[Tech Report] 5970 Review and OC

2507 Views 27 Replies 23 Participants Last post by TheBlademaster01, Nov 23, 2009

Daegameth

Discussion Starter · Nov 22, 2009

Quote:

Conclusions
What to make of the Radeon HD 5970? On the one hand, it's clearly the fastest graphics card you can plug into your PC, easily outpacing the previous champ, the GeForce GTX 295. This one seemed like an obvious winner, given that it has two of AMD's excellent Cypress GPUs onboard. That means all sorts of goodness we haven't really discussed yet in the context of this review, including a DirectX 11-capable feature set (which no Nvidia GPU has yet delivered) and the highest texture filtering quality on the market. At its default speeds, the card's power draw, thermals, and acoustics are all quite good, too. There's lots to like here.

AMD's new product stack

On the other hand, the 5970 is, well, extreme in various ways. The 12"-plus board length is the most obvious candidate, followed closely by the need to overvolt and overclock the productâ€"and void your warrantyâ€"in order to achieve its true potential. Once you've done so, the 5970 will draw more power than it probably should through its aux power connectors, and it will be one hot and loud card, too.

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1 - 20 of 28 Posts

mothergoose729

· #2 · Nov 22, 2009

Hmm.... these cards could have been pushed further. Results are lack luster IMO, often barely pulling ahead of GTX285 in SLI or even falling behind in some tests. Clearly a need for better drives to show the real potential of this card.

That being said the fastest card available bar none.

quentin

· #3 · Nov 22, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by mothergoose729

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Hmm.... these cards could have been pushed further. Results are lack luster IMO, often barely pulling ahead of GTX285 in SLI or even falling behind in some tests. Clearly a need for better drives to show the real potential of this card.

That being said the fastest card available bar none.

Ugh, yeah...This is a single slot solution that's beating nVidia's second best card by two-fold. Still not sold?: It has 50% less power consumption under load than the gtx 285 sli. The drivers are still in their infancy stages as well, making this card all the more impressive.

I wonder how far you can push this card? The test only went up to 5870 speeds, but hinted at the fact that you can go further.

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andygoyap

· #4 · Nov 22, 2009

it's really not good to compare 2x 285's vs 1x 5970..

and look at the price difference.. if you buy a good brand of gtx 285's lets say EVGA?

It would be around $400 each, if you buy there FTW version that would be $449. So that would be around $898 for 2 Gtx 285's

If you buy a good 5970 brand which is sapphire it costs $600.

Do you still have no idea why 5970 is way better then 2x GTX 285's ?

Even if you buy the EVGA FTX GTX 295 in quad sli competing against the 5970 in quad sli, it gets eaten by tons

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ZealotKi11er

· #5 · Nov 22, 2009

I would wait for drivers and ATi has not done any improvement with 5 series in terms of game performance. Al so i kind of don trust the review. I mean how can GTX285 SLI be more then 50% faster in some test then GTX295. It more like 15-25% tops.

mattliston

· #6 · Nov 22, 2009

With a much better cooler, way more potential can be found

for christs sake the damn thing was idling at 78C stock

get that down to 40-50 and maybe some extra voltage wont turn it into an oven

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Diabolical999

· #7 · Nov 22, 2009

Why would they not put an HDMI output on that thing? They did on the 5870. DVI is fine, but ya know, why have 2 when you already put one on there! My only pet peeve. As I hate adapters, and soley use HDMI.

Spart

· #8 · Nov 22, 2009

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Originally Posted by Diabolical999

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Why would they not put an HDMI output on that thing? They did on the 5870. DVI is fine, but ya know, why have 2 when you already put one on there! My only pet peeve, as I hate adapters.

Hell it makes me want it even more than the 5870 Vapor X I've been eyeing. If they wpuld have put an HDMI on there it would have ruined my single slot watercooled dreams. HDMI isn't as popular as DVI in monitors yet. Right now I have a $25 lan card just sitting there because I only have 2 PCI slots and one is covered by my GPU. The free one has my Prelude in it.

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fraudbrand

· #9 · Nov 22, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by andygoyap

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it's really not good to compare 2x 285's vs 1x 5970..

and look at the price difference.. if you buy a good brand of gtx 285's lets say EVGA?

It would be around $400 each, if you buy there FTW version that would be $449. So that would be around $898 for 2 Gtx 285's

If you buy a good 5970 brand which is sapphire it costs $600.

Do you still have no idea why 5970 is way better then 2x GTX 285's ?

Even if you buy the EVGA FTX GTX 295 in quad sli competing against the 5970 in quad sli, it gets eaten by tons

Best Buy sells BFG 285's for $275

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ChickenInferno

· #10 · Nov 22, 2009

I really wish they would have found a maximum overclock for the card and not just stopped at the 5870 speeds.

TheBlademaster01

· #11 · Nov 22, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by fraudbrand

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Best Buy sells BFG 285's for $275

Yeah, $449 for the GTX285 is highly exaggerated as you can almost get a GTX295 for that price. And why wouldn't it be fair to compare GTX285 SLI with the HD5970, they're both dual GPU solutions. (GTX285 vs HD5850/5870).

Don't get me wrong here, I'd buy an HD5970 over GTX285 SLI at all times (DX 11 and eyefinity FTW

).

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2

Spart

· #12 · Nov 22, 2009

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Originally Posted by fraudbrand

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Best Buy sells BFG 285's for $275

We sell the BFG GTX275 for $260. The GTX285 isn't available in most stores if any. There's only 2 285's listed on the site and both are EVGA. The cheaper with 1gb of vram is $379.

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overcrash

· #13 · Nov 22, 2009

Whoever has 5870 already, get another one. Who doesn't get 2 x 5850 its almost the same.

HA3AP

· #14 · Nov 22, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheBlademaster01

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Yeah, $449 for the GTX285 is highly exaggerated as you can almost get a GTX295 for that price. And why wouldn't it be fair to compare GTX285 SLI with the HD5970, they're both dual GPU solutions. (GTX285 vs HD5850/5870).

Don't get me wrong here, I'd buy an HD5970 over GTX285 SLI at all times (DX 11 and eyefinity FTW

).

Even though the 5970 is a multi-gpu solution, its a single card, not all people have sli/crossfire motherboards...

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2

TheBlademaster01

· #15 · Nov 22, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by HA3AP

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Even though the 5970 is a multi-gpu solution, its a single card, not all people have sli/crossfire motherboards...

That doesn't make any sense, because then you can take into account that the 320mm HD5970 won't fit in most midsize cases

. Performance wise it's a good comarison

.

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3

psi_guy

· #16 · Nov 22, 2009

wow, 5970 for the win!

ChickenInferno

· #17 · Nov 23, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheBlademaster01

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That doesn't make any sense, because then you can take into account that the 320mm HD5970 won't fit in most midsize cases

. Performance wise it's a good comarison

.

Actually his point does make sense. If you are using a mobo with only one PCIe 2.0 x16 like the Gigabyte EP45-UD3R (A great overclocking board that does not support SLI or crossfire due to only have one PCIe slot), then you could not physically put in two cards. Yes, the card is huge, but that wasn't his point.

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3

Licht

· #18 · Nov 23, 2009

That's it, Crossfire is over, everyone out. Seriously, scaling has gone to hell.

ErBall

· #19 · Nov 23, 2009

If i hear one more person yell driver infancy im gonna spit.

The same thing was thrown around when the 4800 series launched, and the drivers BARELY got better over the following 6 months. That is when I finally parted with them. I switched back from nvidia about 3 months after that to another 4800 series card only to find the drivers still were not up to snuff.

Call me jaded, but i find the initial driver release to be well within spec of what future performance of a card will hold.

Ihitbuttons

· #20 · Nov 23, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChickenInferno

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I really wish they would have found a maximum overclock for the card and not just stopped at the 5870 speeds.

Guru3d has some benchmarks that include overclocking the card beyond 5870 stock speeds (with voltage increases). Using their guide I have been able to achieve similar speeds on my card quite easily. I can definately see the only thing holding it back is the stock cooling solution (as under full load - and with no manual fan control the card approaches the 100 degree mark). I am anxious to get my hands on a water block as soon as they come out and push it further.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/overcl...on-5970-guide/

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