AMD’s Radeon HD 5850: The Other Shoe Drops
by Ryan Smith on September 30, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Batman: Arkham Asylum is another brand-new PC game, and has been burning up the review charts. It’s an Unreal Engine 3 based game, something that’s not immediately obvious from just looking at it, which is rare for UE3 based games.
NVIDIA has put a lot of marketing muscle into the game as part of their The Way It’s Meant to Be Played program, and as a result it ships with PhysX support and 3D Vision support. Unfortunately NVIDIA’s influence has extended to its anti-aliasing abilities too, as its in-game selective AA abilities only work on NVIDIA’s cards. AMD’s cards can perform AA on the game, but only via traditional full screen anti-aliasing, which isn’t nearly as efficient. Because of this, this is the only game where we will not be using AA, as doing so produces meaningless results given the different AA modes used.
Since we can’t use AA, the name of the game is still “runaway performance”, with the 5850 bringing in 88fps. Meanwhile this is as close a gap between the 5850 and the GTX 285 as we’re going to see, with the 5850 beating the GTX 285 by only a few percent. The 5850 Crossfire maintains a similar gap, but doesn’t fall behind as it has in some tests.
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silverblue - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
nVidia shouldn't "get out of the game" at all. True, ATI may just have 3 or 4 months of technical superiority, but nVidia's next cards may be superior as well as offering plenty of revolutionary features.nVidia can also chop prices for their current lineup but not too much, otherwise they may undercut their new cards.
I'm impressed by the 5850's frugal (as compared to the 5870) power requirements. Coupled with a relatively low price, it should sell very nicely indeed (and spawn some overclocked versions very quickly).
SJD - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
Did you have the August DirectX Redist installed on your test system? I think I've read somewhere that this is the update that brings 'full' DirectX11 functionality to Windows 7, and perhaps this is the reason you didn't see the results you were expecting.Otherwise, awesome card!
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
Based on AMD's internal data I suspect it's just the fact that we have everything cranked up. We're taking a look at it ASAP.Totally - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
Ryan, could you retest the 5870 again but this time with a piece of tape running across the two 'vents' on the back of the card.Ryan Smith - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
I'm curious what makes you think that will have any impact.Totally - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
well, since it's a centrifugal fan, it sucks air through the center and exhausts it in a radial direction, being the shroud's job to redirect the air afterwards. now looking at how restricted the openings appear on the 5850 and the cooling performance. I'm curious if there is connection, say fresh air may be escaping through those openings and back into the case instead of passing through the heatsink and out the back of the case.Ryan Smith - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
I don't have a good front-shot, but it's a sealed shroud. There's no air escaping.toast70 - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
With 5870 being basically a doubled up 4870 architecture and (still SIMD), i am interested to see how Nvidia's new MIMD architecture will compete, especially with the ridiculous memory bandwidth it will have with GDDR5 and a 512 bit bus.(if the 512 bus isnt just a rumor and hopefully they are not plagued by driver issues) I am glad AMD/ATI is doing better the competition is great, but i feel the new NV cards are going to be good (least if any of the rumors are true). I am still trying to find a reason to replace my 9800GTX SLI, they burn thru about any game as long as you stay away from over 4X AA due to the 512 MB frame buffer.BTW, Not a NV fanboi here, hope i dont sound like one, its late and i just dropped my friend off at the ER, brain is tired. the fiancee's PC has a ATI card and its great, no complaints other than a few driver issues, but nothing i could complain about really. HD4850 512MB
keep up the competition, we have AMD to thank for under 400 fast cards
poohbear - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
very well done review and the conclusion was spot on! gonna get one of these this fall, Nvidia better hurry up b4 shiat really hits the fan.:0Roland00 - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
I wonder how close the 5850 will be to the 5870 once they have similar memory speeds and thus bandiwidth. Are those extra shaders/core frequency wasted due to the limited memory bandiwidth.