Ati radeon hd 5870 - Ati News!

Once the heatsink is removed, we can see the GPU. On the front part of the PCB, there are only 4 memory modules, which is a choice that will be justified later on by the working temperatures of this card. The heatsink is developed in the classic Sapphire style for the latest cards: four small rubber circles go directly in contact with the card’s PCB, to avoid vibration problems.

The part directly in contact with the chip is made in copper, in order to guarantee a better thermal conduction. Instead of having the heatsink pushing the hot air out of the card, the fan sends air to the radiator that remains inside the chassis.

The card

Sapphire was the first manufacturer that released a Radeon HD 5750 card, it’s a solution that doesn’t differ too much from the reference design proposed by ATI. The layout is extremely polished and essential, as it should be for a video card on this price range; the rather large heatsink only cools the GPU, and not the memory modules.

The card is 18.2 cm long and it can also be placed on Mini-ITX or small case PCs. One of the aspects that come to evidence on the Sapphire proposal is the high connectivity that it can offer. Other than the usual DVI outputs, there’s also an HDMI and a DisplayPort. Also, as usual for the HD 5000 family, the HD 5750 supports the Eyefinity technology.

The Radeon HD 5750 is nothing but a slightly redimensioned version of the HD 5770, with less stream processors (80, more precisely), and lower frequencies: 700 Mhz for the GPU and 4600 MHz for the memories. It’s very hard not to compare this model to the HD 4770, starting from the fabrication process, the 128-bit memory bus and the frequencies.

It’s easy to expect, in that way, a similar behavior on the test, perhaps with slightly higher framerates, except for the cases in which the different amount of memory (512MB for the HD 4770 and 1GB for the HD 5750) can really make a difference.

Introduction

The Radeon HD 5750 is one of the four models developed on the new ATI architectured known as Evergreen; after the HD 5870, HD 5850 and HD 5770, now it’s time for the mainstream model, the HD 5750. ATI confirms its own strategy by offering solutions that are capable of good performances, but also reaching market ranges that would give the company a good sales margin: the good direction taken with the HD 4800 was still kept for the new models.

As the title may suggest, we’ll be reviewing the Radeon HD 5750 in the next few articles. The card is designed for the medium-low market range and it’s the most accessible offer on the Evergreen family, thus, compatible with the DirectX 11 APIs.

Conclusion - Final

At this point, we have to wait for nVIDIA’s counteraction against this card. We’re sure that it’ll come sometime soon, although so far its nature is still unknown. nVIDIA will have to pay a lot of attention in managing to build a good solution, since ATI manages to supply everything that has been seen in this review for less than $400. For nVIDIA, the CUDA and PhysX are two advantages but that do not make enough difference to compete with the new Radeon HD 5800 series.

The card proposed by Sapphire also presents a large connection output with two DVI connectors that can be converted to VGA with the DVI-VGA adaptor, an HDMI and DisplayPort connector. Sapphire also offers a couple of games: Battlestations Pacific and D.I.R.T 2 (this one can be downloaded in its complete version).

Conclusion - part 2

The features that make this card unique and that will set the basis for the next solutions on this same architecture are the DirectX 11 API support, that will be used in future Windows 7/Vista compatible games; the advanced multi-monitor support present in the ATI Eyefinity brand and the noticeable power of the OpenCL and Compute Shader technologies, that will finally bring a benefit to every sector, both the 3D Graphics and acceleration of other applications.

Also present are the video acceleration features. The Radeon HD 5870 integrates the UVD 2 engine that accelerates high-definition video influx in a hardware level, and a 7.1 channel audio controller that guarantees the maximum compatibility with the HDCP contents specifications.

Conclusion - Part 1

The latest evolution on the RV770 architecture is really exceptional for its performances, the features and energy consumptions. The only thing that remains on the “normal” side is the cooling system, which could be the target of many of ATI’s partner manufacturers.

The Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 was capable of outshining the competition and keeping itself at the same levels of a Radeon HD 4870 x2, sometimes even performing better. The only nVIDIA card to come close could be the GTX 295, but its price is still too high, even more so when compared with the new ATI solutions.

Noise

The cooling system used on the new Radeon HD 5870 doesn’t present noise values that are too far from those featured on the previous generation of graphic cards from ATI. With the heatsink to the minimum values (20%), the values are almost identical to those of the Radeon HD 4890, and slightly inferior to a 4870 or a GeForce GTX 285.

Raising the power of the fan, the noise tends to raise accordingly, becoming more noisy than the other solutions. The good part is that even during the most stressful tests, the fan never needed to go beyond 20%.

Energy Consumption

The overall energy consumption on the system for the Sapphire HD 5870 was of 143 Watts in Idle and 248 in full load, while executing 3DMark 06’s Vertex Shader Complex test. The Idle values are really interesting, and in overall, considering the performances the card gives, even the full load values are rather good.

Overclock

While overclocking the card, the maximum values obtained were 900 Mhz for the GPU and 1250 (5GHz) for the memories, starting from the 850 Mhz and 1200 MHz respectively.

The Last Remnant

This RPG developed by Square Enix allows us to value the card performances with a popular engine that is used in many titles: the Unreal Engine.

Normal Settings (values are expressed in FPS)

- 1600 x 1200 - 146.9
- 1920 x 1440 - 113.9
- 2048 x 1536 - 103.8

AA 4x - AF 16x

- 1600 x 1200 - 139.8
- 1920 x 1440 - 106.7
- 2048 x 1536 - 96.6