Radeon HD 5800 series takes the lead
We have a pretty good grip on the first graphics circuit of the Evergreen family but a GPU require a requires a circuit board and Cypress/RV870 is launched in the form of Radeon HD 5800 series. The first two models will be called Radeon HD 5870 and Radeon HD 5850.
Radeon HD 5870 is the flagship is actually the only available so far. AMD has chosen to go with a half paper launch of the Radeon HD 5800 series where little brother Radeon HD 5850 is still waiting for approval. Exactly why AMD has chosen to let loose the top model first is uncertain, but with subpar availability of Radeon HD 5870 it is pretty obvious that it hasn’t been able to produce any significant numbers of yet another card just yet.
AMD Radeon HD 5870
AMD Radeon HD 5850
In spite of all this we will present both cards today making us well prepared when Radeon HD 5850 do arrive. Below is a complete list of specifications that puts AMD’s new Radeon HD 5800 series in contrast to the precursor Radeon HD 4870 and NVIDIA’s fastest graphics card, GeForce GTX 285.
| HD 4870 | HD 5850 | HD 5870 | GTX 285 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manufacturing tech. | 55nm | 40nm | 40nm | 55nm |
| Core size | 263 mm2 | 334 mm2 | 334 mm2 | 470 mm2 |
| Transistors | 956 mil. | 2 150 mil. | 2 150 mil. | 1 400 mil. |
| Shader units | 800 | 1440 | 1600 | 240 |
| GPU frequency | 750MHz | 725MHz | 850MHz | 648MHz |
| Theoretic perf. | 1.2 TFLOPS | 2.09 TFLOPS | 2.7 TFLOPS | 1.01 TFLOPS |
| Texture units | 40 | 72 | 80 | 80 |
| Texture fillrate | 30,0 Gtexel/s | 52,2 Gtexel/s | 68,0 Gtexel/s | 51.8 Gtexel/s |
| ROPs | 16 | 32 | 32 | 28 |
| Pixel fillrate | 12 Gpixel/s | 23.2 Gpixel/s | 27.2 Gpixel/s | 20.7 Gpixel/s |
| Z/Stencil | 48.0GSamples/s | 92.8GSamples/s | 108.8GSamples/s |
–
|
| Memory | GDDR5 | GDDR5 | GDDR5 | GDDR3 |
| Memory frequency | 900 MHz (3600MHz) |
1000 MHz (4000MHz) |
1200 MHz (4800MHz) |
1242 MHz (2484MHz) |
| Bus width | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 512-bit |
| Bandwidth | 115.2 GB/s | 128.0 GB/s | 153.6 GB/s | 159.0 GB/s |
| DirectX | DX10.1 | DX11 | DX11 | DX10 |
| Max. output | 160W | 170W | 188W | 183W |
| Min. output | 90W | 27W | 27W |
–
|
| Price | $150 | $299 | $399 | $350 |
We have already presented the majority of these specifications earlier in the article when discussing the RV870 GPU but here we clearly see the differences between it, the competition and AMD’s last generation graphics circuit. Extra noticeable is that that the number crunching performance (FLOPS) has increased more than the average and that AMD has covered up the weak sport, the texture fillrate that is now more than twice as high as last generation.
 AMD Radeon HD 5870 |
 AMD Radeon HD 5850 |
Even if the additional calculation performance and the great number of transistors have increased quite a lot, the power consumption has only increased marginally, which is of course a result from the more efficient 40nm technology. There is no doubt AMD has done its homework on the idle power consumption, it has lowered it to a third of what the last generation consumed when idle.
The prices are as expected, Radeon HD 5870 costs just under $400 while Radeon HD 5850 are listed south of $300. This puts Radeon HD 5870 between NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 285 and GTX 295, but we are yet to investigate performance. First of all it’s time to look closer at our test card.
