The Official HD 5800 Series Review thread

[Sound_Card]

I'm disappointed, even the Rage3D review failed to test SSAA on games that can't do AA at all.

Maybe because most of those games are bleh.
It's not really up to the IHV's to dedicate them selves to fixing something that should be of the ISV's job. Sometimes, you can't force AA in a game because the problem comes down to if AA is even compatible with the engine at all.

[Destroy]

The Rage3D Preview highlighted some common titles. I'll look at investigating more in those titles as part of follow articles - thanks for the tip.

Cool, looking forward to it. You may want to add Stalker:SoC to test as it's still popular esp. with the recent major mod releases.

Maybe because most of those games are bleh.
It's not really up to the IHV's to dedicate them selves to fixing something that should be of the ISV's job. Sometimes, you can't force AA in a game because the problem comes down to if AA is even compatible with the engine at all.

It's worth noting that the list is far from complete. Only reason it's so short is because NV is able to do AA in games where ATI can't and vice versa.

[Sasquach]

I must resist....its costs so damn much!

I dont know if im willing to drop $450 Canadian for a graphics card.....I think the most expensive card i ever bought was like 350 or something like that (I think it was the All-In-Wonder X800XT at the time)

Im definately getting the 5870 though. I havent bought the highest end part in terms of graphics before (well the X800 technically is, but i bought that after the X1900's or whatever X800 sucessor was out)

Now i just gotta think...drop the big dough and get it now, wait for prices to be more reasonable, or wait for the 2gb version......

[Spyhawk]

So far im loving this launch and all the glowing reviews. AMD should gain some well deserverd market share with this :-)

Btw, I couldnt help but notice that for once NV hasnt tried to counter ATI with anything . Now thats wierd. I dont remember the last time that happened. NV has always been able to spoil ATIs launches in the past.

Hmm I feel a disturbance in the force.

[Gandalfthewhite]

GT300 is kind of running behind schedule tho I have a feeling it will be out this year even if its rushed somewhat. but as someone metioned and I agree I think AMD is holding onto the 5870x2 as its trump card for when NV releases it.

[Corum Jhaelen Irsei]

GT300 is kind of running behind schedule tho I have a feeling it will be out this year even if its rushed somewhat. but as someone metioned and I agree I think AMD is holding onto the 5870x2 as its trump card for when NV releases it.

Don't hold your breath on the 300....

[GanjaStar]

awesome card with last gen VRAM and under utilized raw power, imo.

if all games ran like GRID and HAWX ATI would be unstoppable.

[razor1]

You were impressed when the 280 came out though, and it did not beat the last gens dual card. Your hypocrisy is showing. Nv will not have the crown, because when they release their very hot and very late card, ati will release the x2.

the gtx 280 was faster then 25%-30% of the g80 wasn't it?

Oh yes do you know the die size of the g300? What if nV comes out with thier x2 too? You are talking about if and buts, and your hypocrisy shows too. Its nice the HD5870 is 25-30% then the gtx 285, but you think nV will come out with a chip that won't be 50%+ faster then their previous gen just like ATi just did.

[badsykes]

Some people here drain too much energy from nature to talk about an infinte closed circle that will possibly never end in their own life cycle if they smoke, drink or f**k too much..
Is techpowerup the only site that benched the 5850?Anyway after i saw those results i don't what is in AMD head to put 100dollars different for so little difference between the cards..Either they want to profit on people that actually don't read anything and just go for top stuff or they consider we are too stupid to see..Only 10FPS or max 20FPS in games that deliver very high framerate like CoH or very very little differences in games like Crysis or Stalker that usually demand much from the OS.Is 100$ wth..With some OC on 5850 you just you almost kick the 5870 in the back..

[Wild Thing]

the gtx 280 was faster then 25%-30% of the g80 wasn't it?

Oh yes do you know the die size of the g300? What if nV comes out with thier x2 too? You are talking about if and buts, and your hypocrisy shows too. Its nice the HD5870 is 25-30% then the gtx 285, but you think nV will come out with a chip that won't be 50%+ faster then their previous gen just like ATi just did.

Aaaw....how cute that you didn't mention the GTX280 cost $649 on release.
The green team is now "runner up" in the graphics cards performance war.
Let's hear from you again once you actually have a new chip on the market and for sale......till then its vaporware.

[vertex_shader]

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call Of Pripyat Delayed To 2010

AMD won't be happy, looks like NV paycheck arrived in time

[razor1]

Aaaw....how cute that you didn't mention the GTX280 cost $649 on release.
The green team is now "runner up" in the graphics cards performance war.
Let's hear from you again once you actually have a new chip on the market and for sale......till then its vaporware.

they will probably price according to performance again as always, and yeah it is vaporware for about another month. Which is fine because its very hard to get a hd5870 in retail now.

[Crisler]

Is techpowerup the only site that benched the 5850?.

I would seriously question their 5850 numbers since my sources say they might get review samples Monday.. I guess they might have got one ahead of everyone but I doubt they would beat out Anand or Tom for getting the first one.

[Corum Jhaelen Irsei]

the gtx 280 was faster then 25%-30% of the g80 wasn't it?

Oh yes do you know the die size of the g300? What if nV comes out with thier x2 too? You are talking about if and buts, and your hypocrisy shows too. Its nice the HD5870 is 25-30% then the gtx 285, but you think nV will come out with a chip that won't be 50%+ faster then their previous gen just like ATi just did.

No, it was not more than 25%-30% faster. And it was beeten by the GX2 in almost every game. But you lavished it with praise. Be a man and admit that nothing ATi does is good enough for you, and nothing Nv does will be bad enough to bother you.

[Corum Jhaelen Irsei]

they will probably price according to performance again as always, and yeah it is vaporware for about another month. Which is fine because its very hard to get a hd5870 in retail now.

Stop the spin. There will be no gt300 in a month. It will be after Christmas. If you are waiting for the green team, than you will be waiting a llllooonnnnggg time.

[acroig]

Stop the spin. There will be no gt300 in a month. It will be after Christmas. If you are waiting for the green team, than you will be waiting a llllooonnnnggg time.

What will you say IF nV launches before x-mas? I know you have sources but give yourself some wiggle room in case nV manages to pull it off.

[ikarinokami]

not impressed in the least. hopefully the gt300 will save the day. otherwise this will be the first time ever, since the introduction of the vodoo that i will skip a generation.

[SirBaron]

Man some of you really love your companies way, way, too much, that goes for Razor1 and Corum.

Instead of arguing useless points that will not change either of your minds. Why not just accept the fact that ATI came out with a DX11 card first, and is currently the fastest single GPU on the market, at a decent price that isn't the usual £400 ripoff.

If Nvidia could have released their GPU it's pretty obvious they would have however they haven't.

I'd be tempted to buy this card for my self if it wasn't for the fact I use 3D vision, and there's no way I'm going back to flat 2D gaming again.

I just hope Nvidia doesn't screw me over with the next card otherwise I shall be most pissed.

[Sound_Card]

Hmm interesting because it pulls away when AA and AF are set higher it does bettter.

You need to read the reviews that compare it to the HD 4890 1GB to get a better picture, but I will but it this way. The card has double everything, with massive amount of tweaks on top, yet only a fraction more bandwidth. Quite a few games, it will only pull about 30% over the HD 4890 which is roughly the amount of bandwidth it has more then it. If somebody can manage to OC the ram by 100mhz at least, that would be one interesting test result. The card is starved.
Actually, their should be no reason what so ever the HD 4870x2 being faster in any title. The only reason it would be is because of bandwidth and drivers.

[razor1]

No, it was not more than 25%-30% faster. And it was beeten by the GX2 in almost every game. But you lavished it with praise. Be a man and admit that nothing ATi does is good enough for you, and nothing Nv does will be bad enough to bother you.

Hmm come again? Want me to pull some reviews of the GTX at launch.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/14934/10

http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/hardware/grafikkarten/2008/test_nvidia_geforce_gtx_280_sli/14/#abschnitt_direct3d9benchmarks

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3334&p=11

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=577

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-gtx-280,1953-16.html

It was a solid 75% faster in almost all cases and the few that it wasn't were older games that really didn't push the card at the time, and with newer games with heavier shaders at higher settings it pulled away from the the gx2 too.

I think you should have looked some reviews up before you posted.

[razor1]

You need to read the reviews that compare it to the HD 4890 1GB to get a better picture, but I will but it this way. The card has double everything, with massive amount of tweaks on top, yet only a fraction more bandwidth. Quite a few games, it will only pull about 30% over the HD 4890 which is roughly the amount of bandwidth it has more then it. If somebody can manage to OC the ram by 100mhz at least, that would be one interesting test result. The card is starved.
Actually, their should be no reason what so ever the HD 4870x2 being faster in any title. The only reason it would be is because of bandwidth and drivers.

Yeah that would be interesting to see the OC's unfortunately looks like the tools to overclock might have to be tweaked a bit. But then again, I don't think this card is being pushed on the shader wise, I think its it's raw fillrates that is helping it out at higher settings.

[razor1]

Stop the spin. There will be no gt300 in a month. It will be after Christmas. If you are waiting for the green team, than you will be waiting a llllooonnnnggg time.

ok lets see what happens. Still doesn't change the fact this card ATM doesn't impress me, I was expecting more something like the the 4870 performance leap, which btw was 75%+ of the HD 3870!

[ikarinokami]

Stop the spin. There will be no gt300 in a month. It will be after Christmas. If you are waiting for the green team, than you will be waiting a llllooonnnnggg time.

why would you not wait? this new ati card is not that great. the only game pushing any hardware right now is two year old crysis. Unless you're running a 5 year old graphics cards, there is just no reason other than wanting the newest thing, to buying what really is just a slight evolution of a card. It would be the mildest of overstatements to call it mediocre.

[jam2k]

Added PCLab which has Battleforge DX11 benchies.

[vertex_shader]

Stalker: Call of Pripyat - The first DirectX 11 screenshots

[demo]

Stalker: Call of Pripyat - The first DirectX 11 screenshots

The head shows a nice improvment in that all of it's features are round instead of straight lines. The nose piece, airfilter and the top of the head all look good. Hopefully with DX11 there will be no more hexagon gun barrels and octogon car wheels

As for the shadows, I can see the difference but it's not that much of an improvment imo.. but it's hard to judge without actually playing and seeing the real time dynamic shadows in action overlapping each other and so on.

And I guess there should be performance improvments in the DX11 version aswell, would be nice to see some numbers.

[dom_k]

It seems many reviewers are overlooking the cards ability to bitstream Dolby Digital True HD. Surely this is a massive boon to those with htpcs? I would like to see a proper comparison of sound quality between this card and appropriate equipment (bddrive, amp etc) against a standalone blu-ray player. So far I know that "it works" but how well?

[curio]

Stalker: Call of Pripyat - The first DirectX 11 screenshots

I think they got this one mixed up, DX 11 looks like it is the one on the left:

[curio]

It seems many reviewers are overlooking the cards ability to bitstream Dolby Digital True HD. Surely this is a massive boon to those with htpcs? I would like to see a proper comparison of sound quality between this card and appropriate equipment (bddrive, amp etc) against a standalone blu-ray player. So far I know that "it works" but how well?

Yeah I'm stoked about that feature - but I'll be waiting for a lower voltage, lower clocked version to put in an htpc. There's no way I'd put the 5870 or 5850 in an htpc.

[caveman-jim]

You need to read the reviews that compare it to the HD 4890 1GB to get a better picture, but I will but it this way. The card has double everything, with massive amount of tweaks on top, yet only a fraction more bandwidth. Quite a few games, it will only pull about 30% over the HD 4890 which is roughly the amount of bandwidth it has more then it. If somebody can manage to OC the ram by 100mhz at least, that would be one interesting test result. The card is starved.
Actually, their should be no reason what so ever the HD 4870x2 being faster in any title. The only reason it would be is because of bandwidth and drivers.

Which bandwidth are you talking about?

[caveman-jim]

why would you not wait? this new ati card is not that great. the only game pushing any hardware right now is two year old crysis. Unless you're running a 5 year old graphics cards, there is just no reason other than wanting the newest thing, to buying what really is just a slight evolution of a card. It would be the mildest of overstatements to call it mediocre.

W.
T.
F.

r u crak mang?

[HiThere]

Yeah I'm stoked about that feature - but I'll be waiting for a lower voltage, lower clocked version to put in an htpc. There's no way I'd put the 5870 or 5850 in an htpc.

The ability to biststream is great for those who have DTS-MA capable receivers, but I'm also mildly interested in the ability to decode and pass the advanced audio codecs in full bitrate 7.1 PCM to my slightly older Denon (lacks advanced audio codec support, but will accept 7.1 PCM over HDMI).

It's kind of a tempest in a teacup, however, as the resampling to 16-bit previous to this was likely of sufficient quality that there won't be any audible gains...slightly better than CD-quality sound to 8 channels on my 4350 is enough for me!

[dom_k]

Yeah I'm stoked about that feature - but I'll be waiting for a lower voltage, lower clocked version to put in an htpc. There's no way I'd put the 5870 or 5850 in an htpc.

That would probably make more sense but I can't afford to have a dedicated htpc as well. I'll just crank the volume to 11 to drown out the noise!

[acroig]

Which bandwidth are you talking about?

Memory Bandwidth? Since he asked for reviews with oc VRAM numbers.

[The PyroPath]

Here is a dutch review, they included crossfire numbers, it looks to scale very very nice only culpri is the CPU sometimes (like the left4dead numbers)

they made a newspost about them having 3 cards and showed a sneakpeek of 3x crossfire in 3dmark with the remark they were going to release a 3x review soon

btw the Vapor-X picture looks like a render, this is supposed to be the real deal:

[becco]

I think they got this one mixed up, DX 11 looks like it is the one on the left:

Yep, you were right. The character with Tessellation is the one with perfect poly.

I flipped horizontal that image

[Sound_Card]

I'm talking about memory bandwidth Jim, not internal chip bandwidth.

[Sound_Card]

btw the Vapor-X picture looks like a render, this is supposed to be the real deal:

I want.

[Ancient76]

No, it was not more than 25%-30% faster. And it was beeten by the GX2 in almost every game. But you lavished it with praise. Be a man and admit that nothing ATi does is good enough for you, and nothing Nv does will be bad enough to bother you.

?

GTX 280 was on release 40-50% faster than 8800GTX. Later even more with better drivers.

And GX2 was a pretty bad card.

[SirBaron]

I'm liking the tessellation stuff, though how does it do it, and is there a performance loss for it?

I mean it must obviously have advantages to just making a higher polygon object or there would be no point to it.