Hardware AMD ATI Radeon HD 5970 Review

It's big, fast, power hungry and hot like Scarlett Johansson in a sauna - what's not to like? The size? Yes, at nearly a foot long this dual-HD 5870 beast won't even fit in the front page image box! Read on to see how the new card performs (don't call it a HD 5870 X2 though, or you'll look like a n00b)

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2009/11/18/amd-ati-radeon-hd-5970-review/1

 

What, I think I've seen one 5850 in stock, at scan, but that only lasted a few days. Nowhere else has them in stock, and from what I've seen, they've not been in stock anywhere since release.

 

An interesting review which unfortunately bears no resemblance to other review sites.

Quite confusing!

 

"3/10"...value

Lol, says it all really......£530 to play console ports programmed for 2005 class hardware.....

MADNESS.....

 

On page 2, you state that the 5970 has 2880 stream processors, I thought it had 3200?
Don't tell me that Nvidia payed you guys off, but given the disappointing spec of their 'Tesla' Fermi card, maybe they will have too.
I'm glad that ATI has another generation of great products, it should ensure some healthy cut-throat pricing for us consumers, at least when TMSC get their act together.

PS - When will the folding@home client be coded to take advantage of R800 series GPU's TFLOP firepower?

 

Fixed, Thanks!

 

They've all been sold. Companies have large backlogs of pre-orders from what I can tell, or, they go into OEM or pre-built systems.

Yep it's 3200 we fixed it. /hits Clive for thinking of 5850

I don't know how you came to a "disappointing" Fermi (retail) spec considering there's nothing been officially said yet. I agree, competition = win. Above everything it's great for everyone.

Dunno about Folding either.

Read what other reviews say: most don't take value into account, only performance, so when you have the fastest card = award. We don't do that, the 5970 is evaluated on how much performance is offers for the money.

 

It's 3200 - for some reason it was changed in the edit process. It's been a long few days for a few of us to get this done at the same time as moving test systems to Windows 7. We wanted to add a few more games (which ran fine last week, but wouldn't this week) and had to drop them in the end.

 

Well im not impressed, from that it looks as if the gtx295 can hold its own against it in a 3rd of titles tested. Could that with the fact you can buy 2 for only £50 more than a single 5970 and your on to a winner... Its a shame the 5870 is so hard to find, 3 of those I think would probably be as quick as 2 of the 5970 cards and cost around £200 less.

Andy

 

You barely need more than one 5870 card at the moment, frankly. It's the card I would buy if I was looking for a new graphics card right now (and could buy it of course).

 

We heap praise on the card where praise is due (i.e. STALKER) but it simply doesn't make things better in a lot of other popular titles on a single screen, despite running at resolutions up to 2,560 x 1,600. Triple screen will likely make a difference, but I'd be interested in straw-polling how many of you would run such a set up.

 

The 5870 is a joke, next gen folding PU .. be it drivers or just a bad design they really cant say they have anything to show for the double amount of transistors; im suprised, why on earth is everyone happy to except 4/5 FPS from a NEXT GEN card?

 

I know my gtx 295 isn't on top anymore. but it's availability makes it the better card, and I'm very happy that I got it when I did.

 

I was going on the released spec for the Tesla version of the GT300, and specifically its double precision numbers, which were supposed to be its forte.

HTTP://vr-zone.com/articles/fermi-in-trouble-/8054.html?doc=8054.

I think the BT article was spot-on, a very powerful card, that needs some further driver development. Given that the 5970 basically relies on Crossfire, driver support is crucial. I'm a little surprised that a £500 GPU only ships with 2 GB of memory, was that down to high memory prices, or the problem of the high number of 32 bit OS users?

 

Disapointeeeed. So when will it be time to upgrade my rig then? intel q6600, abit ip35pro, 2x2GB kingston ram, Radeon HD4870 512...

 

In the USA this card is $600 - in the UK it's £520. That'd be why.

 

Trust Bit-Tech to publish a good review! All the other sites were OMG ITS SO FAST BLA BLA BLA, but when it comes down to it, you can't really justify the price tag at all. Especially considering that above 60FPS doesn't matter and a 5870 hits that for most titles except at 2560 resolutions.

 

Yeah, the DP numbers on the C2070 were a little lower than we were hoping for, but I'm going to wait for a GeForce card before making any decision. However, if you want to buy now, there's only one GPU vendor I'd buy a graphics card from at the moment, and it isn't Nvidia.

 

Meh, no point in changing from my Overclocked GTX260-216 SLI Setup.

Roll on Fermi I think, that should at least give us something to compare this to.

 

I was expecting to see a better minimum framerate results. Any idea why its minimum rates aren't much faster than the GTX295 despite having considerably higher max framerates?

It's academic though, there's no way I'll be spending anything near £500 on a single piece of hardware!