Ati radeon hd 5870 - Ati News!

Test configuration

Considering the performances on the ATI Radeon HD 5570 and its initial “base” cost, the tests were done only at these resolutions: 1280 x 1024, 1680 x 1050 and 1920 x 1200 pixels.

In order to analyse the performances, an Intel Core i7 965 Extreme-based platform was used, with clock frequencies of 3.2 GHz and Turbo Mode enabled. The system also features 6 GB of RAM, with the frequencies of 1.600 Mhz, Driver ATI Catalyst 10.1 and Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit.

The connection area has a DVI-D, HDMI and VGA connections. This model in the review doesn’t feature a DisplayPort connection, and hence doesn’t support three monitors simultaneously with the Eyefinity solution.

The cooling system, including the heatsink and fan, only occupies one slot, which makes it easier to connect a second card if needed, as well. The heatsink is attached to the card with four screws on the front panel, and removing it, it gives direct access to the GPU. The heatsink solution also takes care of cooling the memories, even though it’s not directly in contact with them.

The card

This model has a low-profile layout: the possibility of eliminating part of the PCB allows the manufacturer to reduce the ifnal costs, and hence offer the card with an even smaller price to the consumer.

In order to dissipate the heat produced by 400 stream processors that are featured on this GPU, ATI had to choose an active cooling system, with a small fan on the upper part. The rest of the layout seems rather simple and without any particular solution or elements to be noticed.

The RV830 is hence “half” of the Juniper GPU, the one implemented on the HD 5750 and HD 5770. The number of transistors goes in fact from 1.04 billion to 627 million: in this way, the company has reduced the die size that is currently smaller than the RV730.

Even with the smaller size, the same features that came with the first HD 5000 series cards are present: UVD2 still handles the video decoding for high-definition content, and the Eyefinity controller manages the multi-screen mode, guaranteeing support up to 3 monitors simultaneously.

Introduction

The ATI Radeon HD 5570 uses the same GPU seen on the HD 5670, the RV830. The difference is basically on the frequencies, lower in the HD 5570, and the type of memory used, the other features are the same. Same number of stream processors and ROPs and TMUs.

The codename for the RV830 GPU is Redwood, and it’s featured on both the HD5570 and the HD 5670. These two models are, as it might seem logical, a less powerful version of the high-level cards. In fact, when compared to the HD 5770, we can notice that the RV830 has half the stream processors, ROPs and Texture Units.

Far Cry 2 - High Quality / AA 4x / DX10

Values Expressed in FPS

- 2560 x 1600 - 51
- 1920 x 1200 - 75

Far Cry 2 - Ultra Quality / DX10

- 2560 x 1600 - 64
- 1920 x 1200 - 83

Tests

In order to properly analyze the card, an Intel Core i7 965 Extreme platform was used, with the clock frequency at 3.2 Ghz and Turbo Mode enabled. The clock frequency then goes to 3.33 GHz in the moment the processor is used in full load, as the Turbo Mode technology activates a frequency multiplier when 2 or more cores are used simultaneously, plus 6GB of RAM, with the clock frequency at 1.600 Mhz.

The games tested were Far Cry 2, Tom Clancy’s HAWX and Crysis Warhead, and we’ll go into detail in the next few articles.

Temperature and noise

The temperature tests were done in two stages: with the fan at 100% and in automatic. In both cases, the temperature didn’t go beyond 60°C, but while on the 100% settings, the fan has reached 3200 rpm, on the standard mode it didn’t go beyond 1200 rpm, which means clear benefits on the noise level the card produces. The Sapphire proposal has also resulted to be more silent than a standard HD 5870 card: the possibility of a more efficient cooling system also means in less noise produced by the card when in use.

The confrontation with the reference board, with the standard cooling system, shows how evident the advantage of the Vapor-x technology is when it comes to thermal dissipation: when working in equal situations, with the fan balanced to work according to the GPU load, the maximum temperature difference is of more than 10°C.

Crysis Warhead, being one of the most demanding games on the market, was used in order to test the increase in performance with the overclocking. The results were taken in each step in which the overclocking was stabled: increasing the core tension as well, it was possible to increase the frequency to 950 Mhz while the memories were brought up to 5100Mhz.

The increase in performance, in this case, is noticeable and very possible. In order to reach 1GHz for the core, it was necessary to raise the vcore tension to 1.2V, but the memories do not work in a stable way when brought beyond 5.100 Mhz. Beyond those levels, the card isn’t stable, despite any tension/frequency combinations.

The overclocking level is very good, considering the card is already overclocked by Sapphire, even by keeping the normal tension levels, the card can reach 950Mhz without many problems. It’s an interesting value that gives a good performance increase. Increasing the tension to bring the memories to 1GHz sounds a little useless, as the performance increase is minimal in that case.

Overclocking

The presence of a heatsink that has the vapor chamber teechnology should eliminate, at least partially, the problems with the excess of heat when overclocking. In order to properly take care of that problem, the fan speed was manually set at 100% during the overclocking tests.

It’s not possible to alter the clock frequencies from third-party software, as usually happens with new models, it’s necessary to wait more recent software releases for full support. However, AMD GPU Clock Tool does work, and that’s what we used to change the frequencies for the test.