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
Crysis: Warhead
Kicking things off, we’ll start with Crysis: Warhead. Warhead is still the single most demanding game in our arsenal, with cards continuing to struggle to put out a playable frame rate with everything turned up.
AMD’s aspirations for the 5870 are that it will beat the GTX 295. Here they get close, but no cigar. Higher-end dual GPU solutions like the GTX 285 in SLI or the 5870 in Crossfire are still necessary to achieve playable framerates at 2560 in the Frost benchmark, and this isn’t even with the game at its highest settings. For those of you hoping to play Warhead completely maxed out, even the 5870 CF isn’t quite going to be able to deliver on that.
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erple2 - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
I think that you're missing the point. AMD appeared to want the part to be small enough to maximize the number of gpu's generated per wafer. They had their own internal idea of how to get a good yield from the 40nm wafers.It appears to be similar to their line of thinking with the 4870 launch (see http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3469">http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3469 for more information) - they didn't feel like they needed to get the biggest, fastest, most power hungry part to compete well. It turns out that with the 5870, they have that, at least until we see what Nvidia comes out with the G300.
It turns out that performance really isn't all people care about - otherwise nobody would run anything other than dual GTX285's in SLI. People care about performance __at a particular price point__. ATI is trying to grab that particular sweet spot - be able to take the performance crown for a particular price range. They would probably be able to make a gargantuan low-yield, high power monster that would decimate everything currently available (crossfire/SLI or single), but that chip would be massively expensive to produce, and surprisingly, be a poor Return on Investment.
So the comment that Cypress is "too big" I think really is apropos. I think that AMD would have been able to launch the 5870 at the $299 price point of the 4870 only if the die had been significantly smaller (around the same size as the 4870). THAT would have been an amazing bang-for-buck card, I believe.
Doormat - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
[Big Chart] and suchfaxon - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
page 15 is missing its charts guys! look at it, how did that happen lmaoGary Key - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
Ryan is updating the page now. He should be finished up shortly. We had a lot of images that needed to be displayed in a different manner at the last minute.Totally - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
the images are missingdguy6789 - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
You very clearly fail to mention that the cheapest GTX295 one can buy is nearly $100 more expensive than the HD 5870.Ryan Smith - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
In my own defense, when I wrote that paragraph Newegg's cheapest brand-new GTX 295 was only $409. They've been playing price games...SiliconDoc - Friday, September 25, 2009 - link
That "price game" is because the 5870 is rather DISAPPOINTING when compared to the GTX295.I guess that means ATI "blew the competition" this time, huh, and NVidia is going to get more money for their better GTX295.
LOL
That's a *scowl* "new egg price game" for red fans.
Thanks ATI for making NVidia more money !
strikeback03 - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
lol, did they drop the price while they had 5870s in stock, then raise it again once they were gone?SiliconDoc - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
Oh, so sorry, 1:46pm, NO 5870's available at the egg...I guess they sold 1 powercolor and one asus...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Sub...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi...1&na...
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Come on anandtech workers, you can say it "PAPER LUANCH !"