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
Power, Temperature, & Noise
As we have mentioned previously, one of AMD’s big design goals for the 5800 series was to get the idle power load significantly lower than that of the 4800 series. Officially the 4870 does 90W, the 4890 60W, and the 5870 should do 27W.
On our test bench, the idle power load of the system comes in at 141W, a good 42W lower than either the 4870 or 4890. The difference is even more pronounced when compared to the multi-GPU cards that the 5870 competes with performance wise, with the gap opening up to as much as 63W when compared to the 4870X2. In fact the only cards that the 5870 can’t beat are some of the slowest cards we have: the GTS 250 and the Radeon HD 3870.
As for the 5870 CF, we see AMD’s CF-specific power savings in play here. They told us they can get the second card down to 20W, and on our rig the power consumption of adding a second card is 23.5W, which after taking power inefficiencies into account is right on the dot.
Moving on to load power, we are using the latest version of the OCCT stress testing tool, as we have found that it creates the largest load out of any of the games and programs we have. As we stated in our look at Cypress’ power capabilities, OCCT is being actively throttled by AMD’s drivers on the 4000 and 3000 series hardware. So while this is the largest load we can generate on those cards, it’s not quite the largest load they could ever experience. For the 5000 series, any throttling would be done by the GPU’s own sensors, and only if the VRMs start to overload.
In spite of AMD’s throttling of the 4000 series, right off the bat we have two failures. Our 4870X2 and 4890 both crash the moment OCCT starts. If you ever wanted proof as to why AMD needed to move to hardware based overcurrent protection, you will get no better example of that than here.
For the cards that don’t fail the test, the 5870 ends up being the most power-hungry single-GPU card, at 401W total system power. This puts it slightly ahead of the GTX 285, and well, well behind any of the dual-GPU cards or configurations we are testing. Meanwhile the 5870 CF takes the cake, beating every other configuration for a load power of 664W. If we haven’t mentioned this already we will now: if you want to run multiple 5870s, you’re going to need a good power supply.
Ultimately with the throttling of OCCT it’s difficult to make accurate predictions about all possible cases. But from our tests with it, it looks like it’s fair to say that the 5870 has the capability to be a slightly bigger power hog than any previous single-GPU card.
In light of our results with OCCT, we have also taken load power results for our suite of cards when running World of Warcraft. As it’s not a stress-tester it should produce results more in line with what power consumption will look like with a regular game.
Right off the bat, system power consumption is significantly lower. The biggest power hogs are the are the GTX 285 and GTX 285 SLI for single and dual-GPU configurations respectively. The bulk of the lineup is the same in terms of what cards consume more power, but the 5870 has moved down the ladder, coming in behind the GTX 275 and ahead of the 4870.
Next up we have card temperatures, measured using the on-board sensors of the card. With a good cooler, lower idle power consumption should lead to lower idle temperatures.
The floor for a good cooler looks to be about 40C, with the GTS 250, 3870, and 4850 all turning in temperatures around here. For the 5870, it comes in at 46C, which is enough to beat the 4870 and the NVIDIA GTX lineup.
Unlike power consumption, load temperatures are all over the place. All of the AMD cards approach 90C, while NVIDIA’s cards are between 92C for an old 8800GT, and a relatively chilly 75C for the GTX 260. As far as the 5870 is concerned, this is solid proof that the half-slot exhaust vent isn’t going to cause any issues with cooling.
Finally we have fan noise, as measured 6” from the card. The noise floor for our setup is 40.4 dB.
All of the cards, save the GTX 295, generate practically the same amount of noise when idling. Given the lower energy consumption of the 5870 when idling, we had been expecting it to end up a bit quieter, but this was not to be.
At load, the picture changes entirely. The more powerful the card the louder it tends to get, and the 5870 is no exception. At 64 dB it’s louder than everything other than the GTX 295 and a pair of 5870s. Hopefully this is something that the card manufacturers can improve on later on with custom coolers, as while 64 dB at 6" is not egregious it’s still an unwelcome increase in fan noise.
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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.