of the HD5870....in a word, YEEKS. For the first time, a single-GPU graphics card looks quite capable of playing darn near any game at desktop resolutions with the settings *all* pegged to their ceilings (23" LCD). The GTX 285 (nV's current single-GPU champ) has been getting beat (and in some cases, severely waxed), even on TWIMTBP titles, such as NFS: Shift. Next year's HD5870 X2 is shaping up to be a scary scary piece of hardware; however, next week's HD5850 could actually be scarier, at least to the competition.
 
I don't think this new card will improve my game play experience at all.




(I'm so CPU bound it's pathetic)
 
I was wondering about the fan implementation on the card?

The two "red vents" on the end of the card are considered intake vents? And the fan is spinning in the direction of pulling air from the fan hole and the red 2 vents and sending it down the card through the heatsink and out the back of the card where the ports are?

Is that correct?
 
NewEgg had four different models; all were quickly snagged by the Visigoths (all are on auto-notify), despite their identical $380 pre-tax pricing. However, from TechSpot's review (TechSpot is the only company that comes close to [H] in review believability; I'm reading the [H] review as I type this, it looks like my prediction came true....with frosting.

It looks more and more like HD5850 will actually *match* HD4890 performance, while undercutting it on price.

[H]'s review of the HD5870....in a word, YEEKS. For the first time, a single-GPU graphics card looks quite capable of playing darn near any game at desktop resolutions with the settings *all* pegged to their ceilings (23" LCD). The GTX 285 (nV's current single-GPU champ) has been getting beat (and in some cases, severely waxed), even on TWIMTBP titles, such as NFS: Shift. Next year's HD5870 X2 is shaping up to be a scary scary piece of hardware; however, next week's HD5850 could actually be scarier, at least to the competition.

I actually kept hitting refresh on newegg and snagged a 5870... 5 minutes later it was 'out of stock'. I'll believe that my order was successful when I see a tracking number, otherwise I'm literally just holding my breath at the moment.

As for the 5850... how is it undercutting it in price if it's $259 vs. ~$200 for a 4890? And I sure hope it'll perform better than a 4890 since it's supposed to be competitive with a gtx 285.

I was going to wait for the 5850 but I became impatient. I have the money, so why not.
 
While I found this review good, I was kind of amazed that "PhysX" was not mentioned at all.

Incorrect
1st page, 2nd to last paragraph "...and ATI video cards will not use PhysX accelerated Physics."

There ya go, mentioned. Appearantly most of us are just saying,
"PhysX honey, we just aren't that into you"
 
There ya go, mentioned. Appearantly most of us are just saying,
"PhysX honey, we just aren't that into you"

+1 PhysX have potential, but there is nothing significant in the implementation so far that gives me any incentive to buy hardware for this.
 
After reading a lot of reviews around the net I'm simply not all that impressed by this card. I really was expecting more. In the time I spent reading I kept wondering if nvidia was the one to come to market with its next gen card first would it have been welcome to the same reception? Or is nvidia held to a higher standard for some reason? I can't help but feel people would have been bashing nvidia for such a medicore jump in performance after all the hype. Am I wrong? I doubt it sadly.
 
Are there just 19 pages benchmarks :)

Benchmarks can be so meaningless :) , i play Age of Conan and none of the other games. You guys stopped testing it with it :) .

And Age of Conan is still the "best" mmorpg graphics wise ;) yet hardocp is one of the few that ever used it as a benchmark.

Still wouldnt mind seeing [H] followup review on W7 and some other games :) .

+1

Please add this MMO back in.
 
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