Date:
Tuesday , September 22, 2009
Author:
Brent Justice
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
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AMD's ATI Radeon HD 5870 Video Card Review

AMD’s ATI Radeon HD 5800 series debuts today and the new ATI Radeon HD 5870 is now available. We will give you all the gritty details of the HD 5800 Series, and show you just how well the new flagship ATI Radeon HD 5870 accelerates games. Can you say, “I like twice as much performance in the same power envelope.”

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Gameplay Summary

Arma II

Arma II surprised us by performing much faster on the Radeon HD 5870. We were able to take this performance and enable almost all of the in-game settings at 1920x1200. We found that we could enable "Normal" AA and remove all the jaggies in the game, and not only that but also turn every other option up to "Very High." The only setting we could not maximize was the visibility slider, but we did find we could set it at the highest setting for any single-GPU video card.

The story got even better at 2560x1600, where we experienced smooth and playable performance with the Radeon HD 5870. We were still able to have "Low" AA enabled, removing jaggies, and enable "Very High" textures. We did have to lower objects, shadows and terrain to "High", but even at "High" the experience was immersive at 2560x1600. One factor that impressed us most with the HD 5870 was the result of achieving the highest minimum framerates, and providing a more consistent framerate.

Crysis: Warhead

Crysis: Warhead wasn’t near a knock-out-blow as one would have hoped for this game on next gen hardware. However, it still performed the best on the Radeon HD 5870 and this video card allowed us to set all "Enthusiast" settings at 1920x1200 with 2X AA enabled. Previously, only dual-GPU video cards such as the Radeon HD 4870 X2 and GeForce GTX 295 were able to do this. Therefore, we have one single GPU performing as fast as a dual-GPU video card solution at the least in this game.

We did dabble with gameplay at 2560x1600 in this game as well. We found that the Radeon HD 570 was almost playable at all "Enthusiast" settings at 2560x1600 with No AA. However, it was just too close to call and we ended up lowering the Shaders Quality to "Gamer" while everything else was at "Enthusiast" and this allowed a playable gameplay experience. We think a dual-GPU HD 5870 CrossFireX combination may allow at least 2X AA at 2560 with all "Enthusiast" settings.

Need for Speed: Shift

Need for Speed: Shift is a new game, and once again we found the Radeon HD 5870 provided the fastest performance and best gameplay experience. We were able to enable 12X CFAA at 2560x1600 with the highest in-game settings. This is impressive since CFAA utilizes the streaming processor units, and at 2560x1600 you need all you can get. When we tried gaming at 1920x1200 we found that 24X CFAA was also playable.

Supersampling AA was also playable in this game, we found 2X AA at 2560x1600 playable or 4X AA at 1920x1200. Overall though, we feel regular ole Multisample works best, to keep the textures crisp and clear.

The GeForce GTX 285 also performed very well in this game. We learned that AMD’s video cards may not be up to what they could be for this game and a patch and or driver may be forthcoming that could improve this performance. Still, the HD 5870 pulled ahead, and was a huge improvement over the HD 4890 in this game.

Ghostbusters

Thanks to the ability to now enable AA we are able to test Ghostbusters and see how far we can push it. Enabling AA is very demanding in this game as we found out. Both the GTX 285 and HD 4890 could only play Ghostbusters at 2560x1600 without AA. However the Radeon HD 5870 came right along and accelerated the game just fine at 4X AA at 2560x1600. Down at 1920x1200 we could push that up to 8X AA without any problems. Supersampling AA also works, but only at 2X AA at 1920x1200. Overall once again we feel the higher Multisample AA setting is better as it keeps the textures nice and crisp.