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 Test
For the 5970 launch, AMD is launching the card with a special set of drivers based on the Catalyst 9.10 branch, version 8.663.1. These drivers have had a lot of work put in to their Crossfire abilities, both to enable Crossfire Eyefinity support on the 5970, and to improve overall Crossfire performance. The Crossfire performance improvement also cascades down to the 5800 series, where we’ve seen CF performance improve in Crysis and Dawn of War II, while we’ve seen Resident Evil 5 performance dip some. So we’ve rerun our 5850CF and 5870CF numbers with the new drivers an updated them accordingly; single card performance remains unaffected.
Also, for most of these games we’ve gone ahead and dropped all resolutions besides 2560. Crysis is the only game that even remotely struggles with the 5970 (and less so thanks to these drivers). Everything else gets 60fps or more at 2560.
Finally, we’ve gone ahead and benchmarked the 5970 at both stock at overclocked 5870 (850MHz/1200Mhz) speeds. Bear in mind that we did encounter VRM throttling at 5870 speeds however.
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-920 @ 3.33GHz |
| Motherboard: | Intel DX58SO (Intel X58) |
| Chipset Drivers: | Intel 9.1.1.1015 (Intel) |
| Hard Disk: | Intel X25-M SSD (80GB) |
| Memory: | Patriot Viper DDR3-1333 3 x 2GB (7-7-7-20) |
| Video Cards: |
ATI Radeon HD 5970 |
| Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA ForceWare 190.62 |
| OS: | Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit |
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hechacker1 - Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - link
I once had that problem too. Even if my display went to sleep it would reset the monitor configuration.I think disabling this helped:
http://www.tomstricks.com/how-to-disable-or-enable...">http://www.tomstricks.com/how-to-disabl...multimon...
I think eventually catalyst was updated to fix the display loosing connection during sleep (in my case).
The0ne - Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - link
I think we all seen enough data on this poorly programmed game to removed it from the test. There's really not point as even this card, 5970, can choke on it. Seriously, utter crap of programming.lifeblood - Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - link
Three 30" monitors? Dude, I had to work hard just to afford a single 24" monitor. And because I'm salary I don't get overtime (although they do make me work it). If I get a second job flipping burgers at the local fast food joint I might be able to afford two more 24" displays. I bet Eyefinity would still look awesome on that.And I was only kidding about you getting paid too much. The article was great. Now I am eagerly awaiting Nvidia's response.
haplo602 - Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - link
nice review.but PLEASE MARK THE REVIEWED CARD to STAND OUT in the GRAPHS next time. going top down through the list and reading each caption to finaly find the card for EACH GRAPH is realy annoying.
The0ne - Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - link
Anand graphs are really annoying at times. I wish they were more consistent. Xbitlabs are easy and consistent which makes it a breeze for people like me who just wants to look at the specifics.Dante80 - Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - link
I concur, the graphs can be a little confusing without some sort of color coding...Here is a suggestion Ryan. Use light green and orange for Nvidia and AMD single cards, dark green and red for SLI and Xfire setups and lastly, blue for the card reviewed (you can differentiate with light and dark blue readings for the same card in Xfire or OCed readings). I think the graphs would look much better this way, and its a very easy to implement feature anyway...
cheers...^^
SJD - Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - link
Great and interesting article, but I'm confused about this Eyefinity situation again.You state that your monitor didn't support mini-DP, just 'regular' DP, and go on to talk about buying an adapter. Yet, it appears (according to the wiki page at any rate) that mini-DP is electrically identical to regular DP, so only a mini-DP to regular DP cable would be needed. Indeed, other reviews of the 5970 show such an adapter cable included with the card...
What's the score, and why the comment that you need an *active* adapter to go from mini-dp to regular dp?
Simon
strikeback03 - Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - link
The active adapter went to DVI, I was wondering the same about a simple mini-DP to DP cableAnand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - link
I've clarified :)Once you move to three displays AMD runs out of timing sources, the miniDP port must use an active adapter if you're using three displays.
Take care,
Anand
mczak - Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - link
This is however incorrect. You need active adapters because rv870 only supports 2 clock sources for display outputs. However, DP (or mini-DP) don't need any such clock source because they use a fixed clock independent from display timings. Hence, if you want to connect more than 2 monitors using DVI/HDMI/VGA you need active DP-to-something adapter. But for DP outputs this isn't needed. And mini-DP is the same as DP anyway electrically.