AMD's Radeon HD 5870: Bringing About the Next Generation Of GPUs
by Ryan Smith on September 23, 2009 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The First DirectX 11 Games
With any launch of a new DirectX generation of hardware, software availability becomes a concern. As the hardware needs to come before the software so that developers can tailor their games’ performance, it’s just not possible to immediately launch with games ready to go. For the launch of DirectX 11 and the 5800 series, AMD gave us a list of what games to expect and when.
First out of the gate is Battleforge, EA’s card-based online-only RTS. We had initially been told that it would miss the 5870 launch, but in fact EA and AMD managed to get it in under the wire and deliver it a day early. This gives AMD the legitimate claim of having a DX11 title out there that only their new hardware can fully exploit, and from a press perspective it’s nice to have something out there we can test besides tech demos. Unfortunately we wrapped up our testing 2 days early in order to attend IDF, which means we have not yet had a chance to benchmark this title’s DX11 mode or look at it in-depth.
We did have a chance to see the title in action quickly at AMD’s press event 2 weeks ago, where AMD was using it to show off High Definition Ambient Occlusion. As far as we can tell, HDAO is the only DX11 wonder-feature that it current implements, which makes sense given that it should be the easiest to patch in.
The next big title in AMD’s stack of DX11 games is STALKER: Call of Pripyat. This game went gold in Russia earlier this week, with the English version some time behind it. Unfortunately we don’t know what DX11 features it will be using, but as STALKER games have historically been hard on computers, it should prove to be an interesting test case for DX11 performance.
DIRT 2 is a title that got a great deal of promotion at AMD’s press event. AMD has been using it to show off their 6-way Eyefinity configuration, and we had a chance to play it quickly in their testing labs when looking at Eyefinity. This should be a fuller-featured DX11 game, utilizing tessellation, better shadow filtering, and other DX11 features. Certainly it’s the closest thing AMD’s going to have for a showcase title this year for the DX11 features of their hardware, and the console version has been scoring well in reviews. The PC version is due December 11th.
Finally, AMD had Rebellion Games in house to show off an early version of Aliens vs. Predator. This was certainly the most impressive title shown, with Rebellion showing off tessellation and HDAO in real time. Unfortunately screenshots don’t really do the game justice here; the difference from using DX11 is far more noticeable in motion. At any rate, this game is the farthest out – it won’t ship until Q1 of next year at the earliest.
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Ryan Smith - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
We do have Cyberlink's software, but as it uses different code paths, the results are near-useless for a hardware review. Any differences could be the result of hardware differences, or it could be that one of the code paths is better optimized. We would never be able to tell.Our focus will always be on benchmarking the same software on all hardware products. This is why we bent over backwards to get something that can use DirectCompute, as it's a standard API that removes code paths/optimizations from the equation (in this case we didn't do much better since it was a NVIDIA tech demo, but it's still an improvement).
DukeN - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
I have one of these and I know it outperforms the GTX 280 but not sure what it'd be like against one of these puppies.dagamer34 - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
I need my bitstream Dolby Digital TrueHD/DTS HD Master Audio bistreaming codecs!!! :)ew915 - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
I don't see this beating the GT300 as for so it should beat the GTX295 by a great margin.tamalero - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
dood, you forgot the 295 is a DUAL CHIP?SiliconDoc - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
roflmao - Gee no more screaming the 4850x2 and the 4870x2 are best without pointing out the two gpu's needed to get there.--
Nonetheless, this 5870 is EPIC FAIL, no matter what - as we see the disappointing numbers - we all see them, and it's not good.
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Problem is, Nvidia has the MIMD multiple instructions breakthrough technology never used before that according to reports is an AWESOME advantage, lus they are moving to DDR5 with a 512 bit bus !
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So what is in the works is an absolute WHOMPING coming down on ati that BIG GREEN NVIDIA is going to deliver, and the poor numbers here from what was hoped for and hyped over (although even PREDICTED by the red fan Derek himself in one portion of one sorrowful and despressed sentence on this site) are just one step closer to that nail in the coffin...
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Yes I sure hope ati has something major up it's sleeve, like 512 bit mem bus increased card coming, the 5870Xmem ...
I find the speculation that ATI "mispredicted" the bandwidth needs to be utter non-sense. They are 2-3 billion in the hole from the last few years with "all these great cards" they still lose $ on every single sale, so they either cannot go higher bit width, or they don't want to, or they are hiding it for the next "strike at NVidia" release.
erple2 - Friday, September 25, 2009 - link
So you're comparing this product with a not yet release product and saying that the not yet released product is going to trounce it, without any facts to back it up? Do you have the hardware? If not, then you're simply ranting.Will the GT300 beat out the 5870? I dunno, probably. If it didn't, that would imply that the move from GT200 to GT300 was a major disappointment for NVidia.
I think that EPIC FAIL is completely ludicrous. I can see "epic fail" applied to the Geforce FX series when it came out. I can also see "epic fail" for the Radeon MAXX back in the day. But I don't see the 5870 as "epic fail". If you look at the card relative to the 4870 (the card it replaces), it's quite good - solid 30% increase. That's what I would expect from a generation improvement (that's what the gt200's did over the 9800's, and what the 8800 did over the 7900, etc).
BTW, I'm seeing the 5870 as pretty good - it beats out all single card NVidia by a reasonable and measureable amount. Sounds like ATI has done well. Or are you considering anything less than 2x the performance of the NVidia cards "epic fail"? In that case, you may be disappointed with the GT300, as well. In fact, I'll say that the GT300 is a total fail right now. I mean jeez! It scores ZERO FPS in every benchmark! That's super-epic fail. And I have the numbers to back that statement up.
Since you are making claims about the epic fail nature of the 5870 based on yet to be released hardware, I can certainly play the same game, and epic fail anything you say based on those speculative musings.
SiliconDoc - Monday, September 28, 2009 - link
Well the GT200 was 60.96% increase average. AT says so.http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3334...">http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3334...
So, I guess ati lost this round terribly, as NVidia's last just beat them by more than double your 30%.
Great, EPIC FAIL is correct, I was right, and well...
Finally - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
Team Green foames out of their mouthes. It's funny to watch.SiliconDoc - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
Glad you are having fun.Just let me know when you disagree, and why. I'm certain your fun will be "gone then", since reality will finally take hold, and instead of you seeing foam, I'll be seeing drool.