ATIs 5000s on newegg!!! (Edit from original title)

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  1. Posts : 322
    Windows 7 PRO x64
       #1

    ATIs 5000s on newegg!!! (Edit from original title)


    Computer Shopper: News: ATI launches world's first DirectX 11 graphics card: the Radeon HD 5870

    News

    [Graphics cards]
    Tuesday 22nd September 2009
    ATI launches world's first DirectX 11 graphics card: the Radeon HD 5870 11:08PM, Tuesday 22nd September 2009

    It's been a while since anything truly exciting happened in the world of PC graphics cards, but as Shopper sat in a sweaty London Bridge meeting room for five hours of briefings from AMD, we knew the 5870 was going to change all that.
    Performance
    This beast of a PCI Express card (it's 280mm long) packs an incredible punch, and takes the title of 'world's fastest graphics card' with ease. We tested a final production Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 and in Crysis it returned a stunning 56.4fps at 1,680x1,050 with 4x anti-aliasing and detail levels set to High.
    That makes it faster than Nvidia's GTX 295 (44fps) and ATI's own 4870X2 (41fps), both of which have two graphics processors. The GTX 295 costs roughly £20 more than the 5870, which goes on sale today for around £330 including VAT.
    Nvidia's DirectX 11 graphics processor is currently nowhere to be seen, and the company is likely to be fairly worried at the sheer power that ATI has managed to produce from a single GPU. Even more worrying for Nvidia is that ATI doesn't just have one new GPU but four. The HD 5870 will be joined by the HD 5700-series in October, using a GPU codenamed Juniper, and the fastest card is likely to cost below £170, but still be quicker than Nvidia's cards at the same price. Redwood is an even more cut-down GPU (models are likely to be the HD 5670 and HD 5650) for undemanding gamers, while Cedar is for the cheapest cards; both will surface in early 2010. The fearsome Hemlock is almost certain to be a dual-processor card with a pair of 5870 GPUs, and may even appear before Christmas and cost between £350 and £450.
    DirectX 11
    With Vista came DirectX 10 (DX10), but few gamers were bothered by this as it offered almost no noticeable benefits. It's a different story with DirectX 11 (DX11), though. For a start, it won't be exclusive to Windows 7: Vista users will get it at some point in the near future. This means games developers should sit up and take more notice, and DirectX 11 games - in theory - will appear thick and fast. Currently though, there are only a handful of DX11 titles due out before Christmas, including Colin McRae: Dirt 2, Aliens vs Predator, BattleForge and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat.
    DirectX 11 is an evolution of DirectX 10, and while it still lacks some of the features that games developers have been asking Microsoft for since the launch of Vista, it does have some highlights that are sure to bring big improvements to game effects.



    One is tessellation. This has been around since 2001, but with the power of new graphics cards like the HD 5870, it can be put to use making objects and scenery in games look more lifelike. It automatically increases the complexity of an object as the player moves closer to it, adding extra triangles only when they're needed. Previously, developers would have to make several different versions of an object, and show the appropriate one depending on its distance to the player. Tessellation, therefore, is just one feature that makes the programmer's life easier, and is why they are more likely to produce games that take advantage of DirectX 11.DirectCompute is also new. It's main purpose isn't for gaming, but to allow the GPU to be used for other functions. GPUs are excellent at executing instructions in parallel, while CPUs excel at executing instructions in a serial fashion. Essentially, it means that applications which can take advantage of parallel processors can run much, much faster. Video transcoding is a good example. Often these days, you'll need to convert a video to a different format, perhaps to watch on a portable media player. This conversion can take a long time using a CPU, but a GPU can complete the job in a fraction of the time.
    A third benefit of DirectX 11 is multithreaded rendering. Again, this simply means that the full power of a dual-, triple- or quad-core CPU can be used, avoiding the traditional bottleneck which slowed a fast graphics card down. In theory, it should lead to more frames per second in the latest games.
    EyeFinity
    Not content with merely extra power, ATI has also innovated with features like Eyefinity. This may just be a marketing word for supporting multiple monitors, but it's good to see the HD 5870 supporting three monitors rather than the traditional two. We already covered the details of Eyefinity two weeks ago, but suffice to say that the HD 5870 is more than powerful enough to drive three 1080p monitors when playing the latest games like Dirt 2.
    Even if you're not interested in Eyefinity for gaming, it means you can have three monitors on your desk running at the same or different resolutions, horizontally or vertically and work even more efficiently than before. Soon, ATI says special Eyefinity6 cards will be available with six DisplayPort outputs for running six monitors from a single card.
    Power
    The Radeon HD 5870 processor has 2.15 billion transistors inside it, compared with 956 million in the HD 4870. This partially explains why it's roughly twice as fast, but the good news is that it doesn't generate twice the heat or use twice the power. This is because ATI has used a smaller manufacturing process which reduces the GPU's size. While the 4870 used a maximum of 160W, the new card uses little more at 188W. Importantly, it uses just 27W when idle, compared to the 4870's 90W.
    During our testing, we were impressed with the card's quiet fan, which was never noisy even when running benchmarks. While we haven't had enough time to fully test it's overclocking potential, we're certain that there's plenty of scope to get even better performance from this amazing GPU.
    The Verdict
    It's really too early to say whether the HD 5870 is the ultimate graphics card - much will depend on whether lots of awe-inspiring DirectX 11 games appear soon. It's fairly certain that the HD 5870 won't be the best-value card in the new 5000 range, but it will still inject life into your existing DirectX 9 and 10 games collection, thank to its astonishing power which should allow you to ramp all the graphical settings to the max, and enjoy your games again - the way the developers intended you to.
    If your budget won't quite stretch to £270, fear not. There's a good chance that existing fast cards like the HD 4870 and 4890 will plummet in price, so you might be able to bag a bargain.

    Jim Martin
      My Computer


  2. Posts : 322
    Windows 7 PRO x64
    Thread Starter
       #2
      My Computer


  3. Posts : 4,282
    Windows 7 Ultimate Vista Ultimate x64
       #3

    That's a sweet looking card and that's coming from someone who only buys Nvidia, well done ATI.
      My Computer


  4. Posts : 2
    Windows 7 Ultimate
       #4

    I am ready to buy a new video card and have been waiting for this card to be released.

    Thanks for the newegg link.... my questions are:

    1) Why would you buy one over the other? They are all priced the same but why is there an ASUS, Saphire, and HIT card? What makes them different from one another and why would you choose an Asus over a Saphire for example?

    2) They say 2 X DVI out..... I thought these cards could support three monitors. I have three DVI monitors and would want to run them all from one card. Am I missing something?


    Thanks.

    D.
      My Computer


  5. Posts : 115
    Windows 7
       #5

    Overpriced! Nothing today or in the next 6 months needs anything this powerful. By the time games/apps need something like this, the price will be down by 50-80 bucks.
      My Computer


  6. Posts : 8,398
    ultimate 64 sp1
       #6

    a good point gizbug,

    bleeding-edge (or even cutting-edge) hardware is always going to be horrendously expensive due to the need to recoup high development costs.

    the good news is that it brings the price down on the previous 'high-end' stuff, making it affordable to the masses...

    ...further increasing the profits of the manufacturer...

    ...thereby spurring the competition...

    ...resulting in lower prices!

    sounds good to me

    a big thanks to early adopters - order your card now!
      My Computer


  7. Posts : 22
    Windows XP 32, Linux 32, Windows 7 64bit
       #7

    Got a question. Compared to the 295 how do the specs stack up. Too me it seems that the 295 is just as good. Though just more expensive.

    Agreed nobody needs this much power in a video card unless your doing something other then games such as graphic design or game development art.
      My Computer


  8. Posts : 5,747
    7600.20510 x86
       #8

    New Overclock Tool specifically made for 5870. AMD GPU Clock Tool v0.9.26.0 For HD 5870 download from Guru3D.com
      My Computer


  9. Posts : 3,322
    Windows 8.1 Pro x64
       #9

    Mr GRiM said:
    That's a sweet looking card and that's coming from someone who only buys Nvidia, well done ATI.
    Yea, them vents look awesome on it. Would love an Nvidia card to look like that, have the same black, but change the red trims to Nvidia green and it'd look great

    Overclockers have some up for pre-order for UK as well http://www.overclockers.co.uk/produc...=56&subid=1502
      My Computer


  10. Posts : 353
    Win 7 Ultimate x64
       #10

    gizbug said:
    Overpriced! Nothing today or in the next 6 months needs anything this powerful. By the time games/apps need something like this, the price will be down by 50-80 bucks.
    I object,

    Microsoft Flight Simulator X, hands down, will take all the freakin juice you can give her and still ask for more. Trust me.
      My Computer


 
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