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AMD's Radeon HD 5870: Bringing About the Next Generation Of GPUs

 by Ryan Smith on September 23, 2009 9:00 AM EST
327 Comments | Add A Comment
327 Comments

Batman: Arkham Asylum

Batman: Arkham Asylum is another brand-new PC game, and has been burning up the review charts. It’s an Unreal Engine 3 based game, something that’s not immediately obvious from just looking at it, which is rare for UE3 based games.

NVIDIA has put a lot of marketing muscle into the game as part of their The Way It’s Meant to Be Played program, and as a result it ships with PhysX support and 3D Vision support. Unfortunately NVIDIA’s influence has extended to its anti-aliasing abilities too, as its in-game selective AA abilities only work on NVIDIA’s cards. AMD’s cards can perform AA on the game, but only via traditional full screen anti-aliasing, which isn’t nearly as efficient. Because of this, this is the only game where we will not be using AA, as doing so produces meaningless results given the different AA modes used.

Without the use of AA, the performance in this game is best described as “runaway”. The 5870 turns in a score of 102fps, and even the GTS 250 can do just 53fps. However we’re also seeing the 5870’s performance pattern maintained here: it beats the single-GPU cards and loses to the multi-GPU cards.

Resident Evil 5 Left 4 Dead
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  • T2k - Thursday, September 24, 2009 - link

    quote:
    How would ET:QW be a good benchmark? Last I checked, it's still limited to the 30 FPS animations, which makes running it at more than 30 FPS pointless because everything will look jerky.
    I agree something like the CoD games should be included for comparison's sake, but they're hardly a good benchmark or taxing on a system. QW does not fall into the same category though, it has a smaller active playerbase than even L4D which lost a lot of players due to the lack of updates.


    Just whatF are you talking about, seriously? Is this some kind of new urban BS again?
    Look at other sites, they DID test it with ET:QW:
    http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/Radeon_HD_5...">http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/Radeon_HD_5...
    http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/rad...">http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/rad...

    and so on. BTW L4D is a passing fart in the wind while ET:QW is still going strong, stronger than UT3 (unfortunately because UT3 looks 10x better and the old ONS mode was awesome but Epic fucked it in UT3)

    Read other reviews before you post:
    http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid...">http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...amp;thre...

  • SiliconDoc - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link

    I see by your review links the 5870 just doesn't do well in ET:QW, everything else is closer to it and it gets beat worse, at 2560 high aa&af GTX295 slams it by 20%, so, of course, it was left out, in order to "pump up the percieved red number".
    -
    It's "not a good appearance".

    You'll just have to live with it for now like the rest of us.

  • number58 - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link

    Is this card any closer to saturating the pci-express 2.0 x16 slot? That was one of the big arguments in the P55 vs X58 debate. Would there be any loss of performance using these in crossfire on P55 compared to X58?
    Otherwise, great article. I think I'll be hanging on to my 4890 for a while though.

  • Kaleid - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link

    Look here for an answer:
    http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_5870_PCI...">http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_5870_PCI...

  • number58 - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link

    Thanks. That just about settles it. My next system will be Lynnfield based.

  • Zeratul - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link

    Please add support for Stereoscopic 3D, ATI. I'm not going back to play games in 2D, though I don't like nvidia's monopoly in that.

  • Arbie - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link

    Not just a review but an excellent technical discussion. It must have been a lot of work. Thanks for all of that, and do please follow up where you can on people's requests for more info on this very important card.

    Kudos to ATI/AMD for such an achievement. It looks like Nvidia is in big trouble.

    Arbie

  • SiliconDoc - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link

    rofl - Nvidia is in big trouble ? LOL
    Have you looked at the charts on wiki that predicted what this review shows ? Maybe you should take a gander at the Nvidia chart, now, and cry.
    --
    It is a nice review, although biased red here as usual.
    --
    I'd like to mention as he fretted about heat because of the 1/2 vent on the back of the card, I didn't notice overt despairing mention of the TWO rectangular exhaust ports on the fan end BLOWING HEAT INTO THE CASE.... which of course is deserved. Nice how that was held back as if overlooked. (Boy what trouble for Nvidia! hahha)
    Next we'll be told the red rooster tester put his hand next to the two internal exhaust ports, and "the air felt rather cool" so "rest assured not much heat is being pushed into your case", and "this doesn't matter".
    See, the trouble is already in the article, the trouble it took to spin it just so for Ati... lol... it's hilatrious!

  • ClownPuncher - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link

    Bizzarro SnakeOil, is that you?

  • SiliconDoc - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link

    No, this is me, the same me I've always been.
    Would you like to comment on the two internal exhaust ports of the 5870 that put sweltering heat into your case ?
    I guess you tried to ignore that entirely.
    You can always insult me again and avoid commenting on the heating exhaust ports ramping up your case temps on the 5870...
    That of course would be "the right thing to do".
    Perhaps call me crazy, and avoid the topic, right, you're good at that, huh.
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