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AMD ATI Radeon HD 5970 Review

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Cerberus90 18th November 2009, 12:25 Quote
Quote:

In comparison, the Radeons HD 5870 and HD 5850 launched with tens of thousands of cards in the channel, and were stocked everywhere.

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.
DeadMan 18th November 2009, 12:30 Quote
An interesting review which unfortunately bears no resemblance to other review sites.

Quite confusing!
Hustler 18th November 2009, 12:31 Quote
"3/10"...value

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

MADNESS.....
Turbotab 18th November 2009, 12:38 Quote
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:p, 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?
alpaca 18th November 2009, 12:38 Quote
Fixed, Thanks!
Bindibadgi 18th November 2009, 12:39 Quote
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cerberus90
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.

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.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Turbotab
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:p, 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?

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.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DeadMan
An interesting review which unfortunately bears no resemblance to other review sites.

Quite confusing!

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.
Tim S 18th November 2009, 12:45 Quote
Quote:
Originally Posted by Turbotab
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:p, 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?

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.
andrew8200m 18th November 2009, 12:47 Quote
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
Tim S 18th November 2009, 12:50 Quote
Quote:
Originally Posted by andrew8200m
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).
Tim S 18th November 2009, 12:51 Quote
Quote:
Originally Posted by DeadMan
An interesting review which unfortunately bears no resemblance to other review sites.

Quite confusing!

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.
p3n 18th November 2009, 12:53 Quote
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?
Vakuum 18th November 2009, 12:54 Quote
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. :)
Turbotab 18th November 2009, 13:05 Quote
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bindibadgi

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

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?
stoff3r 18th November 2009, 13:07 Quote
Disapointeeeed. So when will it be time to upgrade my rig then? intel q6600, abit ip35pro, 2x2GB kingston ram, Radeon HD4870 512...
Baz 18th November 2009, 13:08 Quote
Quote:
Originally Posted by DeadMan
An interesting review which unfortunately bears no resemblance to other review sites.

Quite confusing!

In the USA this card is $600 - in the UK it's £520. That'd be why.
Autti 18th November 2009, 13:11 Quote
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.
Tim S 18th November 2009, 13:12 Quote
Quote:
Originally Posted by Turbotab
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bindibadgi

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

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.
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.
xaser04 18th November 2009, 13:26 Quote
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.
Yadda 18th November 2009, 13:27 Quote
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!
gavomatic57 18th November 2009, 13:28 Quote
Lets not forget, DX11 performance is still an unknown - no DX11 games, so unless you need a card now, it might be more sensible to wait. Personally, I can already play all of the games I have at maximum settings with a £160 card.
Toka 18th November 2009, 13:33 Quote
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tim S
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 find it of course).

Fixed

(srysly - hurry up and get mine in the post!!!)
RotoSequence 18th November 2009, 13:34 Quote
Quote:
Originally Posted by xaser04
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.

If Charlie Damarajin's information about Fermi is accurate, it's not going to be anything to write home about. While he's, at best, an... infamous... source of information, his reporting on Nvidia's production issues have been spot on, and those statements arrived months before anyone else said it. At least in this case, he has some shred of credibility.

According to semiaccurate, Nvidia missed their clock targets by 18%. Ouch.
cheeriokilla 18th November 2009, 13:36 Quote
this reminds me of when the 280 and 260 came out costing A LOT and then suddenly ATI came out with cheaper better cards and forced nvidia to lower prices. I hope nvidia releases their cards soon and forces a price drop on the ATI cards...

Won't buy DX11 cards til the full pack of cards comes out. Come on nVidia hurry up already
xaser04 18th November 2009, 13:47 Quote
Quote:
Originally Posted by RotoSequence
Quote:
Originally Posted by xaser04
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.

If Charlie Damarajin's information about Fermi is accurate, it's not going to be anything to write home about. While he's, at best, an... infamous... source of information, his reporting on Nvidia's production issues have been spot on, and those statements arrived months before anyone else said it. At least in this case, he has some shred of credibility.

According to semiaccurate, Nvidia missed their clock targets by 18%. Ouch.


To be honest, with the amount of miss-information and rumours that surround the Graphics card market I am going to wait until we see firm specs / previews from the big hitting sites before making any firm decisions on whether Fermi is any good or not. Hopefully it will turn out to be pretty good.
Turbotab 18th November 2009, 13:48 Quote
Quote:
Originally Posted by RotoSequence
If Charlie Damarajin's information about Fermi is accurate, it's not going to be anything to write home about. While he's, at best, an... infamous... source of information, his reporting on Nvidia's production issues have been spot on, and those statements arrived months before anyone else said it. At least in this case, he has some shred of credibility.

According to semiaccurate, Nvidia missed their clock targets by 18%. Ouch.

But remember, Fermi has the advantage of a single GPU config, so is not reliant on multi-GPU drivers. The GTX 295 also was significantly weaker in TFLOP performance than the 4870 X2, but still beat it in FPS. Different architectures, and dare I say it Nvidia's better driver support, mean this battle has a long way to go. Now if that Lucid Hydra thingymabob(*), were adopted by ATI in place of Crossfire, that could be a tasty slice of silicon.

(*) - If it works
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