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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Agentbolt - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
Informative and well-written. My main question was "how future-proof is it?" I got the Radeon 9700 for DirectX9, the 8800GTS for DirectX10, and it looks like I may very well be picking this up for DirectX11. It's nice there's usually one card you can pick up early that'll run games for years to come at acceptable levels.kumquatsrus - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
great article and great card btw. just wanted to point out that the gtx 285 also had 2x6 pins only required, i believe.Ryan Smith - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
That's correct. I'm not sure how "275" ended up in there.SiliconDoc - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
One wonders how the 8800GT ended up on the Temp/Heat comparison, until you READ the text, and it claims heat is "all over the place", then the very next line is "ALL the Ati's are up @~around 90C" .Yes, so temp is NOT alkl over the place, it's only VERY HIGH for ALL the ATI cards... and NVIDIA cards are not all very high...
-so it becomes CLEAR the 8800GT was included ONLY so the article could whine it was at 92C, since the 275 is @ 75C and the 260 is low the 285 is low, etc., NVidia WINS HANDS DOWN the temperature game...... buit the article just couldn't bring itself to be HONEST about that.
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What a shame. Deception, the name of the game.
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
The 8800GT, as was the 3870, was included to offer a snapshot of an older value product in our comparisons. The 8800GT in particular was a very popular card, and there are still a lot of people out there using them. Including such cards provides a frame of reference for performance for people using such cards.SiliconDoc - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
Gee I cannot imagine load temps for the 4980 and 4870x2 exist anywhere else on this site along with the 260,275, and 285... can you ?Oh, how about I look...
Finally - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
Nvidida-Trolls tend to turn green when feeling inferior.SiliconDoc - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
Turning green was something the 40nm 5870 was supposed to do wasn't it ?Instead it turned into another 3D HEAT MONSTER, like all the ati cards.
Take a look at the power charts, then look at that "wonderful tiny ATI die size that makes em so much money!" (as they lose a billion plus a year), and then calculate that power into that tiny core, NOT minusing failure for framerates hence "less data", since of course ati cards are "faster" right ?
So you've got more power in a smaller footprint core...
HENCE THE 90 DEGREE CELCIUS RUNNING RATES, AND BEYOND.
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Yeah, so sorry that it's easier for you to call names than think.
RubberJohnny - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
LOL...replying to your own post 3 times...gettin all worked up about temps...PUTTIN STUFF IN CAPS...Looks like this fan boy just can't accept that the 5890 is a great card. Not surprising really, these reviews always seem to bring the fanboys/trolls/whackos out of the woodwork.
Once again, good job AT!!!
JarredWalton - Thursday, September 24, 2009 - link
SiliconDoc, you should try thinking instead of trolling. Why would the maximum be around 90C? Because that's what the cards are designed to target under load. If they get hotter, the fan speeds would ramp up a bit more. There's no need to run fans at high rates to cool down hardware if the hardware functions properly.Reviewing based on max temperatures is a stupid idea when other factors come into play, which is why one page has power draws, temperatures, and noise levels. The GTX 295 has the same temperature not because it's "as hot" but because the fan kicked up to a faster speed to keep that level of heat.
The only thing you can really conclude is that slower GPUs generate less heat and thus don't need to increase fan speeds. The 275 gets hotter than the 285 as well by 10C, but since the 285 is 11.3 dB louder I wouldn't call it better by any stretch. It's just "different".