ATI Radeon HD 5870 Review

[Airbot]

Following a successful run with the codenamed R700 family of GPUs, which was originally released back in June 2008 as the Radeon HD 4000 series, AMD is launching the highly anticipated R800. Debuting to no one's surprise as the ATI Radeon HD 5000, the new series is said deliver around 2x more performance than previous generation Radeon cards, and brings DirectX 11 support to desktops for the first time.

more..

 

[Pandemonium]

For something theoretically doubling the processing power of a HD4890 I'm not totally impressed with the results.

According to Toms Hardware graphs, its beaten by the 4870 x2
3x monitor support according to initial tests seems a bit iffy. I'm sure driver sets in the future will iron out issues as always, but on a whole I'm a little disappointed with the 5870.

 

[thefabe]

IMO for the first time (since I'm looking to upgrade to just 1 card)
This looks very promising. I'll just have to get used to the ATI drivers since I have always heard nothing but problems with them yet lately since AMD took over things are getting better. Awsome card.

 

[stormy13]

Here's a few more reviews,

Radeon HD 5870 review
DirectX 11 in the Open: ATI Radeon HD 5870 Review - X-bit labs
AnandTech: AMD's Radeon HD 5870: Bringing About the Next Generation Of GPUs
ATI Radeon HD 5870: DirectX 11, Eyefinity, And Serious Speed : Introduction
AMD's Radeon HD 5870 graphics processor - The Tech Report - Page 1
PC Perspective - ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB Graphics Card and AMD Eyefinity Review
Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 1GB GDDR5 Review
Introduction - AMD\'s ATI Radeon HD 5870 Video Card Review | [H]ard|OCP
techPowerUp :: AMD Radeon HD 5870 1 GB GDDR5 Review :: Page 1 / 34
ATI Radeon HD 5870 Graphics Card Review - Introduction - DriverHeaven.net
ATI Radeon HD 5870 Performance Preview
ATI Radeon HD 5870 review from TechRadar UK's expert reviews of Graphics cards
HEXUS.net - Review :: AMD ATI Radeon HD 5870 DX11 graphics-card reviewed and rated : Page - 1/16
ATI Radeon HD 5870 DX11 Video Card Review - The World's First DX11 GPU - Legit Reviews
Legion Hardware

 

[SquonkSC]

IMO for the first time (since I'm looking to upgrade to just 1 card)
This looks very promising. I'll just have to get used to the ATI drivers since I have always heard nothing but problems with them yet lately since AMD took over things are getting better. Awsome card.

Only the new ATI UI (since 9.7) is a complete disaster.

It more like a puzzle game, than an UI.

I hope they fire the moron who came up with it.

 

[mickey megabyte]

who uses ccc anyway? - ati tray tools is far superior...and the latest beta works just fine.

 

[ratePV]

1600 SPU's!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

make's my 8800gt look pity with its 112 stream processors!

who uses ccc anyway? - ati tray tools is far superior...and the latest beta works just fine.

+1 more color=more bloat!

 

[jfar]

Thanks for the read, looks like a good card but still wasn't convinced at the end whether it is as good as they say, maybe time will prove me wrong.

 

[SquonkSC]

who uses ccc anyway? - ati tray tools is far superior...and the latest beta works just fine.

Thanks mickey,

I forgot about that little gem. Will dl it asap.

+rep

 

[Zeca Urubu]

This card will show best results with drivers revision.

In my opinion AMD is confortable position in next generation of video cards because sell first yours products

 

[mickey megabyte]

who uses ccc anyway? - ati tray tools is far superior...and the latest beta works just fine.

Thanks mickey,

I forgot about that little gem. Will dl it asap.

+rep

yes, it certainly is a little gem. it's the first thing i install after my drivers. it can do so many things - full dynamic control of d3d and opengl settings, over- or under-clocking, fine fan speed control, hardware monitoring, custom shortcuts for each game...

i wholeheartedly recommend it to all ati card users - say goodbye to ccc for ever! (well nearly, i don't think att does fancy tv-out stuff, luckily i don't need it anyway. )

 

[A320]

Hey guys,

Just got my MSI 5870 installed. I tried installing ATI Tray Tools but got the errors related to digitally signed drivers and Win7 x64 not allowing it. After googling I found the fix, downloaded DSEO (http://orestech.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/ati-tray-tools-with-win7-rc-64bit/), and ran it as instructed to 'sign' the files atitray64.sys and atitray.sys but after rebooting, during startup, when windows goes to startup tray tools, my screen just goes blue (not BSOD blue but a purple/blue color) and freezes.

I removed tray tools and elected to just install the ATI CCC and everything works normally although I'd rather give tray tools I try instead.

 

[mickey megabyte]

hi A320, it could be that att doesn't support the latest 5xxx cards yet - the software is solely maintained by one guy, ray adams.

he does get around to adding support for new cards, you gotta keep visiting the forum to see if he has...

oh, and you don't need to bother with the dseo - ati tray tools works quite happily without the unsigned driver, at least it has done on all the win 7 x64 builds i've tried to date...

 

[pparks1]

From what Maximum PC said, this card is smoking hot, while consuming less power than similar cards that it outperformed and it only pulls down about 27 watts of power when doing things like your desktop and such. And at less than $400 for that much card, it seems like a great deal.

 

[A320]

hi A320, it could be that att doesn't support the latest 5xxx cards yet - the software is solely maintained by one guy, ray adams.

he does get around to adding support for new cards, you gotta keep visiting the forum to see if he has...

oh, and you don't need to bother with the dseo - ati tray tools works quite happily without the unsigned driver, at least it has done on all the win 7 x64 builds i've tried to date...

That makes sense I guess, but as for tray tools working happily, it won't in my case, but again that may be like you said, nothing to do with digitally signing the program, but just that it is not supporting the new cards yet.

Thanks, I guess CCC for now.

PS - this card is freakin awesome!

PPS - on a side note, since this card, my mouse cursor unexpectedly just goes big on me while working in windows. It's starting to piss me off, anyone know wtf??? It's a microsoft sidewinder

 

[SquonkSC]

hi A320, it could be that att doesn't support the latest 5xxx cards yet - the software is solely maintained by one guy, ray adams.

he does get around to adding support for new cards, you gotta keep visiting the forum to see if he has...

oh, and you don't need to bother with the dseo - ati tray tools works quite happily without the unsigned driver, at least it has done on all the win 7 x64 builds i've tried to date...

That makes sense I guess, but as for tray tools working happily, it won't in my case, but again that may be like you said, nothing to do with digitally signing the program, but just that it is not supporting the new cards yet.

Thanks, I guess CCC for now.

PS - this card is freakin awesome!

PPS - on a side note, since this card, my mouse cursor unexpectedly just goes big on me while working in windows. It's starting to piss me off, anyone know wtf??? It's a microsoft sidewinder

Hi,

It's either a setting in ATI CCC somewhere. Zoom cursor something,

or it's in the mouse settings, but I suspect it's ccc.

Good luck finding it.

 

[A320]

I found the answer in another thread and it appears this is a common glitch among many users of this card and windows with no real fix yet.

 

[Csyzr]

Ati Radeon 5870 oversized mouse fix

i too was suffering from the enlarged mouse. didnt get the video crashes. The secondary display port on radeon 5870 (probably other 5*** models too) is faulty due to drivers failing to parse correctly. this seems to be isolated to the secondary display port only, as i've yet to see it happen on Port 1. personal experience only.

my fix was: Use 1 monitor. Use the top port (in my case anyway). out of sight out of mind.

if you are using dual monitors, gotta wait for a fix. i have CCC 10.3 and still persists. tried 9.12 and 10.2 hotfixes.

not really a fix, but temporary acceptable solution.

 

[Gilly]

who uses ccc anyway? - ati tray tools is far superior...and the latest beta works just fine.

its crap with all the 5-series because you cant set specific automatic fan speed
yet msi afterburner can

 

[JohnPC]

I've installed the Asus ATI 5870 and I'm pretty psyched about it. The utils that came with it allow for manual fan speed, automatic or temperature limit rpm settings... I just have it on auto...
I'm running 2 LCDs and a through-the-sheet-rock connect to my HDTV for Hulu etc. No problems yet for games / productivity. What puzzled me for a while is that my 1st Win 7-64 install showed a 7.4 Windows Experience for graphics. My latter installs have been showing 6.0... a huge drop. I haven't noticed any change... just the numbers on WEI... I read later on 7forums that those number have a tendency to change, and that its best to disregard them anyhow.

Updated:
I've managed to get the WEI index back up to 7.8.
New ATI 790FX drivers did the trick.