The Radeon HD 5970: Completing AMD's Takeover of the High End GPU Market
by Ryan Smith on November 18, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
The catch however is that what we don’t have is a level of clear domination when it comes to single-card solutions. AMD was shooting to beat the GTX 295 with the 5870, but in our benchmarks that’s not happening. The 295 and the 5870 are close, perhaps close enough that NVIDIA will need to reconsider their position, but it’s not enough to outright dethrone the GTX 295. NVIDIA still has the faster single-card solution, although the $100 price premium is well in excess of the <10% performance premium.
-From Our Radeon 5870 Review, On The GTX 295 vs. The 5870
Let’s get straight to the point, shall we? Today AMD is launching the 5970, their dual-GPU card that finishes building out AMD’s technical domination of the high-end market. With it AMD delivers the absolute victory over NVIDIA’s GTX 295 that the Radeon 5870 couldn’t quite achieve and at the same time sets the new high water mark for single-card performance.
This also marks the last AMD product introduction of the year. The rest of the Evergreen series, composing the sub-$100 low-end parts, will be launching next year.
| AMD Radeon HD 5970 | AMD Radeon HD 5870 | AMD Radeon HD 5850 | |
| Stream Processors | 2x1600 | 1600 | 1440 |
| Texture Units | 2x80 | 80 | 72 |
| ROPs | 2x32 | 32 | 32 |
| Core Clock | 725MHz | 850MHz | 725MHz |
| Memory Clock | 1GHz (4GHz data rate) GDDR5 | 1.2GHz (4.8GHz data rate) GDDR5 | 1GHz (4GHz data rate) GDDR5 |
| Memory Bus Width | 2x256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit |
| Frame Buffer | 2x1GB | 1GB | 1GB |
| Transistor Count | 2x2.15B | 2.15B | 2.15B |
| TDP | 294W | 188W | 151W |
| Manufacturing Process | TSMC 40nm | TSMC 40nm | TSMC 40nm |
| Price Point | $599 | $400 | $300 |
The 5970 serves as the nowadays obligatory dual-GPU part. It is 2 Cypress dice mounted on a single, dual-slot video card. AMD clocks it at 725MHz core and 1GHz (4GHz effective) for the GDDR5 memory. The card comes equipped with 2GB of GDDR5, which is split between the two GPUs, giving it an effective memory capacity of 1GB. The card will be selling for $600, at least so long as vendors and retailers hold the line on MSRP.
In practice this makes the card something between a 5850 in Crossfire mode and a 5870 in Crossfire mode. The clocks are the same as the 5850, but here all 20 SIMD units are enabled. This is a 15% clockspeed difference between the 5970 and 5870CF, so officially the 5870CF will continue to be the faster setup. However as we’ll see in a bit, looking at the stock 5970 can be a bit deceiving.
This also brings up the matter of the name of the card. We asked AMD what happened to the X2 tag, and the answer is that they didn’t want to use it since the card was configured neither like a 5850 nor a 5870 – it was closer to a mythical 5860. So rather than call it an odd (or worse yet, wrong) name, AMD just gave it a new model number entirely. We suspect AMD wanted to be rid of the X2 name – their processors go up to X4 after all – but there you go as far as an official reason is concerned. It looks like special multi-GPU tags are now gone in both the NVIDIA and AMD camps.
Moving on, for power, the 5970 uses an 8pin and a 6pin power connector (although the 6pin sits on top of a spot silk-screened for anther 8pin). The TDP is 294W, bringing it in just under the 300W ATX limit. Idle power is 42W, thanks to AMD’s aggressive power optimizations present in the entire 5000 series.
As some of you may have noticed, in spite of the fact that this card is at least a pair of 5850s, it consumes less than the 320W (2x160W) such a setup would. In order to meet the 300W limit, AMD went and binned Cypress chips specifically for the 5970, in order to find chips that could operate at 725MHz at only 1.05v (the 5850 runs at 1.088v). Given the power creep coming from the 4800 series, binning for the best chips is the only way AMD could get a 300W card out.
AMD’s official guidance for this card is that the minimum requirements are a 650W power supply, and they recommend a 750W power supply. The recommended power supply will become more important later on when we talk about overclocking.
Finally, AMD is also launching Crossfire Eyefinity support with the 5970, and thus far only the 5970. Currently Eyefinity doesn’t work with Crossfire mode on any of AMDs cards due to driver limitations. The drivers that the 5970 will be shipping with enable Crossfire Eyefinity support on the 5970 for 22 games – currently AMD is using whitelisting and is enabling games on a case-by-case basis. Crossfire Eyefinity will make its way in to the mainstream Catalyst drivers and be enabled for other cards early next year.
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Paladin1211 - Saturday, November 21, 2009 - link
To be precise, anything above the monitor refresh rate is not going to be recognizable. Mine maxed out at 60Hz 1920x1200. Correct me if I'm wrong.Thanks :)
noquarter - Saturday, November 21, 2009 - link
If you read AnandTech's 'Triple Buffering: Why We Love It' article, there is a very slight advantage at more than 60fps even though the display is only running at ~60Hz. If the GPU finishes rendering a frame immediately after the display refresh then that frame will be 16ms stale by the time the display shows it as it won't have the next one ready in time. If someone started coming around the corner while that frame is stale it'd be 32ms (stale frame then fresh frame) before the first indicator showed up. This is simplified as with v-sync off you'll just get torn frames but the idea is still there.To me, it's not a big deal, but if you're looking at a person with quick reaction speed of 180ms, 32ms of waiting for frames to catch up could be significant I guess. If you increase the fps past 60 you're more likely to have a fresh frame rendered right before each display refresh.
T2k - Friday, November 20, 2009 - link
Seriously: is he no more...? :DXeroG1 - Thursday, November 19, 2009 - link
OK, so seriously, did you really take a $600 video card and benchmark Crysis Warhead without turning it all the way up? The chart says "Gamer Quality + Enthusiast Shaders". I'm wondering if that's really how you guys benchmarked it, or if the chart is just off. But if not, the claim "Crysis hasn’t quite fallen yet, but it’s very close" seems a little odd, given that you still don't have all the settings turned all the way up.Incidentally, I'm running a GeForce 9800 GTX (not plus) and a Core2Duo E8550, and I play Warhead at all settings enthusiast, no AA, at 1600x900. At those settings, it's playable for me. People constantly complain about performance on that title, but really if you just turn down the resolution, it scales pretty well and still looks better than anything else on the market IMHO.
XeroG1 - Thursday, November 19, 2009 - link
Er, oops - that was supposed to say "E8500", not "E8550", since there is no 8550.mapesdhs - Thursday, November 19, 2009 - link
Carnildo writes:
> ... I was the administrator for a CAVE system. ...
Ditto! :D
> ... ported a number of 3D shooters to the platform. You haven't
> lived until you've seen a life-sized opponent come around the
> corner and start blasting away at you.
Indeed, Quake2 is amazing in a CAVE, especially with both the player
and the gun separately motion tracking - crouch behind a wall and be
able to stick your arm up to fire over the wall - awesome! But more
than anything as you say, it's the 3D effect which makes the experience.
As for surround-vision in general... Eyefinity? Ha! THIS is what
you want:
http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/lockheed_cave.jpg">http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/lockheed_cave.jpg
270 degree wraparound, 6-channel CAVE (Lockheed flight sim).
I have an SGI VHS demo of it somewhere, must dig it out sometime.
Oh, YouTube has some movies of people playing Quake2 in CAVE
systems. The only movie I have of me in the CAVE I ran was
a piece taken of my using COVISE visualisation software:
http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/iancovise.avi">http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/iancovise.avi
Naturally, filming a CAVE in this way merely shows a double-image.
Re people commenting on GPU power now exceeding the demands for
a single display...
What I've long wanted to see in games is proper modelling of
volumetric effects such as water, snow, ice, fire, mud, rain, etc.
Couldn't all this excess GPU power be channeled into ways of better
representing such things? It would be so cool to be able to have
genuinely new effects in games such as naturally flowing lava, or
an avalanche, or a flood, tidal wave, storm, landslide, etc. By this
I mean it being done so that how the substance behaves is governed
by the environment in a natural way (physics), not hard coded. So far,
anything like this is just simulated - objects involved are not
physically modelled and don't interact in any real way. Rain is
a good example - it never accumulates, flows, etc. Snow has weight,
flowing water can make things move, knock you over, etc.
One other thing occurs to me: perhaps we're approaching a point
where a single CPU is just not enough to handle what is now possible
at the top-end of gaming. To move them beyond just having ever higher
resolutions, maybe one CPU with more & more cores isn't going to
work that well. Could there ever be a market for high-end PC
gaming with 2-socket mbds? I do not mean XEON mbds as used for
servers though. Just thoughts...
Ian.
gorgid - Thursday, November 19, 2009 - link
WITH THEIR CARDS ASUS PROVIDES THE SOFTWARE WHERE YOU CAN ADJUST CORE AND MEMORY VOLTAGES. YOU CAN ADJUST CORE VOLTAGE UP TO 1.4VREAD THAT:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php...">http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/sho...cd1d6d10...
I ORDERED ONE FROM HERE:
http://www.provantage.com/asus-eah5970g2dis2gd5a~7...">http://www.provantage.com/asus-eah5970g2dis2gd5a~7...
K1rkl4nd - Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - link
Am I the only one waiting for TI to come out with a 3x3 grid of 1080p DLPs? You'd think if they can wedge ~2.2 million mini-mirrors on a chip, they should be able to scale that up to a native 5760x3240. Then they could buddy up with Dell and sell it as an Alienware premium package of display + computer capable of using it.skrewler2 - Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - link
When can we see benchmarks of 2x 5970 in CF?Mr Perfect - Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - link
"This means that it’s not just a bit quieter to sound meters, but it really comes across that way to human ears too"Have you considered using the dBA filter rather then just raw dB? dBA is weighted to measure the tones that the human ear is most sensitive to, so noise-oriented sites like SPCR use dBA instead.