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
The Race is Over: 8-channel LPCM, TrueHD & DTS-HD MA Bitstreaming
It's now been over a year since I first explained the horrible state of Blu-ray audio on the PC. I'm not talking about music discs, but rather the audio component of any Blu-ray movie. It boils down to this: without an expensive sound card it's impossible to send compressed Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio streams from your HTPC to an AV receiver or pre-processor. Thankfully AMD, Intel and later NVIDIA gave us a stopgap solution that allowed HTPCs, when equipped with the right IGP/GPU, to decode those high-definition audio streams and send them uncompressed over HDMI. The feature is commonly known as 8-channel LPCM support and without it all high end HTPC users would be forced into spending another $150 - $250 on a sound card like the Auzentech HomeTheater HD I just recently reviewed.
For a while I'd heard that ATI was dropping 8-channel LPCM support from RV870 because of cost issues. Thankfully, those rumors turned out to be completely untrue. Not only does the Radeon HD 5870 support 8-channel LPCM output over HDMI like its predecessor, but it can now also bitstream Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA. It is the first and only video card to be able to do this, but I expect others to follow over the next year.
The Radeon HD 5870 is first and foremost a card for gamers, so unless you're building a dual-purpose HTPC, this isn't the one you're going to want to use. If you can wait, the smaller derivatives of the RV870 core will also have bitstreaming support for TrueHD/DTS-HD MA. If you can't and have a deep enough HTPC case, the 5870 will work.
In addition to full bitstreaming support, the 5870 also features ATI's UVD2 (Universal Video Decoder). The engine allows for complete hardware offload of all H.264, MPEG-2 and VC1 decoding. There haven't been many changes to the UVD2 engine; you can still run all of the color adjusting post-processing effects and accelerate a maximum of two 1080p streams at the same time.
ATI claims that the GPU now supports Blu-ray playback/acceleration in Aero mode, but I found that in my testing the UI still defaulted to basic mode.
To take advantage of the 5870's bitstreaming support I had to use a pre-release version of Cyberlink's PowerDVD 9. The public version of the software should be out in another week or so. To enable TrueHD/DTS-HD MA bitstreaming you have to select the "Non-decoded high-definition audio to external device" option in the audio settings panel:
With that selected the player won't attempt to decode any audio but rather pass the encoded stream over HDMI to your receiver. In this case I had an Integra DTC-9.8 on the other end of the cable and my first test was Bolt, a DTS-HD MA title. Much to my amazement, it worked on the first try:
No HDPC errors, no strange player issues, nothing - it just worked.
Next up was Dolby TrueHD. I tried American History X first but the best I could get out of it was Dolby Digital. I swapped in Transformers and found the same. This ended up being an issue with the early PowerDVD 9 build, similar to issues with the version of the player needed for the Auzentech HomeTheater HD. Switching audio output modes a couple of times seemed to fix the problem, I now had both DTS-HD MA and Dolby TrueHD bitstreaming from the Radeon HD 5870 to my receiver.
One strange artifact during my testing was the 5870 apparently delivered 1080i output to my JVC RS2 projector. I'm not exactly sure what went wrong here as 1080p wasn't an issue on any other display I used. I ran out of time before I could figure out the cause of the problem but I expect it's an early compatibility issue.
I can't begin to express how relieving it is to finally have GPUs that implement a protected audio path capable of handling these overly encrypted audio streams. Within a year everything from high end GPUs to chipsets with integrated graphics will have this functionality.
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dieselcat18 - Saturday, October 3, 2009 - link
It truly amazes me that AnandTech allows a Troll like you to keep posting...but there is always one moron that comes to a forum like this and shows his a** to the world...So we all know it to be you...nice work not bringing anything resembling an intelligent discussion to the table..Oh and please don't tell me what it is that I bring to the conversation...my thoughts about this topic have nothing to do with my reply to you about your vulgar manner and lack of respect for anyone that has a difference of opinion.Oh and as for you paper launch...well sites like Newegg were sold out immediately because of the overwhelming demand for this card and I'll bet you anything there are cards available and in good supply at this very moment...Why don't you take a look and give us all another update.....I guess having that big "L" stamped on your forehead sums it up.....
SiliconDoc - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
No, they didn't, because the 5870's just showed up last night, 4 of them, and just a bit ago the ONE of them actually became "available", the Powercolor brand.The other three 5870's are NOT AVAILABLE but are listed....
So "ATI paper launch" is the key idea here (for non red roosters).
1:43 PM CST, Wed. Sept. 23rd, 2009.
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Yes, I watched them appear on the egg last night(I'm such a red fanboy I even love paper launches)... LOL
crimson117 - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
Current cheapest GTX 295 at Newegg is $469.99.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a...p;cm_re=...
B3an - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
Ryan, on your AA page, you have an example of the unofficial Nvidia SSAA where the tree branches have gone missing in HL2. And say because of this it's not suitable for general use.But for both the ATI pics, on either MSAA or SSAA, the tree branches are missing as well. Did you not notice this? because you do not comment on it.
Either way it looks like ATI AA is still worse, or there is a bug.
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
We used the same save game, but not the same computer. These were separate issues we were chasing down at the same time, so they're not meant to be comparable. In this case I believe some of the shots were at 1600x1200, and others were at 1680x1050. The result of which is that the widescreen shots are effectively back a bit farther due to the use of the same FOV at all times in HL2.As you'll see in our Crysis shots, there's no difference. I can look in to this issue later however, if you'd like.
chizow - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
Really enjoyed the discussion of the architecture, new features, DX11, Compute Shaders, the new AF algorithm and the reintroduction of SSAA an ATI parts.As for the card itself, its definitely impressive for a single-GPU but the muted enthusiasm in your conclusion seems justified. Its not the definite leader for single-card performance as the 295 is still consistently faster and the 5870 even fails to consistently outperform its own predecessor, the 4870X2.
Its scaling problems are really odd given its internals and overall specs seem to indicate its just RV790 CF on a single die, yet it scales worst than the previous generation in CF. I'd say you're probably onto something thinking AMD underestimated the 5870's bandwidth requirements.
Anyways, nice card and nice effort from AMD, even if its stay at the top is short-lived. AMD did a better job pricing this time around and will undoubtedly enjoy high sales volume with little competition in the coming months with Win 7's launch, up until Nvidia is able to counter with GT300.
chizow - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
Holy....lolI didn't even realize til I read another comment that Ryan Smith wrote this and not Anand/Derek collaboration. That's a compliment btw, it read very Anand-esque the entire time! ;-) Really enjoyed it similar to some of your earlier efforts like the 3-part Vista memory investigation.
formulav8 - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
I wouldn't be surprised if most of us already knew what was going to take place with performance and what-not. But its still a nice card whether I knew the specs before its official release or not. (And viewed many purposely leak benches). :)Jason
PJABBER - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
Another fine review and nice to see it hit today. Your reviews are one reason I keep coming back to AT!Unfortunately, at MSRP the 5870 doesn't offer enough for me to move past the 4890 I am currently using, and bought for $130 during one of the sales streaks a month or so ago. Will re-evaluate when we actually start seeing price drops and/or DX11 games hit the shelves.
wicko - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
It would have been nice to see 4890 in CF against 5870 in CF. 500$ spent vs 800$ spent :p