Ati radeon hd 5870 - Ati News!

With these first Radeon HD 5800 cards, ATI puts a little pressure on nVIDIA, who has decided to take the stance to not bother launching their DX11 models so far. nVIDIA claims that the DirectX 11 APIs shouldn’t and perhaps will not be the only reason to buy a new card. ATI instead is betting on their new models to be the next big selling point for the company.

But why is it so important to compete in the graphic card market? The numbers in this case show the reasons why. According to AMD, the 2010 should bring an income of 3.4 billion dollars, which are basically divided by nVIDIA and AMD as the main graphic card manufacturers in the market.

With these series of articles, we will analyze the numbers obtained with a Sapphire ATI RAdeon HD5870, taking into consideration the DirectX 11 support, the ATI Eyefinity and ATI Stream technologies.

The first cards were announced on September 23rd, and some test models have been given away, although the actual cards will only be available in a few weeks. Those cards were the high-end, single CPU models indicated with the names of Radeon HD 5850 and Radeon HD 5870. The core chip on those cards is known as Cypress and the final solutions should be around $300 and $400.

Before the end of the year, the mainstream cards should be launched, based on the Juniper GPU (costing around $200), and also the top of the line dual GPU models based on the Hemlock design (with prices around $500). Closing the new line, on 2010, the low-end cards will be launched, with the Redwood and Cedar chipsets, thought for a market group that wants to spend less than $100 on a card.

Introduction - Part 1

The goal to offer effective solutions to the market was always a characteristic from ATI during the years. The company has always managed to make graphic cards that are up to date and offering innovative technologies, also taking into consideration the customer’s budget.

ATI has recently announced the arrival of their new generation of graphic cards, compatible with the Direct X 11 APIs that will be available with Windows 7 and with an update, also to Windows Vista. The ATI Radeon HD 5800, the name of the new family, add new interesting technologies that we will cover in this series of articles.

A few days ago, ATI started to present their new line of high-performance graphic cards from the Radeon HD 5800 family, compatible with the DirectX 11 APIs, more precisely, the Radeon HD 5870 and HD 5850 models, featuring a single-GPU architecture and based on the 40nm Cypress core, differing from each other only by the number of stream processors and clock frequencies on both GPU and memories.

The enthusiast level model that ATI will offer in the next few days was first known with the codename Hemlock and it’ll be commercialized with the Radeon HD 5870 X2 name. It’s a dual-GPU solution with a single PCB, feauring two Cypress cores that work in parallel (3200 stream processors in total). The cooling system uses the same model as the HD 5870 but looks a little longer, and with little changes to give the second core a better cooling. The card also needs a second 8-pin PCIe connector, together with a 6-pin one, in order to function.

The core frequencies, the launch date and price haven’t yet been announced.

ATI presented the new series of graphic cards with full support to the new DirectX 11 APIs coming with Windows 7. The models are the ATI Radeon HD 5800, and they will ready for any next-generation games based on DX11. The new series features two models: ATI Radeon HD 5870 and ATI Radeon HD 5850, each with 1GB GDDR5 RAM and frequencies of 4800Mhz and 4000Mhz respectively.

The two cards differ from each other on the number of integrated stream processors as well: 1600 for the 5870 and 1400 for the 5850. The clock frequency is also different: 850Mhz for the 5870 and 725Mhz for the 5850.

With the new models, ATI also launches the ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology, that allows the management, in standard configuration, of up to 3 displays at the same time. ATI has also developed a special version of the HD 5870 called Eyefinity 6, capable of managing up to 6 displays connected to the system through 6 mini Display Ports.

We’re back from our brief vacation, and time to talk about the latest news once more. After announcing the first DirectX 11 GPUs, ATI is completing the notebook versions of those GPUs to be commercialized in November, unless there are delays.

The first DX11 graphic chips will be the 40nm solutions to which ATI will have enough distribution units (there was a problem with the HD 4770, that had a higher request than models available). The first top-level chips, called Brodway, already have a few testing units produced, while the big manufacturing should start in November, and even though perhaps it will take a little longer to buy a notebook featuring the DirectX 11 graphics, it shouldn’t take too long.