XFX ATI Raedon HD 5870 1GB Video Card Review
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| I’m sick and tired of going to computer hardware review sites and seeing hardware reviewed on extreme rigs with unbelievably unaffordable systems to the common man. Review after review – it just was not happening to where I would see anything close to similar results on my system. And I feel I’m not the only person in the world that’s fed up with this sort of thing, so I’ve decided to review the latest, and greatest video card released to this date for myself. For our first hardware review on Top Tier Gaming, it is only acceptable that we test a top tier piece of hardware. This card happens to be the recently released ATI Raedon HD 5870 1GB Video card – the first DirectX 11 video card on the market and the first video card ATI released with their new Eyefinity technology. Ladies and gentlemen, be prepared to feast your eyes on incredible performance.
About the XFX ATI Raedon HD 5870 1GB From XFXforce.com: “Taking 3 enormous steps towards realistic gaming, the The XFX Radeon HD 5870 with Eyefinity Technology, gives the first-ever wrap-around in-picture experience to fully immerse yourself in the game, or maximize your productivity at work. Additionally, with ATI Stream Technology, boost your systems performance by offloading tasks originally sent to your CPU, to your GPU and max out your settings with the first ever full support for Microsoft Directx11.”
This card’s numbers are sick! Crafted on the 45nm process, this card delivers exceptional gaming performance with a graphics processing unit (GPU) clock speed of 850mhz, and a memory operating a speed of 1200mhz. Compared to its predecessor, the ATI Raedon HD 4870 512mb Video card, which has a GPU clock speed of 750mhz and a memory operating speed of 900mhz, there’s really no completion, but when you compare it to Nvidia’s GTX 295, their high end gaming performance part, we start to see the even bigger picture. ATI has created a monster single GPU video card that has performance close to none! The HD 5870 is the first DirectX 11 video card on the market – tailored to take advantage of the new graphics API, bringing new features to the table such as GPGPU, which allows the GPU to take over tasks that normally a CPU would perform, tessellation, and better multi-core support for game developers. Also new with the HD 5870 is Eyefinity, which allows users to experience a unique gaming experience that allows the game to expand their game to three or more monitors on the system. Returning with the HD 5870 is, of course, ATI CrossireX technology – the ability to use two, three, or even four video cards in sync with each other to increase gaming performance! Powered by two 6 Pin PCI-E power connecters, with a minimum power supply of 500W, this card appears to be a power hog. However, after a little testing we’ve determined that our total system drew about 309 Watts at full peak, whereas two 4870’s in Crossfire drew about 342 Watts and our GTX 295 drew a whopping 426 Watts . Being, as you’ll see in our review, that the HD 5870 performs close to the GTX 295, or sometimes faster, this energy draw is much more efficient. Our Test Setup: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.8ghz (Overclocked @3.8ghz) Foxconn BlackOps Intel x48 Chipset 2x 2GB Muskin DDR3 Memory 1600mhz Gigabyte Odin GT 800w Power Supply Acer H233H 23 Inch 1920 x 1080 Monitor Windows 7 Ultimate x64 Video Cards Tested XFX ATI Raedon HD 5870 1GB Video Card eVGA Nvidia Geforce GTX 295 CO-OP FTW 1.792GB Video Card PNY Nvidia Geforce XLR8 GTX 275 896 MB Video Card VisionTek Raedon HD 4870 512 MB Video Cards Programs tested: Call of Duty: World at War Crysis: Warhead (Direct X 10) FarCry 2 (Direct X 10) Team Fortress 2 3dMark Vantage [more] Here is a little information about our testing methodology. Our operating system is the soon-to-be-released Windows 7 Ultimate Edition (64-bit Edition). All Nvidia cards were tested with the latest 191.07 WHQL driver set, whereas the ATI video cards were tested with Catalyst Control Center Driver Suite 9.10. The average frame rate for each game was found using FRAPS – a graphical benchmarking suite. The numerical value on each graph is the average frames per second. What are ‘Frames per second?’ From Wikipedia.org: [more] “Frame rate, or frame frequency, is the measurement of the frequency (rate) at which an imaging device produces unique consecutive images called frames. The term applies equally well to computer graphics, video cameras, film cameras, and motion capture systems. Frame rate is most often expressed in frames per second (FPS) and in progressive-scan monitors as hertz (Hz).” So, why do we care about this? Well, the more frames per second you have, the less stuttering and freezing you’ll get during game play; offering a smoother gaming experience for the user. Granted there’s a cutoff point for diminishable return – the refresh rate of your monitor, but generally it’s better to have a higher value as much as possible. If you start to see tearing in your gaming because of having too high of a frame rate, it’s suggested to that you turn on VSYNC under your game’s settings or under your video card’s driver profile. It’s also important to note that the lowest Frame Rate value should be reported as well, in addition to the average frame rate– this will be disclosed in the summary synopsis for each game. This is a huge factor in determining if a game is playable on said system or not. If the value jumps too low, your game will slow down periodically, freeze, and even crash, making it not playable. At that point it’s suggested to go with lower in game settings. So, without further adieu, I give you some performance charts. Performance Call of Duty: World at War
Overall, it looks like the GTX 295 has the lead in this title with the 5870 1GB trailing slightly behind. Honestly however, any of these cards for this title would work great, as the engine isn’t nearly as demanding as some of the other current titles out there. Crysis: Warhead
Looks like the GTX 295 pulled another close victory in terms of overall frames per second, but don’t let this graph deceive you, as the real winner is actually the 5870 with its better gaming experience. Low frame per second dips are just as important, if not more, than the average, and in this case, at 1920 x 1080, the 5870 scored with a low of only 26FPS whereas the GTX 295 had a drop averaging 10-14FPS. It’s also interesting to note that at 1920x1080 the 5870 actually had a higher average. I can just imagine putting two HD 5870’s in crossfire, and it’d be safe to say that Crysis is finally tamed, especially when you start adding 4x or 8x the AA, which doesn\'t phase the HD 5870 nearly as much as it cripples the GTX 295 to a crawl. Yes, I\'d like to have the honors of stating that this is the first video card to max Crysis. FarCry 2
Here we see the HD 5870 barely dominated by the GTX 295 because of the 8x AA and the 16xAF, yet, again, the smoother performance is handed to the HD 5870 because of performance sliding down to a mere 16 FPS for the GTX 295, and only 22 FPS on the HD 5870. ATI\'s cards seem to handle AA better than Nvidia’s. Again, I’d love to see the performance of two of these monsters in crossfire. Team Fortress 2
Numbers are all about the same, sans the HD 4870, which isn’t too far behind. I feel this may be due to the CPU being a bottleneck. The source engine is pretty much dominated by any modern video card, so while the GTX 295 did win this round, realistically if all you play are source engine games like this, Counter Strike Source, or Left for Dead, or less demanding games like World of Warcraft, then save yourself some money and get yourself a cheaper video card, such as a 4850 or a 9800 GT. 3DMark Vantage
I feel synthetic benchmarking is not a good way to show off real performance levels of a product, however, a lot of you disagree so I\'ve included them anyway. As you can see, the GTX 295 is the leader of the pact, but that\'s mainly because of the extra GPU, which Vantage seems to love. However, the HD 5870 isn\'t far behind, so again this shows off the power of ATI's HD 5870 as a great single card solution. Verdict Overall, I was impressed by the XFX ATI HD 5870 1GB. Performance wise, it’s close, and sometimes better, than the Nvidia GTX 295. Realistically though, it wasn’t even competing against that card, as ATI planned it to compete against the GTX 285. And for the price of the eVGA GTX 295 Co-Op, you could get two HD 5870’s in Crossfire, and obliterate any game on the market, even Crysis. Nvidia really needs to get a move on its next generation DirectX 11 cards, as they are really going to lose out against the HD 5800 series. So is it worth it to upgrade? Yes! For around $379 you get the greatest performance out of a single card on the market, along with DirectX 11 support, ATI’s amazing Eyefinity technology, and near the levels of a GTX 295 but at a much greater reduced cost. Get two or more of these in crossfire and you’re sure to have a beast that destroys any game that comes along in its path. We did experience some driver issues with a few of the games with corrupt graphics with Need for Speed: Shift and some older titles, but the drivers are not yet mature enough, and as I’ve seen on other review sites, it could be just our test system. It’s also important to note that with XFX’s HD 5870 1GB video card you receive a double lifetime warranty, which means that if you ever sell the card, you can transfer the lifetime warranty to another person at no cost, plus you’re able to put on a different GPU cooler and overclock the card without voiding the warranty. This along with exceptional customer service makes XFX a must buy. We rate the XFX ATI HD 5870 1GB Video Card a 9 out of 10 – a must buy product. | ||
| Comment by
AMDATIFAN
(11/19/2009):
Nice read! What are you going to do with the card now. =) | ||
| Comment by
Jarrett
(12/06/2009):
I'm going to game with it, of course. However, there will soon be a review where I will be giving away the product. Be sure to check it out soon! | ||
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