Hardware AMD ATI Radeon HD 5970 Review

Newegg has them now at $625USD.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...970&x=0&y=0&cm_mmc=SNC-Twitter-_-na-_-na-_-na

 

$599 for the Diamond/Gigabyte version.

I'm wonder how they're able to release these if they have almost no HD5850 and HD5870 stock.

 

reminds me of when the 4870x2 just came out. there were so many stream processors that werent used that it hurt the performance. why couldnt the 5870 perform like this?

 

Some comments from a non-gamer.

The B-T bashing is to be expected.

I read all the B-T reviews whether I need the product or not. Maybe one of my clients will ask for one. SO! In the last 6 yrs. I've been here, B-T is the closest reviews one will find to real world experience with systems in use by the users. Sure you could get optimized numbers by building a dedicated rig tuned for each review. That's not real world testing. Most customers want to buy a product for upgrade and use it in an established rig to boost performance. Show us what it will add for to what we already have. Not always the most current drivers. Not the most powerful PSU. Real world systems. Value for money spent.

I tested products for part 15 and part 68 compliance. Nearly perfect systems optimized for each product. Won't happen in he real world of normal or even dedicated users.

If it falls down, B-T will mark it down. If it excels, B-T will rate it up.

john

 

But john, we're talking a $600 GPU here. How 'real-world' is that anyway, and then wouldn't anyone spending $600+ on a GPU be running at least on overclocked i7 920, if not something higher?

 

The GPU takes care of all the memory accesses with its driver or onboard hardware.
Try a 4Gb Tesla card in WinXP. It will still have 4Gb or Video Ram...its not OS dependant.

 

And you are confusing system RAM, and Video RAM.
I am talking about over 4Gb of video RAM, not System RAM.

 

So when it comes to value you give this card a 3 out of 10 but give the GTX 295 a 6 out of 10?
and performance the GTX295 gets a 10 out of 10 and this card a 7?
hmm curious but I wonder if someone in favor of nvidia over ati just a bit maybe? it just doesnt added up when you compare the two reviews as its clear that in this case the ATI card performs better and isnt that far away in terms of price and yet it gets a much lower score to that of the gtx295 when not only is it close or better in performance and price but more efficient in power usage as well then the 295 and just as feature packed as the 295.

Also were you guys using the latest Cat drivers 9.11? I dont see the driver version used mentioned in the review.

 

Scores reflect performance and pricing at time of launch. Simple as that. The HD 5970 is released 11 months after the 295, but actually costs over £100 more than the 295 did at release and, while it provides jumps in performance in some games, is not a cosmic leap ahead of the 295 in others (Crysis, CoD) and still suffers from CrossFire issues. Hence the three - all of this is explained in the review should you choose to read it.

I'm getting tired of fielding questions disputing our fairness, or our testing methods. We test fairly, we test differently to other sites so amazingly we get different results. We are not biased or prejudiced against any particular manufacturer. We slammed the 9800GTX+. We loved the HD 5850. Just because our review doesn't mesh with what you think doesn't mean we're wrong and you're right.

 

Welcome to the wonderful world of multi-gpu solutions!

We used the release driver - same as everyone else. For the other cards on test we used the most upto date drivers available (191.07 for Nvidia, Catalyst 9.10s for the ATI cards), which are listed on the testing page in the review.

 

I understand that cards like these are not intended for mass consumption - they are a showcase for the manufacturer's skills - £500+ for a flipping graphics card is insanity.

 

Is DX11 really going to make a difference? The growth of console gaming pretty much killed the development of DX10 games. Prior to the launch of Vista, it seemed that every game was going to be DX10 compatible. Now it seems as if developers aren't bothered. The biggest selling game of all time (MW2) is DX9; developers see the success of this game and see no reason to develop for DX10. What chance does DX11 have, unless it provides a notable step up in graphics?

 

I kind of think the people who would slap down the cash for this card would tend to have machines with a high OC.

I also tend to think while this card is just to expensive I can't deny your own numbers seem rather low, the simple fact is that it isn't just the odd one or two reviews that are totally different from yours but about the 5 I've read so far.

 

You're including the PCI bracket, which isn't relevant when you're installing it into a case.

 

No I'm not, Tim. I am including the faux venting on the front, though.

 

This great card really does nothing for the PC market, which is a shame because theres some really good tech in there. Sadly producing cards costing so much these days is exactly what will bring about the demise of PC Gaming. There is quite simply no justification whatsoever to pay more than £150 for a graphics card when all you'll be doing is playing xbox360 ports on a PC. Its an endictment on the sad state of pc gaming today IMHO.

 

This argument is precisely why AMD has taken the market approach that it has. It's HD 5870/5850 cards, though still more than £150, are aimed at a more sensible price point and are being churned out in greater numbers. This card on the other hand is just addressing the small top end of the market. It's not meant to be for every PC gamer but for AMD simply to forgo the ultra high-end would affect its success due to what's known as the halo effect - many people think that just because one company has the fastest product, all it's other products must be the best as well. Of course anyone reading bit-tech should know that this is entirely the wrong way to approach your buying decision but a company can't simply ignore this phenomena.

 

You're not thinking about at the time of writing. It's the same reason why we don't re-score anything further down the line if the price drops or a new driver launches.

They were launched at 3pm the day before. It was physically impossible to use them, despite the fact we only had the card for two days anyway. If ATI had got us them before public release, then of course we would have used them.

 

I do not even want those ultra high end dual GPU cards. Tell me how much gain in price/performance/value/etc. have in all the games you played against a mainstream card. I have played Crysis almost two years ago on my then new 8800GT. Do I want to play it again, hell no. Do I need such a high end card to play my online games like L4D. Nope. 8800GT doing fine on 1680 res.

I do notice however that with recent released games that my system is getting old (still on a 4800+ s939 socket). However the new games are playable. I rather see a review with the new 'mainstream' graphics cards on 'older' hardware configurations and see how the performance is holding up. Because most people buying a new card for their excising systems. How do these new cards perform on lets say a two year old system? If you want realistic real world benchmarking then that would be it.

 

It's a nice idea, but older hardware won't happen sorry. We keep our gaming rigs consistent and reimage the whole drive every single time we change a graphics cards. It takes a very long time to install all the games and setup the system otherwise.

Simply put, the new cards would be far easier bottlenecked by CPU and PCI-Express 1.0 versus 2.0 too.