Wednesday, November 11th 2009

AMD Radeon HD 5970 Specs Surface

In a few days from now, AMD will unveil its new flagship graphics accelerator, the ATI Radeon HD 5970, which will intends to cement the brand's performance leadership over every product from rival NVIDIA. The HD 5970, codenamed "Hemlock", is a dual-GPU accelerator, with two codenamed "Cypress" GPUs in an internal CrossfireX configuration.

Built on the 40 nm process, these GPUs will feature 1600 stream processors each, and will each have a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface to connect to 2 GB of memory (4 GB total on card). The clock speeds are where the specifications of these GPUs differ from their single-GPU avatar, the Radeon HD 5870. The core is clocked at 725 MHz, while the memory runs at 1000 MHz (4000 MHz effective).

The accelerator will not have a rear panel identical to those of other Radeon HD 5000 series accelerators. It has the usual broad air vent occupying one slot, while the other has two DVI-D and one mini DisplayPort (DP) connector. The mini DP connector can give out DVI output using a dongle, and in this way, support for ATI Eyefinity technology remains intact. The NDA covering this accelerator is said to expire on the 19th of November, not very far away.
Source: TechConnect Magazine
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147 Comments on AMD Radeon HD 5970 Specs Surface

#51
W1zzard
DanishDevilI find it interesting that after the die shrink, they still had to underclock the cards to get them to run cool enough. ATi is feeling the heat (from their own cards).
wildest speculation, no evidence. maybe ati wants to keep some room for a higher clock version? wait for my reviews before you decide to believe something like that
Posted on Reply
#52
ToTTenTranz
inferKNOXThe amount of memory on the card cannot exceed the amount in the system, thus 4GB+ would be necessary in the system, which could only be utilised by a 64-bit system.
And why is that?
DanishDevil59xx is dual GPU. If you want trifire with 2 cards, you pair a 5970 with a 5870.

I find it interesting that after the die shrink, they still had to underclock the cards to get them to run cool enough. ATi is feeling the heat (from their own cards).
Hey, these are 2.15billion transistor behemoths. I'm sure it's not a task that easy for a second-gen 40nm process.
Posted on Reply
#53
wolf
Performance Enthusiast
inferKNOXHe's talking about the rename from die shrink of nv 8series to call it 9series & blatant rename of 9800GTX+ to GTS250.
www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_9800_gtx_plus_us.html

www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_gts_250_us.html

Funny, I could have sworn there were differences.... PCB, pci-e power requirements, cooler... In any case I really don't want to get into this here, its hardly the thread, Wanna start one about it? :rolleyes:

:p
Posted on Reply
#54
JrRacinFan
Served 5k and counting ...
DanishDevil59xx is dual GPU. If you want trifire with 2 cards, you pair a 5970 with a 5870.
But last we known you can't crossfire from different families. eg 58XX with 58XX, 48XX with 48XX ....

unless I am missing something here.
Posted on Reply
#55
1Kurgan1
The Knife in your Back
Not as exciting as I would have hoped, but it's also a good sign. While the clock speeds on this are less than stellar, it's overkill either way. Yes 2x 5870's will be faster, but thats a big deal right now. ATI has said they have that "ace in the hole" for when GT300 lands, which is exactly what they need, and my bet is, when GT300 is announced, ATI will announce 5890 and a 5990.
Posted on Reply
#56
devguy
JrRacinFanBut last we known you can't crossfire from different families. eg 58XX with 58XX, 48XX with 48XX ....

unless I am missing something here.
Yeah, the family of the chip is not as important as the core of the chip. I would believe one could crossfire any cards that contain the RV870 pro or xt cores. Since R800 is just 2xRV870, then it should be fine with the HD 58xx series.
Posted on Reply
#57
aj28
DanishDevilI find it interesting that after the die shrink, they still had to underclock the cards to get them to run cool enough. ATi is feeling the heat (from their own cards).
Die shrink and double the stream processors. The "underclock" still leaves them at 4870 speeds, which is pretty impressive if you ask me.
Posted on Reply
#58
1Kurgan1
The Knife in your Back
aj28Die shrink and double the stream processors. The "underclock" still leaves them at 4870 speeds, which is pretty impressive if you ask me.
Not to mention that when you get a 4870 or especially a 4870x2 there isnt a ton of headroom. The 5870's have a ton though, heck even 5850's I'm seeing a ton of people with them over 1000mhz on the core, dual GPU cards are just heat monsters.
Posted on Reply
#59
Soylent Joe
Wow, this thing is going to be badass, and probably close to a grand.
Posted on Reply
#60
eidairaman1
The Exiled Airman
I hope its overwhelmingly fast, and have certain techniques that make it faster for games that do not support crossfire etc. Apparently a gaming buddy of mine has a 4870X2, apparently MS had a flaw with the OS that was problematic with detecting video cards in Multicard config or even dual chip cards, They Fixed it and His performance jumped considerably.
Posted on Reply
#61
hv43082
More importantly, HOW MUCH???
Posted on Reply
#62
Kenshai
hv43082More importantly, HOW MUCH???
Expect slightly over the price over 2 5870's at launch but slightly cheaper than 2 5870's at it's settle price.

This is a guess, but it's what the previous generation did. I assume ATI's going to go with the same thing.
Posted on Reply
#63
jaredpace
hv43082More importantly, HOW MUCH???
Posted on Reply
#64
Tatsumaru
Damn, A monster not a card ! for its power and its fantastic length.
This thing will kick the crap out of even the strongest fermi single chip card ,that still has a very long way to get in the market
Posted on Reply
#65
AsRock
TPU addict
1Kurgan1Not as exciting as I would have hoped, but it's also a good sign. While the clock speeds on this are less than stellar, it's overkill either way. Yes 2x 5870's will be faster, but thats a big deal right now. ATI has said they have that "ace in the hole" for when GT300 lands, which is exactly what they need, and my bet is, when GT300 is announced, ATI will announce 5890 and a 5990.
But if CF is not supporte3d by the game it's going run worse than a single 5870 ?.
Posted on Reply
#66
Lazzer408
5970 = 5870x2?
CHAOS_KILLAcall it the hd5870x2, stop changing the naming schemes, dont follow in nvidias footsteps! lol
Agreed.
Posted on Reply
#67
newconroer
mtosev4GB. hmm,... most PCs have that amount of RAM. a lot of memory on that card. should be good for playing games at max for the next 3years.
Maybe, but isn't the architecture still the same? The cards don't technically have access to 4gb in real time, it's 2gb/2gb instead?
Posted on Reply
#69
eidairaman1
The Exiled Airman
they may have looked at how the 4870X2 accesses the ram and actually improved on it or changed the technique to make it work better overall.
Posted on Reply
#70
Kenshai
eidairaman1they may have looked at how the 4870X2 accesses the ram and actually improved on it or changed the technique to make it work better overall.
All it's doing is crossfire on a single card, it should work as crossfire does on two cards.
Posted on Reply
#71
Lazzer408
KenshaiAll it's doing is crossfire on a single card, it should work as crossfire does on two cards.
I had 5-10% better performance using 2x3870s vs. 1 3870x2 fwiw.
Posted on Reply
#72
Kenshai
Lazzer408I had 5-10% better performance using 2x3870s vs. 1 3870x2 fwiw.
Was referring to the memory, not overall performance.
Posted on Reply
#73
W1zzard
i just got an answer regarding "4 GB card requires 64-bit OS".

This is not the case. Any such cards will work fine in a 32-bit OS. Once the texture is created in system memory (which you have to do in any case) the GPU is tasked with copying it to video memory without any CPU interaction (DMA transfer). In other words, the GPU is told: "copy 16 MB of texture from main memory address X into GPU memory". Done.
Posted on Reply
#74
extrasalty
Lazzer408I had 5-10% better performance using 2x3870s vs. 1 3870x2 fwiw.
3870X2 had PCIe 1.1 bridge chip.
Posted on Reply
#75
inferKNOX
KenshaiExpect slightly over the price over 2 5870's at launch but slightly cheaper than 2 5870's at it's settle price.

This is a guess, but it's what the previous generation did. I assume ATI's going to go with the same thing.
Don't you mean, slightly under the price of 2 5870s? That's how I remember it from the 4 series.
Even now, looking at jaredpace post, you can see that it's US$600, where 2x5870s would cost about US$800, considering they're going for about US$400 ATM.

All of which is pretty pricey thanks to nVidia's fumbling. If you think about it however, the performance is worth the price, far more so than previous generations of cards that still couldn't handle the games of their day totally, but were being priced even higher than this.:slap:
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