AMD's Radeon HD 5870: Bringing About the Next Generation Of GPUs
by Ryan Smith on September 23, 2009 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Sometimes a surprise is nice. Other times it’s nice for things to go as planned for once.
Compared to the HD 4800 series launch, AMD’s launch of the HD 5800 series today is going to fall into the latter category. There are no last-minute announcements or pricing games, or NDAs that get rolled back unexpectedly. Today’s launch is about as normal as a new GPU launch can get.
However with the lack of last-minute surprises, it becomes harder to keep things under wraps. When details of a product launch are announced well ahead of time, inevitably someone on the inside can’t help but leak the details of what’s going on. The result is that what we have to discuss today isn’t going to come as a great surprise for some of you.
As early as a week ago the top thread on our video forums had the complete and correct specifications for the HD 5800 series. So if you’ve been peaking at what’s coming down the pipe (naughty naughty) then much of this is going to be a confirmation of what you already know.
Today’s Launch
3 months ago AMD announced the Evergreen family of GPUs, AMD’s new line of DirectX11 based GPUs. 2 weeks ago we got our first briefing on the members of the Evergreen family, and AMD publically announced their Eyefinity technology running on the then-unnamed Radeon HD 5870. Today finally marks the start of the Evergreen launch, with cards based on the first chip, codename Cypress, being released. Out of Cypress comes two cards: The Radeon HD 5870, and the Radeon HD 5850.
| ATI Radeon HD 5870 | ATI Radeon HD 5850 | ATI Radeon HD 4890 | ATI Radeon HD 4870 | |
| Stream Processors | 1600 | 1440 | 800 | 800 |
| Texture Units | 80 | 72 | 40 | 40 |
| ROPs | 32 | 32 | 16 | 16 |
| Core Clock | 850MHz | 725MHz | 850MHz | 750MHz |
| Memory Clock | 1.2GHz (4.8GHz data rate) GDDR5 | 1GHz (4GHz data rate) GDDR5 | 975MHz (3900MHz data rate) GDDR5 | 900MHz (3600MHz data rate) GDDR5 |
| Memory Bus Width | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit |
| Frame Buffer | 1GB | 1GB | 1GB | 1GB |
| Transistor Count | 2.15B | 2.15B | 959M | 956M |
| Manufacturing Process | TSMC 40nm | TSMC 40nm | TSMC 55nm | TSMC 55nm |
| Price Point | $379 | $259 | ~$180 | ~$160 |
So what’s Cypress in a nutshell? It’s a RV790 (Radeon HD 4890) with virtually everything doubled, given the additional hardware needed to meet the DirectX 11 specifications, with new features such as Eyefinity and angle independent anisotropic filtering packed in, lower idle power usage, and fabricated on TSMC’s 40nm process. Beyond that Cypress is a direct evolution/refinement of the RV7xx, and closely resembles its ancestor in design and internal workings.
The leader of the Evergreen family is the Radeon HD 5870, which will be AMD’s new powerhouse card. The 5870 features 1600 stream processors divided among 20 SIMDs, 80 texture units, and 32 ROPs, with 1GB of GDDR5 on-board connected to a 256bit memory bus. The 5870 is clocked at 850MHz for the core clock, and 1.2GHz (4.8GHz effective) for the memory, giving it a maximum compute performance of 2.72 teraflops. Load power is 188W, and idle power is a tiny 27W. It is launching at a MSRP of $379.
Below that we have the 5850 (which we will not be reviewing today), which is a slightly cut-down version of the 5870. Here we have 1440 stream processors divided among 18 SIMDs, 72 texture units, and the same 32 ROPs, with the same 256bit memory bus. The 5850 is clocked at 725Mhz for the core, and 1Ghz for the memory, giving it a maximum compute performance of 2.09 TFLOPS. With the disabled units, load power is slightly reduced to 170W, and it has the same 27W idle power. AMD expects the 5850 to perform at approximately 80% the performance level of the 5870, and is pricing it at $259.
Availability is going to be an issue, so we may as well get the subject out of the way. While today is a hard launch, it’s not quite as hard of a launch as we would like to see. AMD is launching the 5800 series with Dell, so it shouldn't come as a surprise if Dell has cards when e-tailers don't.
The situation with general availability is murky at best. The first thing we heard was that there may be a week of lag, but as of today AMD is telling us that they expect e-tailers to have 5870 cards on the 23rd, and 5850 cards next week. In any case whatever cards do make it in the channel are going to be in short supply, which matches the overall vibe we’re getting from AMD that supplies are going to be tight initially compared to the demand. So even after the first few days it may be hard to get a card. Given a tight supply we’ll be surprised if prices stick to the MSRP, and we’re likely to see e-tailers charge a price premium in the first days. Depending on just how high the demand is, this may mean it’ll take a while for prices to fall down to their MSRPs and for AMD to completely clear the backlog of demand for these cards.
Update: As of 5am EDT, we have seen the availability of 5870s come and go. Newegg had some in stock, but they have since sold out. So indeed AMD did make the hard launch (which we're always glad to see), but it looks like our concerns about a limited supply are proving to be true.
Finally, we asked AMD about the current TSMC 40nm situation, and they have told us that they are happy with it. Our concern was that problems at TSMC (specifically: yield) would be a holdup in getting more cards out there, but this does not look to be the case. However given the low supply of the cards compared to where AMD expects the supply to be, TSMC’s total 40nm capacity may not be to AMD’s liking.
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poohbear - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
is it just me or is anyone else disappointed? next gen cards used to double the performance of previous gen cards, this card beats em by a measly 30-40%. *sigh* times change i guess.AznBoi36 - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
It's just you.The next generations never doubled in performance. Rather they offered a bump in framerates (15-40%) along with better texture filtering, AA, AF etc...
I'd rather my games look AMAZING at 60fps rather than crappy graphics at 100fps.
SiliconDoc - Monday, September 28, 2009 - link
Golly, another red rooster lie, they just NEVER stop.Let's take it right from this site, so your whining about it being nv zone or fudzilla or whatever shows ati is a failure in the very terms claimed is not your next, dishonest move.
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NVIDIA w/ GT200 spanks their prior generation by 60.96% !
That's nearly 61% average increase at HIGHEST RESOLUTION and HIGHEST AA AF settings, and it right here @ AT - LOL -
- and they matched the clock settings JUST TO BE OVERTLY UNFAIR ! ROFLMAO AND NVIDIA'S NEXT GEN LEAP STILL BEAT THE CRAP OUT OF THIS LOUSY ati 5870 EPIC FAIL !
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3334...">http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3334...
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roflmao - that 426.70/7 = 60.96 % INCREASE FROM THE LAST GEN AT THE SAME SPEEDS, MATCHED FOR MAKING CERTAIN IT WOULD BE AS LOW AS POSSIBLE ! ROFLMAO NICE TRY BUT NVIDIA KICKED BUTT !
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Sorry, the "usual" is not 15-30% - lol
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NVIDIA's last usual was !!!!!!!!!!!! 60.69% INCREASE AT HIGHEST SETTINGS !
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Now, once again, please, no lying.
piroroadkill - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
No, it's definitely just youGriswold - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
Its just you. Go buy a clue.ET - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
Should probably be removed...Nice article. The 5870 doesn't really impress. It's the price of two 4890 cards, so for rendering power that's probably the way to go. I'll be looking forward to the 5850 reviews.
Zingam - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
Good but as seen it doesn't play Crysis once again... :DWe shall wait for 8Gb RAM DDR 7, 16 nm Graphics card to play this damned game!
BoFox - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
Great article!Re: Shader Aliasing nowhere to be found in DX9 games--
Shader aliasing is present all over the Unreal3 engine games (UT3, Bioshock, Batman, R6:Vegas, Mass Effect, etc..). I can imagine where SSAA would be extremely useful in those games.
Also, I cannot help but wonder if SSAA would work in games that use deferred shading instead of allowing MSAA to work (examples: Dead Space, STALKER, Wanted, Bionic Commando, etc..), if ATI would implement brute-force SSAA support in the drivers for those games in particular.
I am amazed at the perfectly circular AF method, but would have liked to see 32x AF in addition. With 32x AF, we'd probably be seeing more of a difference. If we're awed by seeing 16x AA or 24x CFAA, then why not 32x AF also (given that the increase from 8 to 16x AF only costs like 1% performance hit)?
Why did ATI make the card so long? It's even longer than a GTX 295 or a 4870X2. I am completely baffled at this. It only has 8 memory chips, uses a 256-bit bus, unlike a more complex 512-bit bus and 16 chips found on a much, much shorter HD2900XT. There seems to be so much space wasted on the end of the PCB. Perhaps some of the vendors will develop non-reference PCB's that are a couple inches shorter real soon. It could be that ATI rushed out the design (hence the extremely long PCB draft design), or that ATI deliberately did this to allow 3rd-party vendors to make far more attractive designs that will keep us interested in the 5870 right around the time of GT300 release.
Regarding the memory bandwidth bottleneck, I completely agree with you that it certainly seems to be a severe bottleneck (although not too severe that it only performs 33% better than a HD4890). A 5870 has exactly 2x the specifications of a 4890, yet it generally performs slower than a 4870X2, let alone dual-4890 in Xfire. A 4870 is slower than a 4890 to begin with, and is dependent on Crossfire.
Overall, ATI is correct in saying that a 5870 is generally 60% faster than a 4870 in current games, but theoretically, a 5870 should be exactly 100% faster than a 4890. Only if ATI could have used 512-bit memory bandwidth with GDDR5 chips (even if it requires the use of a 1024-bit ringbus) would the total memory bandwidth be doubled. The performance would have been at least as good as two 4890's in crossfire, and also at least as good as a GTX295.
I am guessing that ATI wants to roll out the 5870X2 as soon as possible and realized that doing it with a 512-bit bus would take up too much time/resources/cost, etc.. and that it's better to just beat NV to the punch a few months in advance. Perhaps ATI will do a 5970 card with 512-bit memory a few months after a 5870X2 is released, to give GT300 cards a run for its money? Perhaps it is to "pacify" Nvidia's strategy with its upcoming next-gen that carry great promises with a completely revamped architecture and 512 shaders, so that NV does not see the need to make its GT300 exceed the 5870 by far too much? Then ATI would be able to counter right afterwards without having to resort to making a much bigger chip?
Speculation.. speculation...
Lakku - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
Read some of the other 5780 articles that cover SSAA image quality. It actually makes most modern games look worse, but that is through no fault of ATi, just the nature of the SS method that literally AA's everything, and in the process, can/does blur textures.strikeback03 - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
I don't know much about video games, but in photography it is known that reducing the size of an image reduces the appearance of sharpness as well, so final sharpening should be done at the output size.