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AMD's Radeon HD 5870: Bringing About the Next Generation Of GPUs

 by Ryan Smith on September 23, 2009 9:00 AM EST
327 Comments | Add A Comment
327 Comments

Meet the Rest of the Evergreen Family

Somewhere on the way to Cypress, AMD’s small die strategy got slightly off-track.

AMD’s small-die strategy for RV770

Cypress is 334mm2, compared to 260mm2 for RV770. In that space they can pack 2.15 billion transistors, versus 956 million on the RV770, and come out at a load power of 188W versus 160W on the RV770. AMD called 256mm2 their sweet spot for the small die strategy, and Cypress missed that sweet spot.

The cost of missing the sweet spot is that by missing the size, they’re missing the price. The Cypress cards are $379 and $259, compared to $299 and $199 that the original small die strategy dictated. This has resulted in a hole in the Evergreen family, which is why we’re going to see one more member than usual.

As Cypress is the base chip, there are 4 designs and 3 different chips that will be derived from it. Above Cypress is Hemlock, which will be the requisite X2 part using a pair of Cypress cores. Hemlock is going to be interesting to watch not just for its performance, but because by missing their sweet spot, AMD is running a bit hot. A literal pair of 5870s is 376W, which is well over the 300W limit of a 6-pin + 8-pin power configuration. AMD saves some power in a single card (which is how they got the 4870 under the limit) but it likely won’t be enough. We’ll be keeping an eye on this matter to see what AMD ends up doing to get Hemlock out the door at the right power load. As scheduled we should see Hemlock before the end of the year, although given the supply problems for Cypress that we mentioned earlier, it’s going to be close.

The “new” member of the Evergreen family is Juniper, a part born out of the fact that Cypress was too big. Juniper is the part that’s going to let AMD compete in the <$200 category that the 4850 was launched in. It’s going to be a cut-down version of Cypress, and we know from AMD’s simulation testing that it’s going to be a 14 SIMD part. We would wager that it’s going to lose some ROPs too. As AMD does not believe they’re particularly bandwidth limited at this time with GDDR5, we wouldn’t be surprised to see a smaller bus too (perhaps 192bit?). Juniper based cards are expected in the November timeframe.

 

Finally at the bottom we have Redwood and Cedar, the Evergreen family’s compliments to RV710 and RV730. These will be the low-end parts derived from Cypress, and will launch in Q1 of 2010. All told, AMD will be launching 4 chips in less than 6 months, giving them a top-to-bottom range of DX11 parts. The launch of 4 chips in such a short time frame is something their engineering staff is very proud of.

Meet the 5870 A Quick Refresher on the RV770
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  • T2k - Thursday, September 24, 2009 - link

    quote:
    How would ET:QW be a good benchmark? Last I checked, it's still limited to the 30 FPS animations, which makes running it at more than 30 FPS pointless because everything will look jerky.
    I agree something like the CoD games should be included for comparison's sake, but they're hardly a good benchmark or taxing on a system. QW does not fall into the same category though, it has a smaller active playerbase than even L4D which lost a lot of players due to the lack of updates.


    Just whatF are you talking about, seriously? Is this some kind of new urban BS again?
    Look at other sites, they DID test it with ET:QW:
    http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/Radeon_HD_5...">http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/Radeon_HD_5...
    http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/rad...">http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/rad...

    and so on. BTW L4D is a passing fart in the wind while ET:QW is still going strong, stronger than UT3 (unfortunately because UT3 looks 10x better and the old ONS mode was awesome but Epic fucked it in UT3)

    Read other reviews before you post:
    http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid...">http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...amp;thre...

  • SiliconDoc - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link

    I see by your review links the 5870 just doesn't do well in ET:QW, everything else is closer to it and it gets beat worse, at 2560 high aa&af GTX295 slams it by 20%, so, of course, it was left out, in order to "pump up the percieved red number".
    -
    It's "not a good appearance".

    You'll just have to live with it for now like the rest of us.

  • number58 - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link

    Is this card any closer to saturating the pci-express 2.0 x16 slot? That was one of the big arguments in the P55 vs X58 debate. Would there be any loss of performance using these in crossfire on P55 compared to X58?
    Otherwise, great article. I think I'll be hanging on to my 4890 for a while though.

  • Kaleid - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link

    Look here for an answer:
    http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_5870_PCI...">http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_5870_PCI...

  • number58 - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link

    Thanks. That just about settles it. My next system will be Lynnfield based.

  • Zeratul - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link

    Please add support for Stereoscopic 3D, ATI. I'm not going back to play games in 2D, though I don't like nvidia's monopoly in that.

  • Arbie - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link

    Not just a review but an excellent technical discussion. It must have been a lot of work. Thanks for all of that, and do please follow up where you can on people's requests for more info on this very important card.

    Kudos to ATI/AMD for such an achievement. It looks like Nvidia is in big trouble.

    Arbie

  • SiliconDoc - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link

    rofl - Nvidia is in big trouble ? LOL
    Have you looked at the charts on wiki that predicted what this review shows ? Maybe you should take a gander at the Nvidia chart, now, and cry.
    --
    It is a nice review, although biased red here as usual.
    --
    I'd like to mention as he fretted about heat because of the 1/2 vent on the back of the card, I didn't notice overt despairing mention of the TWO rectangular exhaust ports on the fan end BLOWING HEAT INTO THE CASE.... which of course is deserved. Nice how that was held back as if overlooked. (Boy what trouble for Nvidia! hahha)
    Next we'll be told the red rooster tester put his hand next to the two internal exhaust ports, and "the air felt rather cool" so "rest assured not much heat is being pushed into your case", and "this doesn't matter".
    See, the trouble is already in the article, the trouble it took to spin it just so for Ati... lol... it's hilatrious!

  • ClownPuncher - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link

    Bizzarro SnakeOil, is that you?

  • SiliconDoc - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link

    No, this is me, the same me I've always been.
    Would you like to comment on the two internal exhaust ports of the 5870 that put sweltering heat into your case ?
    I guess you tried to ignore that entirely.
    You can always insult me again and avoid commenting on the heating exhaust ports ramping up your case temps on the 5870...
    That of course would be "the right thing to do".
    Perhaps call me crazy, and avoid the topic, right, you're good at that, huh.
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