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
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.
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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 !"