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ATi Radeon 5870


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Radeon HD 5870 review

Newegg's Stock (or lack thereof)

I don't know how closely anyone else here follows the desktop GPU market, but for anyone else as intrigued as I am, this card is a BEAST. I am shocked to see it beat the GTX295 in a few game benches, and it runs pretty damn close behind in 3DMark Vantage (about as authoritative a benchmark as you can find).

Not since Nvidia's 8 series have I been charged for a new release. I'm also glad to see that ATI is the one to enter the DX11 fray first; Nvidia has clearly been lagging in the aftermath of the 8 series success and it's time they feel the pressure from competition to put out something that is not only capable, but priced considerably better. The GTX series is decent, don't get me wrong, but the GTX285 is priced on par (or slightly below) with the 5870 and will get its ass handed to it in every possible way.

Anyone going to adopt early? I plan on waiting for a while, I'd like to see it get closer to $300 but that is probably 6 months away. Maybe 5850?

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The drivers seem very love/hate, never in between. And remember, the performance we are seeing right now is with exceptionally early (even beta) drivers, and it is suggested that the card will push further as the it matures.

ATi was dead probably from 2900XT through 3870/3870X2. The 4 series has been a success mostly because ATi is just willing to price their cards far better than Nvidia. The exemplar of this is the 4890.

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Definitely looks impressive. I'm not going to go up to a 5870 just yet myself as I've got a 4890 which isn't really being stressed by any games currently. My card has a Vapor-X cooler so neither heat or noise are much of a problem. I've not seen any driver issues either with any of the games I play although I can understand people not liking the Catalyst Control Center. I think a lot of what gets classified as driver issues are actually bad Direct X installs.

For those waiting NVidia does have a new GPU on the way soon too. I think it's due Oct/Nov. ATI has been beating them on price/performance for some time though.

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no way. the 260 generally mops the floor with the 4870 in performance, and isn't that much more expensive.

Is this with newer drivers or something? The two cards were pretty close in all the benchmarks I've seen and if anything favored the 4870 slightly. The 4870 can be pretty noisy with it's stock fan though which would make me think twice about it.

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  • 1 month later...

I have a 4870x2, a really great card, and have been using ATI cards since the late 90's. Their drivers and software are the best they've ever been. But that ain't saying a lot. To have to occasionally format to fix a driver issue is nuts. The 4870x2 though has had zero issues, and runs Crysis pretty well! The 5870 looks pretty killer, Hmmm X2 version...

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I have a 4870x2, a really great card, and have been using ATI cards since the late 90's. Their drivers and software are the best they've ever been. But that ain't saying a lot. To have to occasionally format to fix a driver issue is nuts. The 4870x2 though has had zero issues, and runs Crysis pretty well! The 5870 looks pretty killer, Hmmm X2 version...

What's the size of your power supply? I like to get an x2 card but I don't think my PS can take it. I am running a water-cooled tower on a 480W Antec, with CPU Q6600/8GB mem/NV 9800 GPU all OCed and 4 750G HD.

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What's the size of your power supply? I like to get an x2 card but I don't think my PS can take it. I am running a water-cooled tower on a 480W Antec, with CPU Q6600/8GB mem/NV 9800 GPU all OCed and 4 750G HD.

I don't have the chip you have or water cooling. I have an OC'd 6850. I do have 6 1TB HDs though. The Power supply is a 1000w CoolerMaster that came as a package deal with the case. The case is a CoolerMaster Stacker 830 Evolution. I think a 480w would not work for my card. But a 600w might work.

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