AMD's Radeon HD 5870: Bringing About the Next Generation Of GPUs
by Ryan Smith on September 23, 2009 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The Race is Over: 8-channel LPCM, TrueHD & DTS-HD MA Bitstreaming
It's now been over a year since I first explained the horrible state of Blu-ray audio on the PC. I'm not talking about music discs, but rather the audio component of any Blu-ray movie. It boils down to this: without an expensive sound card it's impossible to send compressed Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio streams from your HTPC to an AV receiver or pre-processor. Thankfully AMD, Intel and later NVIDIA gave us a stopgap solution that allowed HTPCs, when equipped with the right IGP/GPU, to decode those high-definition audio streams and send them uncompressed over HDMI. The feature is commonly known as 8-channel LPCM support and without it all high end HTPC users would be forced into spending another $150 - $250 on a sound card like the Auzentech HomeTheater HD I just recently reviewed.
For a while I'd heard that ATI was dropping 8-channel LPCM support from RV870 because of cost issues. Thankfully, those rumors turned out to be completely untrue. Not only does the Radeon HD 5870 support 8-channel LPCM output over HDMI like its predecessor, but it can now also bitstream Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA. It is the first and only video card to be able to do this, but I expect others to follow over the next year.
The Radeon HD 5870 is first and foremost a card for gamers, so unless you're building a dual-purpose HTPC, this isn't the one you're going to want to use. If you can wait, the smaller derivatives of the RV870 core will also have bitstreaming support for TrueHD/DTS-HD MA. If you can't and have a deep enough HTPC case, the 5870 will work.
In addition to full bitstreaming support, the 5870 also features ATI's UVD2 (Universal Video Decoder). The engine allows for complete hardware offload of all H.264, MPEG-2 and VC1 decoding. There haven't been many changes to the UVD2 engine; you can still run all of the color adjusting post-processing effects and accelerate a maximum of two 1080p streams at the same time.
ATI claims that the GPU now supports Blu-ray playback/acceleration in Aero mode, but I found that in my testing the UI still defaulted to basic mode.
To take advantage of the 5870's bitstreaming support I had to use a pre-release version of Cyberlink's PowerDVD 9. The public version of the software should be out in another week or so. To enable TrueHD/DTS-HD MA bitstreaming you have to select the "Non-decoded high-definition audio to external device" option in the audio settings panel:
With that selected the player won't attempt to decode any audio but rather pass the encoded stream over HDMI to your receiver. In this case I had an Integra DTC-9.8 on the other end of the cable and my first test was Bolt, a DTS-HD MA title. Much to my amazement, it worked on the first try:
No HDPC errors, no strange player issues, nothing - it just worked.
Next up was Dolby TrueHD. I tried American History X first but the best I could get out of it was Dolby Digital. I swapped in Transformers and found the same. This ended up being an issue with the early PowerDVD 9 build, similar to issues with the version of the player needed for the Auzentech HomeTheater HD. Switching audio output modes a couple of times seemed to fix the problem, I now had both DTS-HD MA and Dolby TrueHD bitstreaming from the Radeon HD 5870 to my receiver.
One strange artifact during my testing was the 5870 apparently delivered 1080i output to my JVC RS2 projector. I'm not exactly sure what went wrong here as 1080p wasn't an issue on any other display I used. I ran out of time before I could figure out the cause of the problem but I expect it's an early compatibility issue.
I can't begin to express how relieving it is to finally have GPUs that implement a protected audio path capable of handling these overly encrypted audio streams. Within a year everything from high end GPUs to chipsets with integrated graphics will have this functionality.
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SiliconDoc - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
No, it's the fact you tell LIES, and always in ati's favor, and you got caught, over and over again.That is WHAT HAS HAPPENED.
Now you catch hold of your senses for a moment, and supposedly all the crap you spewed is "ok".
SiliconDoc - Friday, September 25, 2009 - link
Once again, all that matters to YOU, is YOUR games for PC, and ONLY top sellers, and only YOUR OPINION on PhysX.However, after you claimed only 2 games, you went on to bloviate about Havok.
Now you've avoided entirely that issue. Am I to assume, as you have apparently WISHED and thrown about, that HAVOK does not function on NVidia cards? NO QUITE THE CONTRARY !
--
What is REAL, is that NVidia runs Havok AND PhysX just fine, and not only that but ATI DOES NOT.
Now, instead of supporting BOTH, you have singled out your object of HATRED, and spewed your infantile rants, your put downs, your empty comparisons (mere statements), then DEMAND that I show PhysX is worthwhile, with "golden sellers". LOL
It has been 1.5 years or so since Aegia acquisition, and of course, game developers turning anything out in just 6 short months are considered miracle workers.
The real problem oif course for you is ATI does not support PhysX, and when a rouge coder made it happen, NVidia supported him, while ATI came in and crushed the poor fella.
So much for "competition", once again.
Now, I'd demand you show where HAVOK is worthwhile, EXCEPT I'm not the type of person that slams and reams and screams against " a percieved enemy company" just because "my favorite" isn't capable, and in that sense, my favorite IS CAPABLE.
Now, PhysX is awesome, it's great, it's the best there is, and that may or may not change, but as for now, NO OTHER demonstrations (you tube and otherwise) can match it.
That's just a sad fact for you, and with so many maintaining your biased and arrogant demand for anything else, we may have another case of VHS instead of BETA, which of course, you would heartily celebrate, no matter how long it takes to get there.
LOL
Yes, it is funny. It's just hilarious. A few months ago before Mirror's Edge and Anand falling in love with PhysX in it, admittedly, in the article he posted, we had the big screamers whining ZERO.
Well, now a few months later you are whining TWO.
Get ready to whine higher. Yes, you have read about the uptick in support ? LOL
You people are really something.
Oh, I know, CUDA is a big fat zero according to you, too.
(please pass along your thoughts to higher education universities here in the USA, and the federal government national lab research facilites. Thanks)
SiliconDoc - Thursday, September 24, 2009 - link
Yes, another excuse monger. So you basically admit the text is biased, and claim all readers should see the charts and go by those. LOLSo when the text is biased, as you admit, how is it that the rest, the very core of the review is not ? You won't explain that either.
Furthermore, the assumption that competition leads to something better in technology for videocards quicker, fails the basic test that in terms of technology, there is a limit to how fast it proceeds forward, since scientific breakthroughs must come, and often don't come, for instance, new energy technologies, still struggling after decades to make a breakthrough, with endless billions spent, and not much to show for it.
Same here with videocards, there is a LIMIT to the advancement speed, and competition won't be able to exceed that limit.
Furthermore, I NEVER said prices won't be driven down by competition, and you falsely asserted that notion to me.
I DID however say, ATI ALSO IS KNOWN FOR OVERPRICING. (or rather unknown by the red fans, huh, even said by omission to have NOT COMMITTED that "huge sin", that you all blame only Nvidia for doing.)
So you're just WRONG once again.
Begging the other guy to "not argue" then mischaracterizing a conclusion from just one of my statements, ignoring the points made that prove your buddy wrong period, and getting the body of your idea concerning COMPETITION incorrect due to technological and scientific constraints you fail to include, is no way to "argue" at all.
I sure wish there was someone who could take on my points, but so far none of you can. Every time you try, more errors in your thinking are easily exposed.
A MONOPOLY, in let's take for instance, the old OIL BARRONS, was not stagnant, and included major advances in search and extraction, as Standard Oil history clearly testifies to.
Once again, the "pat" cleche' is good for some things ( for instance competing drug stores, for example ), or other such things that don't involve inaccesible technology that has not been INVENTED yet.
The fact that your simpleton attitude failed to note such anomolies, is clearly evidence that once again, thinking "is not reuired" for people like you.
Once again, the rebuttal has failed.
kondor999 - Thursday, September 24, 2009 - link
This is just sad, and I'm no fanboy. I really wanted a 5870, but only with 100% more speed than a GTX285 - not a lousy 33%. Definitely not worth me upgrading, so I guess ATI saved me some money. I'm certain that my 3 GTX280's in Tri-SLI will destroy 2 5870's in CF - although with slightly less compatability (an important advantage for ATI, but not nearly enough).Moricon - Thursday, September 24, 2009 - link
I have been a regular at Tomshardware for a while now, nad keep coming back to Anandtech time and again to read reviews I have already read on other sites, and this one is by far the best I have read so far, (guru3d, toms, firing squad, and many others)The 5870 looks awesome, but from an upgrade point of view, I guess my system will not really benefit from moving on from E7200 @3.8ghz 4gb 1066, HD4870 @850mhz 4400mhz on 1680x1050.
Such a shame that i dont have a larger monitor at the moment or I would have jumped immediately.
Looks like the path is q9550 and 5870 and 1920x1200 monitor or larger to make sense, then might as well go i7, i5, where do you stop..
Well done ATI, well done! But if history follows the Nvidia 3xx chip will be mindblowing compared!
djc208 - Thursday, September 24, 2009 - link
I was most surprised at how far behind the now 2-generation old 3870 is now (at least on these high-end games). Guess my next upgrade (after a SSD) should be a 5850 once the frenzy dies away.JonnyDough - Thursday, September 24, 2009 - link
They could probably use a 1.5 GB card. :(mapesdhs - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
Ryan, any chance you could run Viewperf or other pro-app benchmarks
please? Some professionals use consumer hardware as a cheap way of
obtaining reasonable performance in apps like Maya, 3DS Max, ProE,
etc., so it would most interesting to know how the 5870 behaves when
running such tests, how it compares to Quadro and FireGL cards.
Pro-series boards normally have better performance for ops such as
antialiases lines via different drivers and/or different internal
firmware optimisations. Someday I figure perhaps a consumer card will
be able to match a pro card purely by accident.
Ian.
AmdInside - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
Sorry if this has already been asked but does the 5870 support audio over Display Port? I am holding out for a card that does such a thing. I know it does it for HDMI but also want it to do it for Display Port.VooDooAddict - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
Been waiting for a single gaming class card that can power more then 2 displays for quite some time. (The more then 2 monitors not necessarily for gaming.)The fact that this performs a noticeable bit better then my existing 4870 512MB is a bonus.