If your system has muscle, this card will flex it

There’s no doubt in our minds that the HIS Radeon HD 5970 offers superlative performance and extremely high frame rates. The combination of dual AMD Cypress GPUs, each coupled with its own dedicated 1GB pool of fast GDDR5 memory, makes this graphics card one of the fastest we’ve ever tested.

This particular card is based on AMD’s reference design, so the two GPUs clock in at 725MHz, while the memory clock is set at 1GHz. It’s an enormous card, too, at just over 12 inches long. If you buy the card from Newegg, you get a compact PC toolkit, though HIS is looking to expand the toolkit bundle. Also included is a coupon for a free Steam download of Dirt 2, the DirectX 11–capable racing game from Codemasters.

Assuming HIS built the cards to AMD specs, there should be plenty of headroom for overclocking. The beefy cooling system, with its full-length vapor chamber, can dissipate up to 400W of power. Of course, for best results, you’ll want to tweak the card’s voltage. AMD initially offered its own tool for overvolting GPU and memory, but has since withdrawn the utility. However, MSI’s Afterburner tool (http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner), which apparently works with any AMD-based graphics card, allows you to tweak the core voltage but doesn’t provide a way to alter memory voltage.

The HIS Radeon HD 5970 is best experienced on big or multiple displays.

We put the HIS Radeon HD 5970 up against AMD’s last-gen dualie, the Radeon HD 4870 X2, Nvidia’s dual GeForce GTX 295, and the two fastest single cards from both vendors. As was the case last month, when we reviewed XFX’s HD 5970, HIS’s HD 5970 blew the doors off any other graphics card currently available. But at $600, you should ask yourself if you really need such a massive, heat-generating monster of a graphics card.

There’s no question that if you’re running on a 1920x1200 or 2560x1600 display, the huge pixel-pushing power of the HIS HD 5970 makes a difference. Do owners of more modest systems and displays need one—or can they even make use of that much GPU horsepower? The current generation of moderately priced LCD displays typically offer native resolutions of 1680x1050 (20- or 22-inch displays) or 1920x1080 pixels (23-inch and larger units.)

To answer this, we ran our suite of game tests on the HIS Radeon HD 5970, HIS Radeon HD 5870, and the XFX Radeon HD 5850 cards at different resolutions. To simplify the results, we took the geometric mean of all our tests at the different resolutions. With a 22-inch 1680x1050 panel, even the $300 Radeon HD 5850 will average above 62fps. At 1920x1080, that 5850 remains above 62fps. By moving to the Radeon HD 5870, you can average 76fps at 1920x1080 and 74fps at 1920x1200. The 5970 at 1920x1200 puts you in the 92fps range, and on a 30-inch 2560x1600 panel, you’re still running at 70fps. The bottom line: If you’re not running a big display, the HD 5970 is pretty much wasted. In fact, at the 1680x1050 resolution of most 22-inch monitors, you’ll still average higher than 60fps with all the graphics goodness turned up (but no AA or AF) with even the $300 Radeon HD 5850.

There’s no question that the HIS Radeon HD 5970 is an awesome piece of kit, but you really need an awesome system and display to take advantage of it. If you’re system isn’t riding the bleeding edge, you might opt for a lesser card. You’ll save money and watts and still get great performance. On the other hand, if you’ve got a 30-inch monitor and the badass PC to drive it, you can’t do better today than this card.

The hottest rumor on the Web right now is that BFG might go play for the red team and start producing ATI Radeon videocards. Could this possibly be true?

"The rumor we are hearing today is that BFG is going RED!," HardOCP.com founder Kyle Bennett posted on Thursday. "Totally unconfirmed, but given the history heard over the last few years...yes years...this does not sound implausible. I am waiting for a response from BFG's CEO, but none is forthcoming."

If this turns out to be true, it would be quite the score for AMD, who in late 2008 managed to pry XFX from Nvidia's exclusivity grip. Like XFX, BFG is one of just a small handful of GPU vendors who offer lifetime warranties on their parts, EVGA being the other.

While this wouldn't be the end of the world for Nvidia, it does seem as though the GPU maker can't catch a break. Everything from failed parts to losing the performance crown have been thorns in Nvidia's side, and it remains to be seen what kind of cure-all Fermi can provide.

DirectX 11 CrossFire on a stick

The recipe: Take two of the fastest GPUs on the planet capable of running DirectX 11, specially chosen for their low voltage leakage. Toss in two gigabytes of high-speed GDDR5 memory. Mix all ingredients into a card with high-end Japanese solid capacitors and a souped-up thermal dissipation system. The result: the XFX Radeon HD 5970—a GPU so yummy, you may even go back for seconds.

While the product name doesn’t hint at the card’s dual-GPU nature, there’s no mistaking the presence of two graphics chips when you check out the back of the board. Then there’s the sheer size of it: At more than 12 inches, you’ll need a high-end PC case that’s deep enough to handle this monster. You’ll need a beefy power supply, too, since the HD 5970 burns 294W at full throttle—and that’s if you don’t overclock it. The good news is the card consumes just 42W at idle, less than double the idle power of a single HD 5870, thanks to an enhanced deep-sleep mode for the slave GPU.

AMD built in a number of enhancements over its previous dual-GPU effort, the 4870 X2. The card now sports a full-length vapor chamber mounted on the back of the board, which enables the card to support up to 400W of heat dissipation—enough headroom for some serious overclocking. A simplistic overvolting tool is available on AMD’s website, allowing you to tweak the voltage setting a little higher in order to push clock speeds—albeit at the expense of additional power consumption.

The HD 5970 does make a few compromises in order to shoehorn 4 billion transistors worth of GPUs onto one card. Core and memory clocks are lower than on the single-GPU Radeon HD 5870, at 725MHz and 1,000MHz, respectively (versus the HD 5870’s 850MHz and 1,200MHz). AMD has built in lots of overhead, so if you have good case cooling and a suitable PSU, you can push the clock speed much higher if you want. One other compromise is the use of a mini-DisplayPort connector. This kept all three display connectors on one expansion slot cover, so that a full-height exhaust could be added to the second slot cover.

OK, so the card is physically large and burns nearly 300W at full throttle. But does it perform? Yes, Virginia, this card does indeed deliver the goods. It’s the fastest single graphics card we’ve ever tested. At $600, this card had better be fast. XFX’s limited lifetime warranty, complete with the ability to transfer said warranty when you resell the card, eases that financial pain a bit.

What you get for your six C-bills is an incredibly speedy graphics card that delivers tremendous gaming performance and doesn’t eat kilowatts when idle. So if what you want is the fastest graphics card you can buy, then the XFX Radeon HD 5970 is the card for you. Just make sure your case can handle it.

AMD’s Radeon HD 5970 takes the performance crown, and now offers DirectX 11 GPUs top to bottom.

You can forgive AMD for stealing a line from Nvidia’s playbook. From the name and marketing materials, it’s not obvious that this card is a dual GPU card. One AMD chart even refers to the card as the “ATI Radeon HD 5970 GPU,” much like Nvidia’s 295 GTX is a dual GPU card that’s sold as if it were a normal graphics card.

Let’s take a quick look at the speeds and feeds of the new card, and then discuss additional features. We’ll compare them to the Radeon HD 5870 single GPU card; there are differences in core and memory clock speeds.

Most features simply double, since there are two identical GPUs with the same memory per GPU. However, note the memory bandwidth is lower, since the memory clock is lower. Also, overall compute performance isn’t quite double, since the engine clock for each GPU defaults to 725MHz, rather than the single GPU 5870’s 850MHz.

In addition to the paired GPUs, the card maximizes performance with a new second generation PLX PCI Express 2.1 bridge chip. This speeds up communications between the two GPUs.

The older Radeon HD 4870 X2, AMD’s last dual GPU card, often suffered from serious overheating problems, so AIT has taken steps to improve overall thermal efficiency. The first step is to used specially screened GPU chips with the minimum amount of leakage current. The thermal system consists of a vapor chamber, with heat dissipation via a fully vented exhaust system. Finally, a multipoint, programmable PWM fan controller ensures fan speeds consistent with overall thermal output. The whole affair is rated to dissipate 400W, or over 100W of headroom.

The use of low leakage GPUs suggests that the core clock speeds could be pushed higher than the default 725MHz. Given that the card can dissipate 400W of overall thermal output, ATI has decided to leave the card unlocked, letting users overclock it to their heart’s content. The company is even making available an overvoltage tool, and suggests that the card has enough headroom to push the engine clock to above the 850MHz of the single GPU HD 5870 and the memory speeds up to the 1200MHz of the 5870. In The HD 5970 also sports sophisticated digital voltage regulators, real time power monitoring and Japanese pure ceramic capacitors, which facilitate higher clock speeds. (The reason for the more conservative default clock speeds is that the company needs to make allowances for the thermal environment inside PC cases, which may be less optimal.)

What about power efficiency? The HD 5970 offers the same clock gating capability as the single GPU variant. In addition, the card offers an ultra low power state that puts one GPU to sleep, which cuts the overall power draw of that GPU by half the normal idle performance. The card idles at 42W, only 15W higher than the 27W of the HD 5870. Of course, the card sucks 294W at full throttle – and that’s at the default clock speeds. So you’ll need a power supply with the later PCI Express 8-pin power connector – the HD 5970 uses one eight pin and one six pin connector from the PSU.

The onboard connectors are slightly different from the original HD 5870: two DVI-I connectors and one mini-DisplayPort attachment, first popularized with Apple’s MacBook Pro laptops and iMacs. All three can be attached simultaneously, and drive three displays at the same time. Note that most DisplayPort enabled monitors which aren’t Apple displays ship with standard sized DisplayPort cables, so you’ll need to obtain a mini-DisplayPort to standard DisplayPort cable if you want to take advantage of that connection option.

Performance

We tested three graphics cards: the Radeon HD 5970, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 and the GeForce 295 GTX. Note that the 295 GTX only ships with 1792MB of GDDR3 memory (896MB per GPU). The Nvidia GPUs on the 295 GTX have a full complement of 240 shaders, like the 285GTX, but only a 448 bit wide memory bus, similar to the GeForce GTX 260 line of graphics chips.

All games were run at two settings: 1920x1200, 4xAA and 2560x1600 4xAA. All detail settings on all games were maxed out. We also report the results from 3DMark Vantage’sdefault, performance setting and the extreme setting. In addition, we’re tossing in the results from the eVGA GeForce 285 GTX SSC and XFX Radeon HD 5870 at the 1920x1200 resolutions, so you can get an idea as to how much you gain from the dual GPU cards.

We used our standard graphics test system for benchmarking graphics cards:

The HD 5890 seems much better behaved than its predecessor, the HD 4870 X2. Although the HD 5970 fan noise became quite audible at high loads, it seemed much quieter than the 4870 X2. More telling was our experience removing the cards immediately after completed benchmarking runs. The 4870 X2 was extremely hot to the touch – we had to handle it carefully to avoid burnt fingers – while the 5970 was cooler to handle (though still very warm.) Much of this was no doubt due to the vapor chamber covering the back side of the card.

As we expected from our previous experience with the Radeon HD 5870, the dual GPU HD 5970 pretty much smokes the competition. At its targeted $599 price point, the performance needs to be stellar – and it is. Let’s check out the performance charts.

There’s no question the Radeon HD 5970 is the fastest single desktop graphics card you can buy today. The real question is if it’s worth $200 more than a single Radeon HD 5870. Certainly if you’re running a 1920x1200 display, we’d recommend the single GPU card. But if you’re running triple displays, or a 30-inch, 2560x1600 monitor, and you want to push polygons at full resolution, you should consider the Radeon HD 5970. But make sure you’re willing to pay the cost.

Another note: this card is enormous. It’s an actual foot-long graphics card; make sure you’ve got a case deep enough to handle it.

Then there’s the whole issue of CrossFire. The HD 5970 is essentially a pair of downclocked HD 5870s in CrossFire mode. When the game can take advantage of CrossFire – as it does in our benchmarks – you can see huge performance gains. If the game can’t make use of CrossFire, then you own a pricey single GPU card that doesn’t run as fast as the HD 5870.

But what about running TWO of these cards in CrossFire mode? Find out on the next page. 

Dual-5970 CrossFire Performance

 We were fortunate enough to get not one, but two 5970 cards to test in our lab. The two cards came in Falcon Northwest's brand new Talon PC, which is the first 5970-equipped system we've reviewed. 

You can read our full review of the kick-ass Falcon Northwest Talon here, but the system specs are below for your reference. Note that the Talon is a Lynnfield-based Core-i7 system, overclocked to 3.93GHz, as opposed to the 3.33GHz Core i7-975 Bloomfield proc we used in our testbed to benchmark the lone 5970 card. 

In addition to a 48-hour plus burn-in period, we wanted to push Falcon Northwest’s dual-Radeon HD 5970 cards on something a bit harder so we connected the FNW Talon to a 30-inch 2560x1600 panel and cranked several benchmarks to maximum. The result? Impressive. Although, the drivers we used were still fairly early, the performance of the card is unquestionable. We had some concerns of running the card in a dual x8 mode (a limitation of the P55 chipset and Lynnfield platform) instead of full x16’s that an X58 platform would give us but the results don’t seem to show too much to be concerned about. The cards seem to offer better than expected scaling, even with early drivers.

Note that in Crysis, enabling 16X Anti-Aliasing doesn't seem to affect the framerate with CrossFire enabled. 

Finally, a note on overclocking. The AMD overvolting tool has two settings for core and memory. You can overvolt the GPUs, overvolt the memory or both. Using the tool, we pumped up both voltage settings, then found the card to be stable at 870MHz core and 1250MHz memory (17 and 25% respectively.) Curiously, though, we saw little actual performance gain. 3DMark Vantage (extreme setting) only saw a 1% increase, from 12084 to 12182. We got two additional FPS in Crysis and either no increase or slight decreases in frame rate for Far Cry 2 and STALKER: Clear Skies. We probably need to do a better job of balancing memory and core clocks, but our initial experiences suggest that overclocking may not be worth the effort.

Near–HD 4870 performance at a budget price

AMD has wasted no time bringing its DirectX 11 GPU architecture to a more affordable, mainstream-class GPU in the HD 5770. HIS is one of the first manufacturers to bring the HD 5770 to market.

At around $160, the card is priced similarly to existing Radeon HD 4870 cards. It’s the lowest-cost card in the roundup, and given the 180mm2 die size (that’s incredibly tiny for a GPU), prices are likely to eventually come down even further.

While the HIS HD 5770’s benchmark scores were the lowest in the roundup, this needs to be put into context. The card is practically miserly with power. Our system’s idle power of 142W was on a par with other HD 5000 series cards, but power at full bore was a scant 251W—about 10W lower than the HD 5850. The card requires just a single PCI Express power connector.

For the low price, you have to give up some graphical amenities, like antialiasing. It’s worth noting, however, that the HD 5770 still delivers 38fps in the Far Cry 2 action scene and 51fps in Ubisoft’s HAWX flight sim with AA and AF enabled. And like all the HD 5000 series, you can connect up to three displays to a single card.

So if you’re on a tight budget, and are still looking for a solid gaming experience and efficient power usage, check out the HIS HD 5770.

Review Roundup:

XFX Radeon HD 5870                             HID Radeon HD 5870

Sapphire Radeon HD 5870                           Asus EAHH5850

Diamond Radeon HD 5850                      Sapphire Radeon HD 5850

Gigabyte 260 GTX Super OC                         HIS Radeon HD 5770

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The 260 GTX chip pushed to its limit

It’s easy to be seduced by the latest and greatest graphics cards, but you can sometimes find excellent deals in older-generation cards that can still keep up with today’s shader-heavy PC games. Gigabyte’s 260 GTX SuperOC is a good example.

To make the cards, Gigabyte starts with cherry-picked 260 GTX chips from the factory. Then it clocks the GPUs at 680MHz, more than 100MHz faster than the standard 576MHz. Similarly, the SuperOC pushes the shader clock to 1,466MHz, instead of the stock 1,350MHz. Rounding off the performance push is 896MB of GDDR3 running at 1.25GHz instead of 1GHz. Gigabyte delivers these rarefied clock rates at slightly less than $200.

It’s true that the SuperOC won’t deliver Radeon HD 5850 levels of performance—but it also costs $60–$80 less. You should get good performance from the card if you’re willing to run without antialiasing in current games. Note, however, that pushing the card this hard takes power; our system idle power was 160W (compared to 141–142W for the Radeon HD 5000 series cards), and power at full bore was 316W—the same as the much more powerful Radeon HD 5870.

The Gigabyte 260 SuperOC supports Nvidia’s PhysX hardware physics acceleration in games that can take advantage of it, as well as 3DVision, Nvidia’s take on 3D stereoscopic gaming (a 120Hz display is required). The card is currently bundled with Far Cry 2.

Review Roundup:

XFX Radeon HD 5870                             HID Radeon HD 5870

Sapphire Radeon HD 5870                           Asus EAHH5850

Diamond Radeon HD 5850                      Sapphire Radeon HD 5850

Gigabyte 260 GTX Super OC                         HIS Radeon HD 5770

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Great performance at a midrange price

As with Sapphire’s Radeon HD 5870, the company’s HD 5850 card ships with coupons for two games: Dirt 2 and Battlestations: Pacific. Sapphire’s HD 5850 delivers a stock Radeon HD 5850, with its 1,440 stream processors, 72 texture units, and DirectX 11 support.

In our power-usage testing, Sapphire’s power draw was about average for an HD 5850. Our system power averaged 140W at idle, while pushing 260W at full throttle. Fan noise was fairly loud at full bore, but that was generally true of all the cards. At idle, overall noise levels were low enough to blend into the background of CPU, power supply, and case cooling.

We put the card through its paces in our gaming benchmark suite and found it to be an able performer, easily besting Nvidia’s last-generation best single-GPU card. There were no benchmark standouts, but given that we were running with 4x AA throughout, overall performance was robust. The Sapphire card kept pace with other HD 5850s in our roundup, but lacks the overclocking software tools Asus includes with its card.

The Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 seems readily available, and the best prices we found hovered around $270. The company offers a two-year warranty, but you need to return it to the retailer for replacement cards. There’s no provision for transferring the warranty if you resell the card.

Review Roundup:

XFX Radeon HD 5870                             HID Radeon HD 5870

Sapphire Radeon HD 5870                           Asus EAHH5850

Diamond Radeon HD 5850                      Sapphire Radeon HD 5850

Gigabyte 260 GTX Super OC                         HIS Radeon HD 5770

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Performs well, but is pricier than the competition

We admit to mixed feelings about Diamond’s Radeon HD 5850. On one hand, it offers the same strong performance as other Radeon HD 5850 cards—second only to their big-brother HD 5870 cards. But unlike other manufacturers, you don’t get a coupon for Dirt 2 in the box. Instead, you need to register the card at Diamond’s website to get the perk. You also won’t get the two-year warranty unless you register the card.

The other puzzling bit is the price. The card seems to be priced higher than other HD 5850s in our survey of online sites, though only by a few dollars.

Built on the cut-down Cypress chip, with 1,440 shader units and 1GB of 1,000MHz GDDR5 memory, Diamond’s card certainly offers terrific performance at a generally sub-$300 price point that’s sure to please, hitting 30fps in the demanding STALKER: Clear Skies test and pushing past 60fps in the Far Cry 2 ranch scene. But Diamond’s warranty, pricing, and bundle policy seem a little consumer unfriendly, so you might want to consider other HD 5850 cards if you’re in the market.

Review Roundup:

XFX Radeon HD 5870                             HID Radeon HD 5870

Sapphire Radeon HD 5870                           Asus EAHH5850

Diamond Radeon HD 5850                      Sapphire Radeon HD 5850

Gigabyte 260 GTX Super OC                         HIS Radeon HD 5770

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Asus beefs up its stock Radeon HD 5850 for better overclocking

All of the Radeon cards tested here are based on AMD’s reference design, including this Asus card. However, Asus includes Smart Doctor software, which allows you to easily overclock its card.

You can use the app to auto-tune the clock speeds, though this typically gives you a conservative up-clock that results in a relatively modest performance gain. When we used the auto-overclock feature, we saw gains of 8 percent in 3DMark Vantage, and a couple of frames per second in STALKER and Far Cry 2. If you have the patience, you can tweak voltage settings, core clocks, and memory clocks manually, which could boost performance more substantially.

The Asus EAH5850 is a double-wide card, and is 9.5 inches long. It will fit comfortably in most PC cases, although it requires a second slot. This is a more power-efficient card than the higher-end Radeon HD 5870s; our system idled at 138W, and maxed out under load at 260W—that’s about 55W less than the Radeon HD 5870 cards. If you use Smart Doctor to push up the voltage on the card, you’ll consume more power, so make sure you have a robust power supply in your system.

At stock clock speeds, performance was on par with the other Radeon HD 5850 cards in the roundup, but the addition of Smart Doctor is a definite distinguishing characteristic. The $260 Asus card was even with or better than the fastest last-generation card, EVGA’s 285 GTX SSC.

Asus offers a three-year warranty, better than all other manufacturers except XFX.

Review Roundup:

XFX Radeon HD 5870                             HID Radeon HD 5870

Sapphire Radeon HD 5870                           Asus EAHH5850

Diamond Radeon HD 5850                      Sapphire Radeon HD 5850

Gigabyte 260 GTX Super OC                         HIS Radeon HD 5770

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Sapphire’s take on the Radeon HD 5870 is pretty much middle-of-the-road

As with all Radeon HD 5870s, Sapphire’s version offers superlative performance, making it one of the fastest single-GPU cards available today. At its core is AMD’s 2.15 billion transistor Cypress chip, coupled with 1GB of 1,200MHz GDDR5 memory. Two DVI, one HDMI, and one DisplayPort connection allow for flexible monitor attachment.

Sapphire is bundling two games with this card: Dirt 2 and Battlestations: Pacific. Dirt 2 is one of the first titles to support Microsoft’s DirectX 11 graphics API, so it should show off the visual chops of the new GPU. As with all HD 5870 cards, the Sapphire HD 5870 is just over 10.5 inches long, so be sure the card will fit in your case before buying.

Sapphire’s two-year warranty is a little different than most others’; rather than returning the card to Sapphire, the company prefers you return it to the original retailer.

In the end, Sapphire’s take on AMD’s hot new GPU is pretty much like all the others—the fastest card you can get for the money, modest power use when it’s not running a game, and a cost below $400. Overall, it’s a combination that’s hard to beat.

Review Roundup:

XFX Radeon HD 5870                             HID Radeon HD 5870

Sapphire Radeon HD 5870                           Asus EAHH5850

Diamond Radeon HD 5850                      Sapphire Radeon HD 5850

Gigabyte 260 GTX Super OC                         HIS Radeon HD 5770

(Back to the main feature)