AMD's Radeon HD 5870: Bringing About the Next Generation Of GPUs
by Ryan Smith on September 23, 2009 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Sometimes a surprise is nice. Other times it’s nice for things to go as planned for once.
Compared to the HD 4800 series launch, AMD’s launch of the HD 5800 series today is going to fall into the latter category. There are no last-minute announcements or pricing games, or NDAs that get rolled back unexpectedly. Today’s launch is about as normal as a new GPU launch can get.
However with the lack of last-minute surprises, it becomes harder to keep things under wraps. When details of a product launch are announced well ahead of time, inevitably someone on the inside can’t help but leak the details of what’s going on. The result is that what we have to discuss today isn’t going to come as a great surprise for some of you.
As early as a week ago the top thread on our video forums had the complete and correct specifications for the HD 5800 series. So if you’ve been peaking at what’s coming down the pipe (naughty naughty) then much of this is going to be a confirmation of what you already know.
Today’s Launch
3 months ago AMD announced the Evergreen family of GPUs, AMD’s new line of DirectX11 based GPUs. 2 weeks ago we got our first briefing on the members of the Evergreen family, and AMD publically announced their Eyefinity technology running on the then-unnamed Radeon HD 5870. Today finally marks the start of the Evergreen launch, with cards based on the first chip, codename Cypress, being released. Out of Cypress comes two cards: The Radeon HD 5870, and the Radeon HD 5850.
| ATI Radeon HD 5870 | ATI Radeon HD 5850 | ATI Radeon HD 4890 | ATI Radeon HD 4870 | |
| Stream Processors | 1600 | 1440 | 800 | 800 |
| Texture Units | 80 | 72 | 40 | 40 |
| ROPs | 32 | 32 | 16 | 16 |
| Core Clock | 850MHz | 725MHz | 850MHz | 750MHz |
| Memory Clock | 1.2GHz (4.8GHz data rate) GDDR5 | 1GHz (4GHz data rate) GDDR5 | 975MHz (3900MHz data rate) GDDR5 | 900MHz (3600MHz data rate) GDDR5 |
| Memory Bus Width | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit |
| Frame Buffer | 1GB | 1GB | 1GB | 1GB |
| Transistor Count | 2.15B | 2.15B | 959M | 956M |
| Manufacturing Process | TSMC 40nm | TSMC 40nm | TSMC 55nm | TSMC 55nm |
| Price Point | $379 | $259 | ~$180 | ~$160 |
So what’s Cypress in a nutshell? It’s a RV790 (Radeon HD 4890) with virtually everything doubled, given the additional hardware needed to meet the DirectX 11 specifications, with new features such as Eyefinity and angle independent anisotropic filtering packed in, lower idle power usage, and fabricated on TSMC’s 40nm process. Beyond that Cypress is a direct evolution/refinement of the RV7xx, and closely resembles its ancestor in design and internal workings.
The leader of the Evergreen family is the Radeon HD 5870, which will be AMD’s new powerhouse card. The 5870 features 1600 stream processors divided among 20 SIMDs, 80 texture units, and 32 ROPs, with 1GB of GDDR5 on-board connected to a 256bit memory bus. The 5870 is clocked at 850MHz for the core clock, and 1.2GHz (4.8GHz effective) for the memory, giving it a maximum compute performance of 2.72 teraflops. Load power is 188W, and idle power is a tiny 27W. It is launching at a MSRP of $379.
Below that we have the 5850 (which we will not be reviewing today), which is a slightly cut-down version of the 5870. Here we have 1440 stream processors divided among 18 SIMDs, 72 texture units, and the same 32 ROPs, with the same 256bit memory bus. The 5850 is clocked at 725Mhz for the core, and 1Ghz for the memory, giving it a maximum compute performance of 2.09 TFLOPS. With the disabled units, load power is slightly reduced to 170W, and it has the same 27W idle power. AMD expects the 5850 to perform at approximately 80% the performance level of the 5870, and is pricing it at $259.
Availability is going to be an issue, so we may as well get the subject out of the way. While today is a hard launch, it’s not quite as hard of a launch as we would like to see. AMD is launching the 5800 series with Dell, so it shouldn't come as a surprise if Dell has cards when e-tailers don't.
The situation with general availability is murky at best. The first thing we heard was that there may be a week of lag, but as of today AMD is telling us that they expect e-tailers to have 5870 cards on the 23rd, and 5850 cards next week. In any case whatever cards do make it in the channel are going to be in short supply, which matches the overall vibe we’re getting from AMD that supplies are going to be tight initially compared to the demand. So even after the first few days it may be hard to get a card. Given a tight supply we’ll be surprised if prices stick to the MSRP, and we’re likely to see e-tailers charge a price premium in the first days. Depending on just how high the demand is, this may mean it’ll take a while for prices to fall down to their MSRPs and for AMD to completely clear the backlog of demand for these cards.
Update: As of 5am EDT, we have seen the availability of 5870s come and go. Newegg had some in stock, but they have since sold out. So indeed AMD did make the hard launch (which we're always glad to see), but it looks like our concerns about a limited supply are proving to be true.
Finally, we asked AMD about the current TSMC 40nm situation, and they have told us that they are happy with it. Our concern was that problems at TSMC (specifically: yield) would be a holdup in getting more cards out there, but this does not look to be the case. However given the low supply of the cards compared to where AMD expects the supply to be, TSMC’s total 40nm capacity may not be to AMD’s liking.
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shaolin95 - Wednesday, October 7, 2009 - link
So Eyefinity may use 100 monitors but if we are still gaming on the flat plant then it makes no difference to me.Come on ATI, go with the real 3D games already..been waiting since the Radeon 64 SE days for you to get on with it.... :-(
GTX 295 for this boy as it is the only way to real 3D on a 60" DLP.
Nice that they have a fast product at good prices to keep the competition going. If either company goes down we all lose so support them both! :-)
Regards
raptorrage - Tuesday, October 6, 2009 - link
wow what a joke this review is but that i mean the reviewer stance on the 5870 sounds like he is a nvidia fan just because it like what 2-3fps off of the gtx 295 doesn't actually mean it can't catch that gpu as the driver updates come out and get the gpu to actually compete against that gpu and if i remember wasn't the GTX 295 the same when it came out .. its was good but it wasn't where we all thought it should have been then BAM a few months go by and it finds the performance it was missingi don't know if this was a fail on anandtech or the testing practices but i question them as i've read many other review sites and they had a clear view where the 5870 / GTX 295 where neck N neck as i've seen them first hand so i go ahead and state them here head 2 head @ 1920x1200 but at 2560x1600 the dual gpu cards do take the top slot but that is expected but it isn't as big as a margin as i see it.
and clearly he missed the whole point YES the 5870 dose compete with the GTX 295 i just believe your testing practices do come into question here because i've seen many sites where they didn't form the opinion that you have here it seems completely dismissive like AMD has failed i just don't see that in my opinion - I'll just take this review with a gain of salt as its completely meaningless
dieselcat18 - Saturday, October 3, 2009 - link
@Silicon DocNvidia fan-boy, troll, loser....take your gforce cards and go home...we can now all see how terrible ATi is thanks you ...so I really don't understand why people are beating down their doors for the 5800 series, just like people did for the 4800 and 3800 cards. I guess Nvidia fan-boy trolls like you have only one thing left to do and that's complain and cry like the itty-bitty babies that some of you are about the competition that's beating you like a drum.....so you just wait for your 300 series cards to be released (can't wait to see how many of those are available) so you can pay the overpriced premiums that Nvidia will be charging AGAIN !...hahaha...just like all that re-badging BS they pulled with the 9800 and 200 cards...what a joke !.. Oh my, I must say you have me in a mood and the ironic thing is I do like Nvidia as much as ATi, I currently own and use both. I just can't stand fools like you who spout nothing but mindless crap while waving your team flag (my card is better than your's..WhaaWhaaWhaa)...just take yourself along with your worthless opinions and slide back under that slimly rock you came from.
dieselcat18 - Saturday, October 3, 2009 - link
@Silicon DocNvidia fan-boy, troll, loser....take your gforce cards and go home...we can now all see how terrible ATi is thanks you ...so I really don't understand why people are beating down their doors for the 5800 series, just like people did for the 4800 and 3800 cards. I guess Nvidia fan-boy trolls like you have only one thing left to do and that's complain and cry like the itty-bitty babies that some of you are about the competition that's beating you like a drum.....so you just wait for your 300 series cards to be released (can't wait to see how many of those are available) so you can pay the overpriced premiums that Nvidia will be charging AGAIN !...hahaha...just like all that re-badging BS they pulled with the 9800 and 200 cards...what a joke !.. Oh my, I must say you have me in a mood and the ironic thing is I do like Nvidia as much as ATi, I currently own and use both. I just can't stand fools like you who spout nothing but mindless crap while waving your team flag (my card is better than your's..WhaaWhaaWhaa)...just take yourself along with your worthless opinions and slide back under that slimly rock you came from.
Scali - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
I have the GPU Computing SDK aswell, and I ran the Ocean test on my 8800GTS320. I got 40 fps, with the card at stock, with 4xAA and 16xAF on. Fullscreen or windowed didn't matter.How can your score be only 47 fps on the GTX285? And why does the screenshot say 157 fps on a GTX280?
157 fps is more along the lines of what I'd expect than 47 fps, given the performance of my 8800GTS.
Ryan Smith - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
Full screen, 2560x1600 with everything cranked up. At that resolution, it can be a very rough benchmark.The screenshot you're seeing is just something we took in windowed mode with the resolution turned way down so that we could fit a full-sized screenshot of the program in to our document engine.
Scali - Friday, October 2, 2009 - link
I've just checked the sourcecode and experimented a bit with changing some constants.The CS part always uses a dimension of 512, hardcoded, so not related to the screen size.
So the CS load is constant, the larger you make the window, the less you measure the GPGPU-performance, since it will become graphics-limited.
Technically you should make the window as small as possible to get a decent GPGPU-benchmark, not as large as possible.
Scali - Friday, October 2, 2009 - link
Hum, I wonder what you're measuring though.I'd have to study the code, see if higher resolutions increase only the onscreen polycount, or also the GPGPU-part of generating it.
Scali - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
That's 152 fps, not 257, sorry.