The Radeon HD 5970: Completing AMD's Takeover of the High End GPU Market

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• Paladin1211 - Saturday, November 21, 2009 - link

  To be precise, anything above the monitor refresh rate is not going to be recognizable. Mine maxed out at 60Hz 1920x1200. Correct me if I'm wrong.
  
  Thanks :)

• noquarter - Saturday, November 21, 2009 - link

  If you read AnandTech's 'Triple Buffering: Why We Love It' article, there is a very slight advantage at more than 60fps even though the display is only running at ~60Hz. If the GPU finishes rendering a frame immediately after the display refresh then that frame will be 16ms stale by the time the display shows it as it won't have the next one ready in time. If someone started coming around the corner while that frame is stale it'd be 32ms (stale frame then fresh frame) before the first indicator showed up. This is simplified as with v-sync off you'll just get torn frames but the idea is still there.
  
  To me, it's not a big deal, but if you're looking at a person with quick reaction speed of 180ms, 32ms of waiting for frames to catch up could be significant I guess. If you increase the fps past 60 you're more likely to have a fresh frame rendered right before each display refresh.

• T2k - Friday, November 20, 2009 - link

  Seriously: is he no more...? :D

• XeroG1 - Thursday, November 19, 2009 - link

  OK, so seriously, did you really take a $600 video card and benchmark Crysis Warhead without turning it all the way up? The chart says "Gamer Quality + Enthusiast Shaders". I'm wondering if that's really how you guys benchmarked it, or if the chart is just off. But if not, the claim "Crysis hasn’t quite fallen yet, but it’s very close" seems a little odd, given that you still don't have all the settings turned all the way up.
  
  Incidentally, I'm running a GeForce 9800 GTX (not plus) and a Core2Duo E8550, and I play Warhead at all settings enthusiast, no AA, at 1600x900. At those settings, it's playable for me. People constantly complain about performance on that title, but really if you just turn down the resolution, it scales pretty well and still looks better than anything else on the market IMHO.

• XeroG1 - Thursday, November 19, 2009 - link

  Er, oops - that was supposed to say "E8500", not "E8550", since there is no 8550.

• mapesdhs - Thursday, November 19, 2009 - link

  
  Carnildo writes:
  > ... I was the administrator for a CAVE system. ...
  
  Ditto! :D
  
  
  > ... ported a number of 3D shooters to the platform. You haven't
  > lived until you've seen a life-sized opponent come around the
  > corner and start blasting away at you.
  
  Indeed, Quake2 is amazing in a CAVE, especially with both the player
  and the gun separately motion tracking - crouch behind a wall and be
  able to stick your arm up to fire over the wall - awesome! But more
  than anything as you say, it's the 3D effect which makes the experience.
  
  As for surround-vision in general... Eyefinity? Ha! THIS is what
  you want:
  
  http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/lockheed_cave.jpg">http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/lockheed_cave.jpg
  
  270 degree wraparound, 6-channel CAVE (Lockheed flight sim).
  
  I have an SGI VHS demo of it somewhere, must dig it out sometime.
  
  
  Oh, YouTube has some movies of people playing Quake2 in CAVE
  systems. The only movie I have of me in the CAVE I ran was
  a piece taken of my using COVISE visualisation software:
  
  http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/iancovise.avi">http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/iancovise.avi
  
  Naturally, filming a CAVE in this way merely shows a double-image.
  
  
  Re people commenting on GPU power now exceeding the demands for
  a single display...
  
  What I've long wanted to see in games is proper modelling of
  volumetric effects such as water, snow, ice, fire, mud, rain, etc.
  Couldn't all this excess GPU power be channeled into ways of better
  representing such things? It would be so cool to be able to have
  genuinely new effects in games such as naturally flowing lava, or
  an avalanche, or a flood, tidal wave, storm, landslide, etc. By this
  I mean it being done so that how the substance behaves is governed
  by the environment in a natural way (physics), not hard coded. So far,
  anything like this is just simulated - objects involved are not
  physically modelled and don't interact in any real way. Rain is
  a good example - it never accumulates, flows, etc. Snow has weight,
  flowing water can make things move, knock you over, etc.
  
  One other thing occurs to me: perhaps we're approaching a point
  where a single CPU is just not enough to handle what is now possible
  at the top-end of gaming. To move them beyond just having ever higher
  resolutions, maybe one CPU with more & more cores isn't going to
  work that well. Could there ever be a market for high-end PC
  gaming with 2-socket mbds? I do not mean XEON mbds as used for
  servers though. Just thoughts...
  
  Ian.
  
  

• gorgid - Thursday, November 19, 2009 - link

  WITH THEIR CARDS ASUS PROVIDES THE SOFTWARE WHERE YOU CAN ADJUST CORE AND MEMORY VOLTAGES. YOU CAN ADJUST CORE VOLTAGE UP TO 1.4V
  
  READ THAT:
  http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php...">http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/sho...cd1d6d10...
  
  I ORDERED ONE FROM HERE:
  
  http://www.provantage.com/asus-eah5970g2dis2gd5a~7...">http://www.provantage.com/asus-eah5970g2dis2gd5a~7...
  
  
  

• K1rkl4nd - Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - link

  Am I the only one waiting for TI to come out with a 3x3 grid of 1080p DLPs? You'd think if they can wedge ~2.2 million mini-mirrors on a chip, they should be able to scale that up to a native 5760x3240. Then they could buddy up with Dell and sell it as an Alienware premium package of display + computer capable of using it.

• skrewler2 - Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - link

  When can we see benchmarks of 2x 5970 in CF?

• Mr Perfect - Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - link

  "This means that it’s not just a bit quieter to sound meters, but it really comes across that way to human ears too"
  
  Have you considered using the dBA filter rather then just raw dB? dBA is weighted to measure the tones that the human ear is most sensitive to, so noise-oriented sites like SPCR use dBA instead.