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
Meet The 5970
To cool the beast, AMD has stepped up the cooler from a solid copper block to a vapor chamber design, which offers slightly better performance for large surface area needs. Vapor chambers (which are effectively flat heatpipes) have largely been popularized by Sapphire, who uses them on their Vapor-X and other high-end series cards. This is the first time we’ve seen a vapor chamber cooler on a stock card. AMD tells us this cooler is design to keep up with 400W of thermal dissipation.
With the need for such a cooler, AMD has finally parted with their standard 5000 series port configuration in order to afford a full slot to vent hot air. In place of the 2xDVI + HDMI + DisplayPort configuration, we have 2xDVI + MiniDisplayPort, all on one slot. MDP was just approved by the VESA last week, and is identical to DisplayPort in features, the only difference is that it’s smaller. This allows AMD to continue offering Eyefinity support, and it also conviently solves any questions of how to plug 3 monitors in, as there are now only as many DVI-type ports as there are available TMDS encoder pairs.
Finally, as dual-GPU cards are always bigger than their single-GPU brethren, and the 5970 is no exception to this rule. However the 5970 really drives this point home, being the largest video card we’ve ever tested. The PCB is 11.5” long, and with the overhang of the cooling shroud, that becomes 12.16” (309mm). This puts it well past our previous record holder, the 5870, and even father ahead of dual-GPU designs like the 4870X2 and GTX 295, both of which were 10.5”. The only way to describe the 5970 is “ridiculously long”.
With such a long card, there are going to be some definite fitting issues on smaller cases. For our testing we use a Thermaltake Speedo case, which is itself an oversized case. We ended up having to remove the adjustable fan used to cool the PCIe slots in order to make the 5970 fit. On a smaller and more popular case like the Antec P182, we had to remove the upper hard drive cage completely in order to fit the card.
In both cases we were able to fit the card, but it required some modification to get there, and this we suspect is going to be a common story. AMD tells us that the full ATX spec calls for 13.3” of room for PCIe cards, and while we haven’t been able to find written confirmation of this, this seems to be correct. Full size towers should be able to accept the card, and some mid size towers should too depending on what’s behind the PEG slot. However – and it’s going to be impossible to stress this enough – if you’re in the market for this card, check your case
GTX 295, 5970, 5870, 5850, 5770
On a final note, while the ATX spec may call for 13.3”, we hope that we don’t see cards this big; in fact we’d like to not see cards this big. Such a length is long enough that it precludes running a fan immediately behind the video card on many cases, and quite frankly at a 294W TDP, this card is hot enough that we’d feel a lot better if we had a fan there to better feed air to the card.
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GourdFreeMan - Friday, November 20, 2009 - link
Having not bought MW2, I can say conversely that the lack of differentiation between console and PC features hurts game sales. According to news reports, in the UK PC sales of MW2 account for less than 3% of all sales. This is neither representative of the PC share of the gaming market (which should be ~25% of all "next-gen" sales based on quarterly reports of revenue from publishers), nor the size of the install base of modern graphics cards capable of running MW2 at a decent frame rate (which should be close to the size of the entire console market based on JPR figures). Admittedly the UK has a proportionately larger console share than the US or Germany, but I can't image MW2 sales of the PC version are much better globally.I am sure executives will be eager to blame piracy for the lack of PC sales, but their target market knows better...
cmdrdredd - Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - link
[quote]Unfortunately, since playing MW2, my question is: are there enough games that are sufficiently superior on the PC to justify the inital expense and power usage of this card? Maybe thats where eyefinity for AMD and PhysX for nVidia come in: they at least differentiate the PC experience from the console.I hate to say it, but to me there just do not seem to be enough games optimized for the PC to justify the price and power usage of this card, that is unless one has money to burn.[/quote]
Yes this is exactly my thoughts. They can tout DX11, fancy schmancy eyefinity, physx, everything except free lunch and it doesn't change the fact that the lineup for PC gaming is bland at best. It sucks, I love gaming on PC but it's pretty much a dead end at this time. No thanks to every 12 year old who curses at you on XBox Live.
The0ne - Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - link
My main reason to want this card would be to drive my 30" LCDs. I have two Dell's already and will get another one early next year. I don't actually play games much but I like having the desktop space for my work.-VM's at higher resolution
-more open windows without switching too much
-watch movie(s) while working
-bigger font size but maintaining the aspect ratio of programs :)
Currently have my main on one 30" and to my 73" TV. TV is only 1080P so space is a bit limited. Plus working on the TV sucks big time :/
shaolin95 - Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - link
I am glad ATI is able to keep competing as that helps keep prices at a "decent" level.Still, for all of you so amazed by eyefinity, do yourselves a favor and try 3D vision with a big screen DLP then you will laugh at what you thought was cool and "3D" before.
You can have 100 monitors but it is still just a flat world....time to join REAL 3D gaming guys!
Carnildo - Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - link
Back in college, I was the administrator for a CAVE system. It's a cube ten feet on a side, with displays on all surfaces. Combine that with head tracking, hand tracking, shutter glasses, and surround sound, and you've got a fully immersive 3D environment.It's designed for 3D visualization of large datasets, but people have 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.
7Enigma - Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - link
But Ryan, I feel you might need to edit a couple of your comparison comments between the 295 and this new card. Based on the comments in a several previous articles quite a few readers do not look at (or understand) the charts and instead rely on the commentary below the charts. Here's some examples:"Meanwhile the GTX 295 sees the first of many falls here. It falls behind the 5970 by 30%-40%. The 5870 gave it a run for its money, so this is no surprise."
This one for Stalker is clear and concise. I'd recommend you repeat this format for the rest of the games.
"As for the GTX 295, the lead is only 20%. This is one of the better scenarios for the GTX 295."
This comment was for Battleforge and IMO is confusing. To someone not reading the chart it could be viewed as saying the 295 has a 20% advantage. Again I'd stick with your Stalker comment.
"HAWX hasn’t yet reached a CPU ceiling, but it still gets incredibly high numbers. Overclocking the card gets 14% more, and the GTX 295 performance advantage is 26%."
Again, this could be seen as the 295 being 26% faster.
"Meanwhile overclocking the 5970 is good for another 9%, and the GTX 295 gap is 37%."
This one is less confusing as it doesn't mention an advantage but should just mention 37% slower.
Finally I think you made a typo in the conclusion where you said this:
"Overclock your 5970 to 5870 speeds if you can bear the extra power/heat/noise, but don’t expect 5970CF results."
I think you meant 5870CF results...
Overall, though, the article is really interesting as we've finally hit a performance bottleneck that is not so easily overcome (due to power draw and ATX specifications). I'm very pleased, however, that you mention first in the comments that this truly is a card meant for multi-monitor setups only, and even then, may be bottlenecked by design. The 5870 single card setup is almost overkill for a single display, and even then most people are not gaming on >24" monitors.
I've said it for the past 2 generations of cards but we've pretty much maxed out the need for faster cards (for GAMING purposes). Unless we start getting some super-hi res goggles that are reasonably priced, there just isn't much further to go due to display limitations. I mean honestly are those slightly fuzzy shadows worth the crazy perforamnce hit on a FPS? I honestly am having a VERY difficult time seeing a difference in the first set of pictures of the soldier's helmet. The pictures are taken slightly off angle from each other and even then I don't see what the arrow is pointing at. And if I can't see a significant difference in a STILL shot, how the heck am I to see a difference in-game!?
OK enough rant, thanks for the review. :)
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - link
Thanks for the edits, I've made some corrections for Ryan that will hopefully make the statements more clear.I agree that the need for a faster GPU on the desktop is definitely minimized today. However I do believe in the "if you build it, they will come" philosophy. At some point, the amount of power you can get in a single GPU will be great enough that someone has to take advantage of it. Although we may need more of a paradigm shift to really bring about that sort of change. I wonder if Larrabee's programming model is all we'll need or if there's more necessary...
Take care,
Anand
7Enigma - Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - link
Thank you for the edits and the reply Anand.One of the main things I'd like to see GPU drivers implement is an artificial framerate cap option. These >100fps results in several of the tests at insane resolutions are not only pointless, but add unneccesary heat and stress to the system. Drop back down to normal resolutions that >90% of people have and it becomes even more wasteful to render 150fps.
I always enable V-sync in my games for my LCD (75Hz), but I don't know if this is actually throttling the gpu to not render greater than 75fps. My hunch is in the background it's rendering to its max but only showing on the screen the Hz limitation.
Zool - Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - link
I tryed out full screen furmark with vsync on and off (in 640*480) and the diference was 7 degre celsius. I have a custom cooler on the 4850 and a 20cm side fan on the case so thats quite lot.7Enigma - Thursday, November 19, 2009 - link
Thanks for the reply Zool, I was hoping that was the case. So it seems like if I ensure vsync is on I'm at least limiting the gpu to only displaying the refresh rate of the LCD. Awesome!