In the last few years in the introduction of the high end single core variants with full support of the latest directX 11 software gaming and a lot amount of copper and fan noise from both NVIDIA and ATI/AMD, with the production of the HD2000 and the GeForce-8 series. Well time has passed and saw the awakening of the dual core behemoths in the GTX295 and the ATI radeon Hd4870X2.
Then the next generation of graphics cards have already hit in the benchmarking criteria and also in the spotlight to steal yet again the performance crown of NVIDIA, so meet the HD5870 1GB from ATI/AMD. Well the introduction of the new ATI radeon high performance single card variants other than the current HD4870 and also the newer HD4890 series. Specifically the newer HD5000 series form AMD does support DX11 software rendering from Microsoft but it will take much time to make DX11 games in the coming months before any implementations in game making is established to have the full potential of the new card. Well, the other key features in the HD5870 is GDDR5 memory in up to a 1GB a new fabrication process in the HD5870 the 40nm drop down makes it much of a cooler statement in the GPU side of things, the cooler in fact is much longer than the previous HD-4 series, covering the whole PCB with a literal black plastic covering.
Well physically the card is almost the same length as the rest of the high end single core graphics card solutions. Having the same eight and six pin eternal combination power inlet, we would expect a higher of demand of watts coming in the graphics card, but I suppose the balance of power, the transistor count in the new HD-5870 and also the frequent comment of AMD graphics users which have cooling problems that the former card hit noticeably around the 50 to 80 degree marks and make the whole system unstable.
In the performance test with the new Intel corei7 processor, some X58 and a SDD drives, making the memory useless of the speed and latency of the new technology. Well the Farcry2, Crysis, Fallout3, and also the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. clear sky, In this case, we got roughly what we expected; which is somewhere between these two scenarios. While the HD 5870 is essentially a replacement to the HD 4870 (as there’s still an X2 card being hammered out on ATI’s anvils), it’s fairer to compare the card’s price/performance ratio to an HD 4870 X2 or GeForce GTX 295 as these dual-GPU cards are roughly equal in graphical horsepower and are more cost comparable to the new Radeon card.
In the conclusion stand of the new HD5870 in the performance ladders, well as the single core alternative to the more bug driven drivers in the multi dual core cards and the easy pawn of the older current generation cards in both NVIDIA and ATI Radeon. Well finding a much beeter look on single core performance in about $430US it is a good buy for a new corei7 ATI Radeon rig system for the new PC.