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
Angle-Independent Anisotropic Filtering At Last
For a number of years now the quality of anisotropic filtering has been slowly improving. Early implementations from AMD and NVIDIA were highly angle-dependent, resulting in a limited improvement to image quality from such filtering. The angle-dependent nature lead to shimmering and other artifacting that was not ideal.
As of the previous generation of cards, the quality of anisotropic filtering had become pretty good. NVIDIA’s best filtering mode was pretty close to angle-independent, and AMD’s only slightly worse. Neither was perfect, but neither was bad either.
The Radeon HD 4890
The GeForce GTX 285
However so long as no one had an angle-independent implementation, there was room to improve. And AMD has gone there. The anisotropic filtering algorithm used by the 5000 series is now truly and completely angle-independent. There are no more filtering tricks being used.
The Radeon HD 5870: Perfection
As you can see, the MIP maps in our venerable D3D AF Tester are perfectly circular, the hallmark of an angle-independent implementation. With angle-independent filtering, this effectively marks the end of the filtering arms race. AMD has won, and should NVIDIA catch up in the future the two would merely be tied. There’s nowhere left to go for quality beyond angle-independent filtering at the moment.
AMD tells us that there is no performance hit with their new algorithm compared to their old one. This is a bit hard to test since we can’t enable the old algorithm on the 5870, but certainly whatever performance hit there is, is similarly minor. In all of the testing we’re doing today, you will see results done with 16x anisotropic filtering used.
What you won’t see however is a difference, particularly with our static screenshots. When discussing the matter, AMD noted that the difference in perceived quality between the old algorithm and the new one was practically the same. After looking at matters we find ourselves in agreement with AMD; we were not able to come up with any situations where there was a noticeable difference, beyond the obvious AF quality tests that are designed to identify such changes.
Regardless of the outcome, AMD deserves kudos for making angle-independent anisotropic filtering happen. It’s demonstrably perfect filtering with no speed hit versus the previous generation of filtering; making it in essence a “free” improvement in image quality, however slight the real-world results are. We’re always ready to get better image quality out of our video cards, after all.
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SiliconDoc - Friday, September 25, 2009 - link
LOL - you won't find me arguing, but that performance per dollar here is absolutely FAMOUS for guess whom, ati !Congratulations, for the first time someone other than myself conplained about it, of course, only when ATI has been implicated as a disaster in it.
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PS - I think what the chart is saying is, use some common sense, not go for 9500, but in your range you hope to purchase, the chart can be handy for picking between several.
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Also, the chart tells us, the 5870 is not bang for the buck.
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So, so sorry, it upset you so badly, the tips above for proper useage should be fine.
KaarlisK - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
Actually, far more developers care about the next version of DirectX (pc-industry-wide vendor-independent development platform) than about PhysX (single vendor, low uptake currently). Not that PhysX would be unimportant.SiliconDoc - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
Not quite time yet, you can "pre-order" one of 3 versions at tiger..LOLThis is not a "hard launch", this is a red RUSE !
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http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTool...">http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTool...
SiliconDoc - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
Ok, hurry, the paper launch finally "cracked" a bit and there's one card of 4 5870's on newwegg that is suposedly "available for purchase".http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Sub...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi...1&na...
It's 1:33pm on the 23rd, so no guarantees there's more than 0 for actual sale....
Good luck on getting something other than paper. :-)
jabroni619 - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
I'd better not get paper... I was able to place an order at newegg at midnight when they were available and 18 hours later it's showing a status of shipped. ;)SiliconDoc - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
7:08PM CST Wed. Sept 23rd, 2009 -Out of the 9 "reviews" by "customers" on newegg for the 5870 card, only ONE of them has the revealing:
" This user purchased this item from Newegg " in blue by their name on the customer reviews tab.
LOL
So it looks like 8 posers and you. Hope you enjoy the XFX 5870,
"WoostaR"
WoostaR - Friday, October 2, 2009 - link
Thanks man, I actually went with 2 5870's. I know it's bit of overkill, yet future proof is better =)anyways, I have gotten over 17000 of 3dMark06. That's with Cpu.
I am running Core i7 @ 4 ghz
6GB of Gskill ram
Dual 5870 @ CF
750W Corsair.
EVGA 3x SLI
jabroni619 - Thursday, September 24, 2009 - link
Oh, and I didn't get the XFX, I got HIS. XFX wasn't even showing up when I placed my order. Only Sapphire, ASUS and HIS were, both the Sapphire and ASUS were OOS.jabroni619 - Thursday, September 24, 2009 - link
I haven't written a review yet as I haven't gotten the card. (hate it when people do that) I was a little worried up until just a few minutes ago when my UPS tracking# actually had some data. Estimated Delivery of 9/24/09. Hopefully it's waiting at the front door when I get home from work. I just spend the last 2 hours moving all the guts of my PC into a larger case to accommodate the card.SiliconDoc - Friday, September 25, 2009 - link
Apparently your luck is immaculate.http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/15673/1/">http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/15673/1/
" We talked to partners and some of them might have a few cards next week and October is the month when things should get better.
The big guys such as Newegg and Tigerdirect don’t have them, and in EU, a hundred plus cards are listed here, but none of them are available.
A launch partner in the UK got 20 cards ...
We hope that Radeon 5870 is not what AMD management calls a hard launch "
ROFL - At least one place doesn't have to censor itself