ATI Radeon HD 5970 - The King Returns

source: hardwarezone.com
Reclaiming the Speed Crown

Speed and power. Men's insatiable lust for the two, and the desire to be the world's fastest and most powerful have led to wars. And not many are as intense and fierce as the one between ATI and NVIDIA.

Just last year, ATI snatched title of world's fastest graphics card from NVIDIA with their dual-GPU Radeon HD 4870 X2 from NVIDIA's single-chip GeForce GTX 280. This prompted a fierce response from the green camp, and it came in the form of the dual-GPU GeForce GTX 295. The GeForce GTX 295 was fantastic card in many aspects, because not only was it blazingly fast, it was also launched at a lower price than the competition. That's a huge double whammy in our books.

Lately, the tables have been turned. ATI has launched their new Radeon HD 5000 series to great success (although we hear availability of these cards are poor, no thanks to yield issues at TSMC), and NVIDIA is still sitting on the sidelines with nothing really noteworthy to show yet (besides the still shrouded Fermi).

The Radeon HD 5870 might be the fastest single GPU yet, but it is not the undisputed single fastest graphics card. While it is certainly a match for the GeForce GTX 295, it doesn't exactly beat it.

More firepower is needed and that's exactly what ATI is giving. Deviating from the usual "X2" suffix, the new Radeon HD 5970, codenamed Hemlock, is ATI's biggest, boldest and most powerful graphics card yet. The Radeon HD 5970 essentially squeezes two Cypress XT chips onto a single GPU, and as such the card boasts a whopping transistor count of 4.3 billion, 3200 stream processors, 160 texture mapping units and 64 raster operator units. This makes the new Hemlock card, the most powerful graphics card in existence.

With the legendary Excalibur sword emblazoned on the packaging, HIS's Radeon HD 5970 looks set to reclaim the speed crown from NVIDIA.

Join us then as we take a look at the kind of performance you can expect to get from a graphics card packing so much firepower under its cooler. But first, a quick look at how it stacks up against current high-end graphics cards just in raw specs:-

The Radeon 5970 and Competitive Comparison SKUs

Model	ATI Radeon HD 5970 2GB	ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB	ATI Radeon HD 5850 1GB	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 1792MB	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 1GB
Core Code	Hemlock	Cypress XT	Cypress Pro	GT200 x 2	GT200
Transistor Count	4300 million	2150 million	2150 million	2800 million	1400 million
Manufacturing Process	40nm	40nm	40nm	55nm	55nm
Core Clock	725MHz	850MHz	725MHz	576MHz	648MHz
Stream Processors	3200 Stream Processing Units	1600 Stream Processing Units	1440 Stream Processors	480 Stream Processors	240 Stream Processors
Stream Processor Clock	725MHz	850MHz	725MHz	1242MHz	1476MHz
Texture Mapping Units (TMU) or Texture Filtering (TF) units	160	80	72	160	80
Raster Operator units (ROP)	64	32	32	56	32
Memory Clock	4000MHz GDDR5	4800MHz GDDR5	4000MHz GDDR5	1998MHz GDDR3	2484MHz GDDR3
DDR Memory Bus	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	448-bit	512-bit
Memory Bandwidth	256GB/s	153.6GB/s	128GB/s	223.8GB/s	159GB/s
PCI Express Interface	PCIe ver 2.0 x16	PCIe ver 2.0 x16	PCIe ver 2.0 x16	PCIe ver 2.0 x16	PCIe ver 2.0 x16
Molex Power Connectors	6-pin, 8-pin	2 x 6-pin	2 x 6-pin	6-pin, 8-pin	2 x 6-pin
Multi GPU Technology	CrossFireX	CrossFireX	CrossFireX	SLI	SLI
DVI Output Support	2 x Dual-Link	2 x Dual-Link	2 x Dual-Link	2 x Dual-Link	2 x Dual-Link
HDCP Output Support	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Street Price	Launch price: US$599	~US$379	~US$259	~US$500	~US$350

The HIS Radeon HD 5970 2GB GDDR5

When the first screenshots of what was supposedly a Radeon HD 5970 surfaced on the Internet, we were slightly shocked to read that the card was a whopping 13.5 inches long. This meant that only the largest of casings would be able to accommodate it.

And our fears came to fruition when we finally unpacked the HIS Radeon HD 5970. At 12 inches long, it was shorter than we had first feared, but still long enough to pose a problem for most users with medium-sized casings. It just about made it into our Cooler Master Storm Sniper, and that's already a huge casing.

Despite the added length, the Radeon HD 5970 retains a similar cooler design to the one on the other Radeon HD 5000 series cards - at least from the exterior outlook. This means it gets a single fan, and two vents at the opposite end of the connector ports. With the card being so long, this also means that the fan is now situated further away from the GPU cores, and we can't help but wonder if this will have a negative effect on operating temperatures. Fortunately this wasn't the case in our temperature testing segment. Internally, we were told that it it's a vapor-chamber based heatsink to accelerate heat draw and massive heatsinks akin to the previous "X2" series of dual-GPU graphics cards.

Perhaps that is why the Radeon HD 5970 card's clock speeds are on the conservative side to ensure the cooler can handle the job decently. Remember, a single Radeon HD 5870 is clocked 850MHz at the core and 4800MHz DDR at the memory. The Radeon HD 5970, however, is only clocked 725MHz at the core and 4000MHz DDR at the memory - equivalent to the Radeon HD 5850 clock speeds, but retains all the processing units available on the Cypress XT GPU. If you're watching the numbers, the new Radeon HD 5970 won't displace the CrossFire pair of Radeon HD 5870 graphics cards yet as you'll soon see.

Measuring a grand 12-inches, the Radeon HD 5970 is easily the longest graphics card ever, and will require users to have an equally large casing to accommodate it.

The Radeon HD 5870 is not a small card, but look at how the Radeon HD 5970 dwarfs it.

Flipping the Radeon HD 5970 over, we can see where the two Cypress XT GPU cores are located.

Differing from the other Radeon 5000 series cards, the Radeon HD 5970 only gets twin DVI outputs and a single mini-DisplayPort. This allows it to have a larger vent, which would undoubtedly come in useful in dissipating heat from its twin GPUs.

The Radeon 5970 gets a single CrossFireX connector, which means a quad-GPU configuration is possible.

Test Setup

To tap onto the full potential of the powerful Radeon HD 5970, we'll be using an Intel X58 and Core i7 setup with the following specifications:

Intel X58 Test System:

• Intel Core i7 975 (3.33GHz)
  
• Gigabyte GA-EX58 Extreme motherboard
  
• 3 x 1GB Kingston HyperX DDR3-1333 in triple channel mode
  
• Seagate 7200.10 200GB SATA hard drive
  
• Windows Vista Ultimate with SP1

Unless something goes horribly wrong, the Radeon HD 5970 will, in all certainty, reclaim the title of the world's fastest single card. Therefore, the question here is how much faster it is than the current crop of fast single graphics card. To answer that, we have the Radeon 5870 and 5850, as well as the duo of GeForce GTX 295 and GTX 285 from NVIDIA. We've also plugged in results from dual Radeon HD 5870 cards in CrossFireX configuration for comparison.

Here is the full list of cards and driver versions used:

• HIS Radeon HD 5970 2GB GDDR5 (Beta 8.66 RC4)
  
• ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 9.10)
  
• ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB GDDR5 in CrossFireX (Catalyst 9.10)
  
• ATI Radeon HD 5850 1GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 9.10)
  
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 1792MB GDDR3 (ForceWare 191.07)
  
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 1GB GDDR3 (ForceWare 191.07)

The cards were tested using the following benchmarks:

• Futuremark 3DMark Vantage
  
• Crysis Warhead
  
• Far Cry 2
  
• Warhammer: Dawn of War 2

3DMark Vantage Results

We begin our report with 3DMark Vantage, and immediately saw the Radeon HD 5970 powering ahead. On the most intense setting, it comprehensively outscored the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 by an astonishing 31%. However, the Radeon HD 5970 could not beat the combined might of two Radeon HD 5870 cards in CrossFireX configuration - the duo has higher clock speeds.



Crysis Warhead & Far Cry 2 Results

Crysis Warhead saw the Radeon HD 5970 dominating again, and it gets the distinction of being the only single graphics card capable of producing playable frame rates (above 30fps) on the most demanding setting of 1920 x 1440 resolution with anti-aliasing enabled. To add, it was about 30% faster than the GeForce GTX 295. And again, it lost out only to the pair of Radeon HD 5870 cards in CrossFireX configuration.




It was the same story on Far Cry 2, as the Radeon HD 5970 was once again the best performing single graphics card by some distance. Interestingly though, the pair of Radeon HD 5870 graphics cards managed to outperform the new single graphics card king by quite a margin yet in this benchmark.






Dawn of War 2 Results

The Radeon HD 5970 disappointed on Dawn of War 2, where it managed low and inconsistent frame rates. The same problem was exhibited by the pair of Radeon 5870 in CrossFireX too, which could point to a problem with poor driver optimization for CrossFireX configurations. Looks like we'll need newer drivers to heal these issues.



Dawn of War 2 Results

The Radeon HD 5970 disappointed on Dawn of War 2, where it managed low and inconsistent frame rates. The same problem was exhibited by the pair of Radeon 5870 in CrossFireX too, which could point to a problem with poor driver optimization for CrossFireX configurations. Looks like we'll need newer drivers to heal these issues.




Temperature

In terms of load operating temperatures, the Radeon HD 5970 did better than we expected, recording a respectable (for high-end cards at least) 78 degrees Celsius. Perhaps the larger vents had a role to play? Also note that both GPUs in the new card recorded roughly the same load operating temperatures which is quite comforting to know that the card's cooling system works for it.




Power Consumption

Power efficiency is one of the bright points of ATI's latest generation cards and the Radeon HD 5970 does not disappoint. Overall, power consumption figures are impressive for a card this powerful. It outperforms the GeForce GTX 295, yet consumes significantly less power than it. Such claims were barely thinkable in the previous generation ATI cards, but they've finally showed themselves as capable.




Overclocking

Using the in-built ATI Overdrive overclocking tool, we managed 800MHz at the core and 4400MHz DDR at the memory, which gave us a negligible improvement of 120 3DMarks. Further attempts to replicate the higher speeds of the Radeon HD 5870 failed, as Vantage would crash halfway into the benchmarking run. Apparently, the Radeon HD 5970 is not a very keen overclocker despite what ATI /AMD would like to have us believe. Perhaps it could be somewhat linked to the early driver nature and this may yet see an area of improvement in the near future.



The Extreme Graphics Card

Overall, there can be no doubting the power and speed of the new Radeon HD 5970. It is simply blazing fast, and as far as single graphics cards go, nothing in the market comes close. The previous speed king, the GeForce GTX 295, has been utterly outclassed by newest dual-GPU offering.

What's more, it does so by offering very impressive levels of power efficiency. In our tests, it easily overpowered the NVIDIA GTX 295 and was on average about 20% faster. Despite that, it also managed to achieve markedly lower power consumption figures. This is testament to the new Evergreen chips' efficiency and is certainly amazing, to say the least.

While it may be an adept graphics cruncher, there are other considerations that work against it. For one, its immense size necessitates an equally gargantuan and high-end casing for it to fit. So unless you have a similarly large casing to begin with, or are prepared to upgrade, the Radeon HD 5970 may not be for you. There are other options yet like a CrossFire pair of Radeon HD 5870 graphics cards, which is actually the current speed champ configuration to beat.

And then there is its massive launch price, a wallet-busting US$599 (S$830). This is US$200 more than a Radeon HD 5870, and is enough to buy two Radeon HD 5850 cards with change to spare. The old adage, "you pay for what you get", certainly holds true here.

The Radeon HD 5970 is easily the fastest single card in the world and so don't expect it to come cheap. This is one for the seriously, seriously hardcore.

To add on, the HIS Radeon HD 5970 we have here retails for US$599.99 but comes bundled with a redeemable copy of Dirt 2 and also comes with a handy multi-purpose screwdriver.

At the end of the day, the King has returned for there's no denying the sheer brute power of the Radeon HD 5970. But with its colossal dimensions and steep asking price, this is ultimately still one for the extremists.