Ati radeon hd 5870 - Ati News!

Prey

Prey is a game that uses the same engine as DOOM. Here there were also two resolutions used, 1280×1024 and 1600×1200, without filters and with AA4x and AF16x, using the HocBench script.

- 1600×1200 (with filters) - 66
- 1600×1200 (without filters) - 100
- 1280×1024 (with filters) - 80
- 1280×1024 (without filters) - 110

Company of Heroes

This strategic game features many detailed scenes, which can be rather demanding on the hardware. The internal benchmark was used in two resolutions: 1280×1024 and 1600×1200 without filters and with AA4x/AF16.

- 1600×1200 (with filters) - 92
- 1600×1200 (without filters) - 101
- 1280×1024 (with filters) - 130
- 1280×1024 (without filters) - 130

X3 Reunion

The internal X3 Reuninon bench features a demo that gives the possibility of testing the card’s performance. The tests were done at two resolutions: 1280×1024 and 1600×1200 without filtes and AA4x / AF16x.

- 1600×1200 (with filters) - 62.55
- 1600×1200 (without filters) - 91.88
- 1280×1024 (with filters) - 75.27
- 1280×1024 (without filters) - 96.81

Splinter cell Chaos Theory

Splinter Cell Chaos Theory is a game produced by Ubisoft. The HocBench script was used in two resolutions, 1280×1024 and 1600×1200 without filters and with AA4x / AF16x. A further test was done enabling the HDR and the filtes.

- 1600×1200 (with filters) - 77.1
- 1600×1200 (without filters) - 126.6
- 1280×1024 (with filters) - 92.2
- 1280×1024 (without filters) - 159

HDR + Filters

- 1600×1200  - 91
- 1280×1024  - 115.5

In-game Tests

Half-Life 2 -  Lost Coast

Half Life 2 was produced by Valve and gives the possibility of enabling the HDR filters as well. The benchmark was used at two resolutions: 1600×1200 and 1280×1024, without filters and with AA4x and AF16x. A further test was done with HDR and active filters.

- 1600×1200 (with filters) - 98
- 1600×1200 (without filters) - 143
- 1280×1024 (with filters) - 115
- 1280×1024 (without filters) - 148

HDR + Filters

- 1600×1200 - 110.2
- 1280×1024 - 123.5

3DMark 06

Pixel Shader

- 1600×1200 - 247
- 1280×1024 - 345

Vertex Shader

- Complex - 191
- Simple - 286

Fillrate

- Multitexturing - 11807
- SingleTexturing - 7886

With different CPUs offering different hardware performances, the change in the card’s performances isn’t that huge, since the card’s architecture was made in order to take as much load off the CPU as possible, thus reducing the loss in performance due to the so-called “CPU limit”.

3Dmark 06

The 3DMark 06 test was done with the same settings as the 05. It can be seen how the situation is different on the more demanding tests of the 3DMark 06 software.

- 1600×1200 (with filters) - 6166
- 1600×1200 (without filters) - 8976
- 1280×1024 (with filters) - 7210
- 1280×1024 (without filters) - 9919

The next texts will be the internal 3DMark06 benchmarks such as Pixel Shader, Vertex Shader and Fillrate.

3DMark 05

The 3DMark 05 test was done first without filters and in 2 resolutions in order to see the range on the card. On a second test, the AA4x and AF8x filters were enabled to check the loss in performance on the GPU.

- 1600×1200 (with filters) - 10479
- 1600×1200 (without filters) - 14095
- 1280×1024 (with filters) - 12043
- 1280×1024 (without filters) - 14871

As it can be seen from the test, the card scores rather high points, only suffering slightly when the filters are enabled.

The Crossfire connectors are placed on the same position as the SLI connectors on the nVIDIA cards. For the first time, ATI has placed a Crossfire connector internally, making it so that for a crossfire connection, a master card isn’t needed, just two identical cards.

The package also includes a DVI-HDMI connector for the first time, which allows users to connect their FullHD TV to the card, in order to take advantage of the FUllHD potential and the 5.1 sound that will be completely managed by the graphic card. In bundle, there’s also the crossfire connector which was seen for thef irst time on the Radeon X1950 Pro.

As for the power, AMD has adopted a system with two connectors, the first a 6pin and the second an 8-pin PCI express connector. The presence of an 8-pin connector indicates that the card requires a higher watt settings than the 8800GTX. In any case, the card will work using 2 6-pin connectors, but on the driver panel, it’ll become impossible to overclock through the official drivers.

It’s possible to overclock the card, even using only 2 6-pin connectors, through third-party software, but if the user wants the best overclocking possible, it’ll be a requirement to have the 8-pin connector, which can be found on more recent power supply models.

Card Layout

Following the ATI standards, the Saphire 2900XT presents itself with a red-colored PCB, rather long but not too exagerated, measuring 24.5cm, compared to the 27cm from nVIDIA’s 8800GTX/Ultra.

The cooling system is rather big and follows roughly the same shape found on the different Geforce 8800 models, with a rather large fan that pushes the air to a copper heatsink featuring 4 heatpipes that are directly connected to the single graphic core. As for the noise models, AMD could have done a better job, especially when compared to the GeForce 8800 that, even though featuring a similar cooling system, has much better noise levels.

Render Back-Ends

The Render back-ends are the the parts on the core that apply the filters to the scenes. As we know, filters such as AntiAliasing are post-processing filters used to reduce the pixelation on the borders of objects, trying to make them as similar to the real thing as possible. With the R600, the shader resources were used to apply the filters and generate the final pixels that create a 3D scene, allowing to have not only the classic filters but also personalized filters according to each pixel sample.

This technique results in an enhanced filtering, not only for the traditional filters, but also for personalized filters for each pixel. This method is only limited by the hardware, hence a better hardware setup will result in a better filtering.