ATI Radeon HD 5870 Review

Windows 7 is pretty cheap too if you're a student. I've ordered my copy of Windows 7 Professional for $30! Now that's awesome pricing!

EDIT: I'm not eligible (non-US student), so it's a no-go.

Nvidia, ati ..blah blah blah. who cares what company makes it.stop comparing companies and start comparing gpu.

Hmmm Rage. My college is closed for the holidays so I can't find out from the Admin as to whether I'll be able to get it through them. But I have a feeling (a very strong one) that I won't be eligible either.

So now it's a question of waiting for Windows 7 prices to fall (if at all).

i read one time in a magazine a thing that nvidia is cheating about crysis. if u use ati graphic card change the name crysis.exe into game.exe and ull get 20 more fps

Keep waiting no more you missed it mate

http://www.techspot.com/review/206-his-radeon-hd-5850/

Wow, this looks like one heck of a card. I wonder what kinda performance the HD 5770 is gonna bring to the table...

You can see that here...

http://www.techspot.com/review/209-ati-radeon-hd-5770/

What a loser, gtx 295 is X2 based, which means there is 2 GPU, HD 5870 is only single GPU, go test out HD 5870X2 with GTX 295, it beat the **** out Nvidia's.

Interesting opinion, you do realize that Nvidia is still yet to release their next gen products right? The GeForce GTX 295 is still a beast!

Get a 5870 and keep your old nvidia like I did for PhysX. Always been green, jumped to red now for the first time and never looking back!

The one thing I must admit here is I'm sick and tired of hearing about how ATI has DX11 and NVIDIA doesn't....at least not yet. Big deal, so ATI released the first DX11 cards to try and beat NVIDIA to the table. Everyone knows that you never run out and buy the first release of a product because it is the worst version. Not only that, but NVIDIA has a very good reason why they have delayed the 300 series. Also, to top that how many DX11 games are currently on the market huh...4 that's right and by the time DX11 becomes standard in games NVIDIA will have gained it's fair share of DX11 sales.

Now, I will say a word or two about this review of the 5870 verses NVIDIA. Sure they made it look good for the newest product, however the cold hard facts are what is going to hurt you noobs feelings that own this card. Cold hard fact 1. 3dMark Vantage records show 3x 5870's in CrossfireX scoring 27790 and that's a validated score in 3dMark Vantage. Fact 2. My three GTX 275's in Tri-SLI scored 28891 and that too is a validated score using 3dMark Vantage. Benchmarking shows the true power and performance of your hardware not FPS benching. Games are written to favor one GPU over the other depending on the company and this too is a common fact that has existed for years now in the gaming industry. Games written to run better on ATI GPUs will score better FPS then NVIDIA that's no secret. However, games written to run better on NVIDIA GPUs score better then ATI and still do today, that too is no secret. In fact any game that uses PhysX will automatically score higher on NVIDIA systems since ATI has no way of rendering PhysX. So benchmarking a card based off game FPS means nothing. If you want to benchmark a graphics card there are several systems to do this on for example Unigine. Again, from personal experience and scores taken right off AMD's own sight 3x 5870's barely can break a score in Unigine of 2000 marks with all settings on high using DX10 and a res of 1680x1050 8xAA. My three NVIDIA GTX 275's score just under 3800 marks at a whopping 3768 using the exact same settings all high with a screen res of 1680x1050 8xAA. I fail to see thus far how you can say 5870 is stronger and faster then the NVIDIA cards when true bench test prove just the opposite.

Now, to all those that want to cry and say well just wait for the x2 series of the ATI card well they are here and they aren't really making a big splash in 3dMark systems. I also have some more bad news for ATI fanboys here. ATI has no big secret weapon with 6000 series cards in fact with what I know NVIDIA has coming in the 300 series, ATI better bring something to the table and fast. There is a reason why NVIDIA stalled the launch until this spring. Let me give you ATI duds, yet another history lesson that you're about to see repeated. It really isn't nothing AMD hasn't seen before "just like on the verge of bankruptcy", but here it goes anyway.

Remember back in the day when AMD had the 4800+ out and it was making Intel P4 HT systems look stupid and all you AMD/ATI fanboys would spout off at the mouth about how so much better AMD was over Intel and how Intel would never design a processor that could beat AMD in speed, gaming or benchmarking. Yeah I admit I had an Intel P4 and I stood behind Intel because I knew they had something coming and it was going to slaughter AMD. Well, do you remember what happened? Remember how Intel over night destroyed AMD's hopes, dreams, and security blanket. Remember how all you AMD fanboys looked like a deer in headlights? Well, it's about to happen again except this time it's not going to be Intel that slaughters AMD/ATI it's going to be NVIDIA. For reference though I would like all you AMD/ATI fanboys to do this. Bookmark this response and when spring comes rolling around and those 300 series start rolling off the NVIDIA line come back here and scroll down to the very last sentence in the response which clearly states the obvious and here it is....

"I TOLD YOU SO"!

This feature no longer works as it has been disabled in the NVIDIA driver as of 185.68, so if you want to use ATI you lose PhysX. And don't worry about the hack patch it barely works and they gave up on it at the driver version 195.62 and PhysX now requires you to have the latest drivers installed before it will work.

This is really funny since you can go to AMD's own website here http://forums.amd.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=13&threadid=120874&STARTPAGE=5&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear and see just how bad the 5870 sucks at a simple advanced gaming engine such as Unigine compared to the GTX 200 series. This isn't the only site showing how poorly the 5870 really is. What I think is the funniest thing about this site is it's the home of ATI it's AMD's own forums LMFAO there getting owned and pawned on there own turf by NVIDIA GTX 200 series users.

Oh and one more quick note, looks to me like the GTX 295 slaughtered two that's right I said 2x 5870's here on AMD's own site just look through the scores. The 5870's where even using a lesser res and still got pawned by the GTX 295. Stop looking at ATI game engine FPS and start looking at the truth. Game FPS benching doesn't mean squat when the games being used are geared for ATI GPU's. Try some PhysX games and see how well those 5870's bench in FPS to NVIDIA 200 series. Oh and just in case you're thinking about using an NVIDIA card to try and cheat the system, forget NVIDIA changed that in the latest drivers which doesn't allow ATI users to enable PhysX on a NVIDIA card if the main card is ATI. Now, that's what I call high class. And don't worry about talking trash about how PhysX will dry up because NVIDIA refuses to let ATI render PhysX. Companies like the biggest gaming software manufacturer Electronic Arts will never let that happen.

Now read the truth off ATI's own website of posted scores from 5800 users verses GTX 200 series users using Unigine. And for the record NVIDIA drivers hardly ever crash ATI has a well known record and history of bad drivers, so get your facts straight.

http://forums.amd.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=13&threadid=120874&STARTPAGE=1&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear

The fact that you base anything on 3Dmark scores make you a "noob" sir. Honestly you talk about AMD fan boys while you make yourself out to be the worlds largest Nvidia fan boy.

I am not going to get into an argument over this because fact 1. I simply do not care.

AMD or Nvidia don't care either, they are companies that set out to make money, not collect fan boys.

Either "Guest" is rabid, or an ATI troll looking to hand out the cups of Hatorade for the anti-nV backlash. Either scenario is far from appealing.

Good god already, That may be about as far a stretch as I have seen posted here on TS. First of all, More than half the games out there are developed on Nvidia cards. second of all, how far did you have to dig into your green team fanatics sites to find two 5870's getting beat by a GTX 295?....sigh. any other site benchmarking these cards shows this.
http://www.hardwareguru.com/article/radeon-hd-5870-review-test/1
here is the difference Fanboy, I build systems for a living, and buy whatever is the best at the time. And right now ATI is on top. They have the fastest single GPU, and the fastest Dual GPU on the market......get over it. If the GF100 cards are better performers when they come out, great I will purchase them. you on the other hand will laud and parse your fanboyism if the green team puts out a fresh dog turd. And Steve is right. If you use 3DMark to gauge 3D performance...you really are a noob!
why don't you go find a blog where people will be more than happy to swallow your BS by the heaping spoonful, or as Divide puts it 'hatorade"

NVIDIA is in major trouble; the latest gaming chip they have was developed in 2008 (the GT21x series) and those cards cannot compete with ATI's offerings on price vs performance. Also, TSMC's yield issues make it a much more compelling issue.

As for drivers, that is BS; NVIDIA had horrible drivers for quite some time on Vista (there's a thread here that attests to this) while ATI had a much more stable release at the time. Also, NVIDIA likes to only tweak performance via drivers for its current flagship cards, ignoring older cards like the 8800 GTS 512, even though the core powering it and the 9800GTX (as well as the "new" GTS250) is exactly the same.

That's another issue; deceptive branding. The GTS 250\8800 GTS 512\9800GTX is prime proof of this.

Add to that the fact that they actually tried to show off fake Fermi boards at the GPU Tech Conference late last year, and it all doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the company.

Unless they have something that's worth the price, I wouldn't want my next card to be an NVIDIA one.

Well done Rage....
Way to feed the troll
You sure picked a good day to hate on nVidia's drivers

I think Rage here is the new record holder...at least the troll/ATI firestarter was topical. Rage's first paragraph actually made so little sense it made my head hurt.

Techspot should have a seperate forum for flame wars with special interactive emoticons instead of text for those so outraged that their sense of grammar and reasoning has deserted them.

p.s. I think this thread could stand to be locked. The constructive comments regarding the HD 5870 and the review seem to have dried up somewhat.