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
Conclusion
The easiest kind of product for us to write about is the kind that’s clearly superior to its competition. The hardest kind to write about is the kind that’s stuck in the middle. For the 5870, we have the latter case.
Let’s be clear here: the 5870 is the single fastest single-GPU card we have tested, by a wide margin. Looking at its performance in today’s games, as a $379 card it makes the GTX 285 at its current prices ($300+) completely irrelevant. The price difference isn’t enough to make up for the performance difference, and NVIDIA also has to contend with the 5850, which should perform near the GTX 285 but at a price of $259. As is often the case with a new generation of cards, we’re going to see a shakeup here in the market as NVIDIA in particular needs to adjust to these new cards.
The catch however is that what we don’t have is a level of clear domination when it comes to single-card solutions. AMD was shooting to beat the GTX 295 with the 5870, but in our benchmarks that’s not happening. The 295 and the 5870 are close, perhaps close enough that NVIDIA will need to reconsider their position, but it’s not enough to outright dethrone the GTX 295. NVIDIA still has the faster single-card solution, although the $100 price premium is well in excess of the <10% performance premium.
Meanwhile AMD is retiring the 4870X2, which ended up beating the 5870 enough that we would consider it a competitor to the 5870. However, you can’t consider it if you can’t buy it.
Then we have the multi-GPU space, where things are rather clear. Having the fastest single-GPU card makes the 5870 in Crossfire the fastest dual-GPU solution by far. Unfortunately we didn’t have a chance to benchmark a GTX 295 Quad SLI setup, but given the notoriously finicky nature of Quad SLI and Quad Crossfire, we’re comfortable calling the 5870 CF the better multi-GPU solution.
And that brings us to our next conundrum: if dual-GPU setups can overshoot the 5870, does that make them better? At equal performance levels, we would take a single-GPU setup any day of the week; there are no profiles to deal with or the sometimes inconsistent scaling in performance (see: Dawn of War II). Even with a slight lead in performance, we would pick the 5870 over the 4870X2 or GTX 295 so long as the latter were not significantly cheaper. As it stands the 5870 is the greater value, even if it's not the fastest card.
Moving away from performance, we have feature differentiation. AMD has a clear advantage here with DirectX11, as the 5870 is going to be a very future-proof card. The 8800GTX is a good parallel here – it took 3 years for it to really be outclassed in terms of features, and the performance is still respectable today. DX11 is going to give the 5870 the same level of longevity when it comes to being up-to-date on features, although we’ll see if its performance lasts for quite as long. When games using DX11 arrive, it’s going to bring about a nice change in quality (particularly with tessellation). However it’s going to be a bit of a wait to get there.
On that tangent, we have Eyefinity. Unlike DX11 Eyefinity is something we can take advantage of today, but also unlike DX11 it’s not necessarily an improvement. As Anand discussed when attempting to use it, when it works it’s absolutely great, but at the moment it has some real teething issues. And it’s expensive – even 3 cheap TV-quality monitors is an investment for most people of hundreds of dollars on top of everything else. It’s very much like a certain NVIDIA feature in terms of cost, goals, and its hit-or-miss nature. Eyefinity is something we’re going to want to keep an eye on to see what AMD does with it in the future, because they’re on the right track. It’s just not something that’s going to tickle the fancy of very many people today.
Wrapping things up, for those of you who were expecting the 5870 to shake things up, the 5870 is certainly going to do that. For those of you looking for the above and a repeat of the RV770/GT200 launch where prices will go into a free fall, you’re going to come away disappointed. That task will fall upon the 5850, and we’re looking forward to reviewing it as soon as we can.
At the end of the day, with its impressive performance and next-generation feature set, the Radeon HD 5870 kicks off the DirectX 11 generation with a bang and manages to take home the single-GPU performance crown in the process. It’s without a doubt the high-end card to get.
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SiliconDoc - Thursday, September 24, 2009 - link
Are you seriously going to claim that all ATI are not generally hotter than the nvidia cards ? I don't think you really want to do that, no matter how much you wail about fan speeds.The numbers have been here for a long time and they are all over the net.
When you have a smaller die cranking out the same framerate/video, there is simply no getting around it.
You talked about the 295, as it really is the only nvidia that compares to the ati card in this review in terms of load temp, PERIOD.
In any other sense, the GT8800 would be laughed off the pages comparing it to the 5870.
Furthermore, one merely needs to look at the WATTAGE of the cards, and that is more than a plenty accurate measuring stick for heat on load, divided by surface area of the core.
No, I'm not the one not thinking, I'm not the one TROLLING, the TROLLING is in the ARTICLE, and the YEAR plus of covering up LIES we've had concerning this very issue.
Nvidia cards run cooler, ati cards run hotter, PERIOD.
You people want it in every direction, with every lying whine for your red god, so pick one or the other:
1.The core sizes are equivalent, or 2. the giant expensive dies of nvidia run cooler compared to the "efficient" "new technology" "packing the data in" smaller, tiny, cheap, profit margin producing ATI cores.
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NOW, it doesn't matter what lies or spin you place upon the facts, the truth is absolutely apparent, and you WON'T be changing the physical laws of the universe with your whining spin for ati, and neither will the trolling in the article. I'm going to stick my head in the sand and SCREAM LOUDLY because I CAN'T HANDLE anyone with a lick of intelligence NOT AGREEING WITH ME! I LOVE TO LIE AND TYPE IN CAPS BECAUSE THAT'S HOW WE ROLL IN ILLINOIS!
SiliconDoc - Friday, September 25, 2009 - link
Well that is amazing, now a mod or site master has edited my text.Wow.
erple2 - Friday, September 25, 2009 - link
This just gets better and better...Ultimately, the true measure of how much waste heat a card generates will have to look at the power draw of the card, tempered with the output work that it's doing (aka FPS in whatever benchmark you're looking at). Since I haven't seen that kind of comparison, it's impossible to say anything at all about the relative heat output of any card. So your conclusions are simply biased towards what you think is important (and that should be abundantly clear).
Given that one must look at the performance per watt. Since the only wattage figures we have are for OCCT or WoW playing, so that's all the conclusions one can make from this article. Since I didn't see the results from the OCCT test (in a nice, convenient FPS measure), we get the following:
5870: 73 fps at 295 watts = 247 FPS per milliwatt
275: 44.3 fps at 317 watts = 140 FPS per milliwatt
285: 45.7 fps at 323 watts = 137 FPS per milliwatt
295: 68.9 fps at 380 watts = 181 FPS per milliwatt
That means that the 5870 wins by at least 36% over the other 3 cards. That means that for this observation, the 5870 is, in fact, the most efficient of these cards. It therefore generates less heat than the other 3 cards. Looking at the temperatures of the cards, that strictly measures the efficiency of the cooler, not the efficiency of the actual card itself.
You can say that you think that I'm biased, but ultimately, that's the data I have to go on, and therefore that's the conclusions that can be made. Unfortunately, there's nothing in your post (or more or less all of your posts) that can be verified by any of the information gleaned from the article, and therefore, your conclusions are simply biased speculation.
SiliconDoc - Saturday, September 26, 2009 - link
4780, 55nm, 256mm die, 150watts HOTG260, 55nm, 576mm die, 171watts COLD
3870, 55nm, 192mm die, 106watts HOT
That's all the further I should have to go.
3870 has THE LOWEST LOAD POWER USEAGE ON THE CHARTS
- but it is still 90C, at the very peak of heat,
because it has THE TINIEST CORE !
THE SMALLEST CORE IN THE WHOLE DANG BEJEEBER ARTICLE !
It also has the lowest framerate - so there goes that erple theory.
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The anomlies you will notice if you look, are due to nm size, memory amount on board (less electricity used by the memory means the core used more), and one slot vs two slot coolers, as examples, but the basic laws of physics cannot be thrown out the window because you feel like doing it, nor can idiotic ideas like framerate come close to predicting core temp and it's heat density at load.
Older cpu's may have horrible framerates and horribly high temps, for instance. The 4850 frames do not equal the 4870's, but their core temp/heat density envelope is very close to indentical ( SAME CORE SIZE > the 4850 having some die shaders disabled and ddr3, the 4870 with ddr5 full core active more watts for mem and shaders, but the same PHYSICAL ISSUES - small core, high wattage for area, high heat)
erple2 - Tuesday, September 29, 2009 - link
I didn't say that the 3870 was the most efficient card. I was talking about the 5870. If you actually read what I had typed, I did mention that you have to look at how much work the card is doing while consuming that amount of power, not just temperatures and wattage.You sir, are a Nazi.
Actually, once you start talking about heat density at load, you MUST look at the efficiency of the card at converting electricity into whatever it's supposed to be doing (other than heating your office). Sadly, the only real way that we have to abstractly measure the work the card is doing is "FPS". I'm not saying that FPS predict core temperature.
SiliconDoc - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
No, the efficiency of conversion you talk about has NOTHING to do with core temp AT ALL. The card could be massively efficient or inefficient at produced framerate, or just ERROR OUT with a sick loop in the core, and THAT HAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH THE CORE TEMP. IT RESTS ON WATTS CONSUMED EVEN IF FRAMERATE OUTPUT IS ZERO OR 300SECOND.(your mind seems to have imagined that if the red god is slinging massive frames "out the dvi port" a giant surge of electricity flows through it to the monitor, and therefore "does not heat the card")
I suggest you examine that lunatic red notion.
What YOU must look at is a red rooster rooter rimshot, in order that your self deception and massive mistake and face saving is in place, for you. At least JaredWalton had the sense to quietly skitter away.
Well, being wrong forever and never realizing a thing is perhaps the worst road to take.
PS - Being correct and making sure the truth is defended has nothing to do with some REDEYE cleche, and I certainly doubt the Gregalouge would embrace red rooster canada card bottom line crumbled for years ever more in a row, and diss big green corporate profits, as we both obviously know.
" at converting electricity into whatever it's supposed to be doing (other than heating your office). "
ONCE IT CONVERTS ELECTRICITY, AS IN "SHOWS IT USED MORE WATTS" it doesn't matter one ding dang smidgen what framerate is,
it could loop sand in the core and give you NO screeen output,
and it would still heat up while it "sat on it's lazy", tarding upon itself.
The card does not POWER the monitor and have the monitor carry more and more of the heat burden if the GPU sends out some sizzly framerates and the "non-used up watts" don't go sailing out the cards connector to the monitor so that "heat generation winds up somewhere else".
When the programmers optimize a DRIVER, and the same GPU core suddenly sends out 5 more fps everything else being the same, it may or may not increase or decrease POWER USEAGE. It can go ANY WAY. Up, down, or stay the same.
If they code in more proper "buffer fills" so the core is hammered solid, instead of flakey filling, the framerate goes up - and so does the temp!
If they optimize for instance, an algorythm that better predicts what does not need to be drawn as it rests behind another image on top of it, framerate goes up, while temp and wattage used GOES DOWN.
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Even with all of that, THERE IS ONLY ONE PLACE FOR THE HEAT TO ARISE... AND IT AIN'T OUT THE DANG CABLE TO THE MONITOR!
SiliconDoc - Friday, September 25, 2009 - link
You can modify that, or be more accurate, by using core mass, (including thickness of the competing dies) - since the core mass is what consumes the electricity, and generates heat. A smaller mass (or die size, almost exclusively referred to in terms of surface area with the assumption that thickness is identical or near so) winds up getting hotter in terms of degrees of Celcius when consuming a similar amount of electricity.Doesn't matter if one frame, none, or a thousand reach your eyes on the monitor.
That's reality, not hokum. That's why ATI cores run hotter, they are smaller and consume a similar amount of electricty, that winds up as heat in a smaller mass, that means hotter.
Also, in actuality, the ATI heatsinks in a general sense, have to be able to dissipate more heat with less surface area as a transfer medium, to maintain the same core temps as the larger nvidia cores and HS areas, so indeed, should actually be "better stock" fans and HS.
I suspect they are slightly better as a general rule, but fail to excel enough to bring core load temps to nvidia general levels.
erple2 - Friday, September 25, 2009 - link
You understand that if there were no heatsink/cooling device on a GPU, it would heat up to crazy levels, far more than would be "healthy" for any silicon part, right? And you understand that measuring the efficiency of a part involves a pretty strong correlation between the input power draw of the card vs. the work that the card produces (which we can really only measure based on the output of the card, namely FPS), right?So I'm not sure that your argument means anything at all?
Curiously, the output wattage listed is for the entire system, not just for the card. Which means that the actual differences between the ATI cards vs. the nvidia cards is even larger (as a percentage, at least). I don't know what the "baseline" power consumption of the system (sans video card) is for the system acting as the test bed is.
Ultimately, the amount of electricity running through the GPU doesn't necessarily tell you how much heat the processors generate. It's dependent on how much of that power is "wasted" as heat energy (that's Thermodynamics for you). The only way to really measure the heat production of the GPU is to determine how much power is "wasted" as heat. Curiously, you can't measure that by measuring the temperature of the GPU. Well, you CAN, but you'd have to remove the Heatsink (and Fan). Which, for ANY GPU made in the last 15 years, would cook it. Since that's not a viable alternative, you simply can't make broad conclusions about which chip is "hotter" than another. And that is why your conclusions are inconclusive.
BTW, the 5870 consumes "less" power than the 275, 285 and 295 GPUs (at least, when playing WoW).
I understand that there may be higher wattage per square millimeter flowing through the 5870 than the GTX cards, but I don't see how that measurement alone is enough to state whether the 5870 actually gets hotter.
SiliconDoc - Saturday, September 26, 2009 - link
Take a look at SIZE my friend.http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1325165">http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1325165
There's just no getting around the fact that the more joules of heat in any time period (wattage used!= amount of joules over time!) that go into a smaller area, the hotter it gets, faster !
Nothing changes this, no red rooster imagination will ever change it.
SiliconDoc - Saturday, September 26, 2009 - link
NO, WRONG." Ultimately, the true measure of how much waste heat a card generates will have to look at the power draw of the card, tempered with the output work that it's doing (aka FPS in whatever benchmark you're looking at)."
NO, WRONG.
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Look at any of the cards power draw in idle or load. They heat up no matter how much "work" you claim they do, by looking at any framerate, because they don't draw the power unless they USE THE POWER. That's the law that includes what useage of electricity MEANS for the law of thermodynamics, or for E=MC2.
DUHHHHH.
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If you're so bent on making idiotic calculations and applying them to the wrong ideas and conclusions, why don't you take core die size and divide by watts (the watts the companies issue or take it from the load charts), like you should ?
I know why. We all know why.
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The same thing is beyond absolutely apparent in CPU's, their TDP, their die size, and their heat envelope, including their nm design size.
DUHHH. It's like talking to a red fanboy who cannot face reality, once again.