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
The First DirectX 11 Games
With any launch of a new DirectX generation of hardware, software availability becomes a concern. As the hardware needs to come before the software so that developers can tailor their games’ performance, it’s just not possible to immediately launch with games ready to go. For the launch of DirectX 11 and the 5800 series, AMD gave us a list of what games to expect and when.
First out of the gate is Battleforge, EA’s card-based online-only RTS. We had initially been told that it would miss the 5870 launch, but in fact EA and AMD managed to get it in under the wire and deliver it a day early. This gives AMD the legitimate claim of having a DX11 title out there that only their new hardware can fully exploit, and from a press perspective it’s nice to have something out there we can test besides tech demos. Unfortunately we wrapped up our testing 2 days early in order to attend IDF, which means we have not yet had a chance to benchmark this title’s DX11 mode or look at it in-depth.
We did have a chance to see the title in action quickly at AMD’s press event 2 weeks ago, where AMD was using it to show off High Definition Ambient Occlusion. As far as we can tell, HDAO is the only DX11 wonder-feature that it current implements, which makes sense given that it should be the easiest to patch in.
The next big title in AMD’s stack of DX11 games is STALKER: Call of Pripyat. This game went gold in Russia earlier this week, with the English version some time behind it. Unfortunately we don’t know what DX11 features it will be using, but as STALKER games have historically been hard on computers, it should prove to be an interesting test case for DX11 performance.
DIRT 2 is a title that got a great deal of promotion at AMD’s press event. AMD has been using it to show off their 6-way Eyefinity configuration, and we had a chance to play it quickly in their testing labs when looking at Eyefinity. This should be a fuller-featured DX11 game, utilizing tessellation, better shadow filtering, and other DX11 features. Certainly it’s the closest thing AMD’s going to have for a showcase title this year for the DX11 features of their hardware, and the console version has been scoring well in reviews. The PC version is due December 11th.
Finally, AMD had Rebellion Games in house to show off an early version of Aliens vs. Predator. This was certainly the most impressive title shown, with Rebellion showing off tessellation and HDAO in real time. Unfortunately screenshots don’t really do the game justice here; the difference from using DX11 is far more noticeable in motion. At any rate, this game is the farthest out – it won’t ship until Q1 of next year at the earliest.
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Scali - Thursday, October 1, 2009 - link
Here's a screenshot of my 8800GTS320 getting almost 49 fps when I overclock it:http://bohemiq.scali.eu.org/OceanCS8800GTS.png">http://bohemiq.scali.eu.org/OceanCS8800GTS.png
So you see why I think 47 fps for a GTX285 is weird. It should easily beat the 72 fps of the HD5870. Even an 8800Ultra might get close to that number.
mapesdhs - Tuesday, September 29, 2009 - link
I sincerely nope not as we need the competition. See:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/does-amd-really-p...">http://www.marketwatch.com/story/does-a...-pose-a-...
Ian.
Johnwo - Monday, September 28, 2009 - link
so wait, can this card play Crysis?vsl2020 - Sunday, September 27, 2009 - link
AMD only introducing new things which merely would make yur frap fps go 1000 and thats it.....no new good or interesting features such as what nvidia did with physx/3d Stereoscopic or similar that would convince me thats the way to the future...why should I need to buy a new dx11gpu only can do 1000fps...I would still luv my 260+ and 60fps in batman arkhum or other games which supported phsyx or similar...AMD just bring us back to the stone age race ..who has the higher fps race......
Jamahl - Tuesday, September 29, 2009 - link
did you even read the review? what about eyefinity, you know a good way to use up those 1000fps by adding more screens?you can be stuck with your 260, you aren't really gaming unless you are gaming on eyefinity.
Zool - Monday, September 28, 2009 - link
Actualy the delaying of nvidia dx11 card will make introducing new things harder. DX11 and OpenCL means enough that u can forget nvidias physx. At least with open platform dewelopers could finaly merge gpu and cpu code and make some more usefull things than improwed water splashing,unrealistic glass shatering and curtains which just run on top of the code and act as some kind of postprocessing + efects just to maintain compatibility.(miles away from the nvidia demos)And also dx11 compute shader can make these things.
RNViper - Sunday, September 27, 2009 - link
Hey GuysNeed Eyefinity a Nativ DisplayPort TFT?
pawaniitr - Sunday, September 27, 2009 - link
maybe a 2 GiB memory will help this card at highest resolutionswaiting for that version
Troll Trolling - Saturday, September 26, 2009 - link
I think you guys from anandtech could do an article explaining why the new Radeons don't don't double performance, even with doubled specs.It happened too with the HD 4870, it had more than doubled everything (except bandwidht, that was 80% higher) and was not close from double performance.
SiliconDoc - Saturday, September 26, 2009 - link
PS - The bandwidth is not doubled.124GB/sec to 153GB/sec, nowhere near an 80% increasse, let alone, virtually double.