HIS Radeon HD 5970 Review

About three months ago, Sunnyvale, California-based Advanced Micro Devices officially unveiled its latest series of desktop graphics cards, namely the Radeon HD 58xx family of GPUs. Launched at a time when a considerable number of reports were indicating that both AMD and NVIDIA had problems with TSMC's 40nm manufacturing technology, the series came with a list of new features that were mainly meant to enhance the visual experience of desktop PC users. In addition, the series was outed at a time when NVIDIA wasn't expected to immediately come up with something that would compete with the fresh Radeon GPUs.

The first series of 40nm-based, DirectX 11-compatible GPUs was launched back in late September, with the chip maker introducing two new cards, the 5850 and its fresh flagship, the Radeon HD 5870. Both cards were said to be capable of delivering an impressive performance, thanks to their powerful GPUs and the unique list of features. However, the HD 5870 stayed on top only for some time, as AMD had bigger plans. The chip maker later released the dual-GPU Radeon HD 5970, a high-end graphics card somewhat different from the previous dual-GPU Radeon cards.

The HD 5970 was released back in November, following a series of leaked details that further increased anticipation around the new card. When it was officially introduced, the card's specifications were nothing short of impressive, packing a total processing power of 4.64 TeraFLOPS, making AMD's flagship Radeon card the king of desktop graphics.

However, the high processing power of the chip maker's latest release came at a cost and one that is still considered as rather exclusive. Aside from its performance capabilities, the Radeon HD 5970 was accompanied by a series of minimum requirements that would dig a considerable hole in the user's budget. Nevertheless, this was a card for the enthusiast market, something that AMD made very clear since the official debut of the gadget.


On that note, we were presented with the opportunity of testing AMD's flagship card, a dual-GPU behemoth that comes with its own list of demands. We put the card through its paces and even had time to play a couple of games, using one of the new features that AMD introduced with the launch of its new generation of Radeon graphics cards. We will try to cover as many key points as possible, with our review of the Radeon HD 5970, including the performance aspects, but also details about the company, its products and the overall market. Without further ado, we'll be taking you on a very nice journey.
Some time has passed since the world's second largest chip maker officially announced the debut of its latest graphics monster, the Radeon HD 5970. However, we were thrilled at the idea of getting to test the world's fastest card, which is why we decided to do some planning, before the card arrived in our labs. We built a new rig, with some of the latest components out there and patiently waited the arrival of the dual-GPU Radeon HD 5970 monster.

The card came from HIS, featuring a reference design, cooler and clock frequencies. That was all fine by us, as we did want to take a look at what AMD's reference board is capable of, without any interference from the graphics card vendor, specifically regarding the card's cooler, clock speed or other settings. Now, we should take a look at what the numbers that make up the Radeon HD 5970 are.

Manufacturer's technical specifications:

Engine clock speed: 725 MHz
Processing power (single precision): 4.64 TeraFLOPS
Processing power (double precision): 928 GigaFLOPS
Polygon throughput: 1.45 billion polygons/sec
Data fetch rate (32-bit): 464 billion fetches/sec
Texel fill rate (bilinear filtered): 116 Gigatexels/sec
Pixel fill rate: 46.4 Gigapixels/sec
Anti-aliased pixel fill rate: 185.6 Gigasamples/sec
Memory clock speed: 1.0 GHz
Memory data rate: 4.0 Gbps
Memory bandwidth: 256.0 GB/sec
Maximum board power: 294 Watts
Idle board power: 51 Watts.

The Radeon HD 5970 features a design similar to some of the other dual-GPU cards that AMD previously released. More specifically, this card couples two Cypress GPUs on a single PCB, paired together by a PLX bridge chip, which are cooled down by a massive vapor chamber that AMD claims to be capable of supporting up to 400W of thermal dissipation. We will get into more of these details later on, as for now, we will concentrate on the other features that have been made available with the new card.

As with all of AMD's latest generation of Radeon graphics cards, the HD 5970 will provide users with support for the new ATI Eyefinity technology, a solution that allows customers to connect up to three monitors for a wider visual experience. That's not all, the card also offers support for CrossFireX multi-GPU technology, which will enable high-end enthusiasts to connect two of these cards on a compatible motherboard, increasing performance and ultimately providing users with a high computing power.

Another of the innovations enabled by AMD's high-end card is the support for DirectX 11 graphics, as well as the OpenGL 3.0 support. In addition, as you have seen from the list of specifications, the card comes with an impressive idle board power, for a card in its class. The 51 watts specifications can be achieved by a feature that disables one of the card's GPUs, when the card is in idle and doesn't require the same level of performance to run applications.

Aside from being the fastest graphics card on the planet, the Radeon HD 5970 also manages to be the world's longest card, a design feature that you'll immediately notice when picking it up. The dual-slot cooling solution is featured with a back plate that is designed to keep the PCB cool, even when the card is overclocked

Another thing you will notice about the Radeon, as we did the first time we had it in our test labs, is that this is a card that will require some modifications, as far as your desktop chassis is concerned. The dual-GPU HD 5970 is a monster by all definitions. This card comes with a list of minimum requirements that you'll most likely find it challenging to accomplish. But we will get into to that later on, as we move to the part where we talk about the tests we have put this card through.

Now, before we get into the details about our experience with the card and its performance, we should talk a little about our platform and the testing methodology. As we said in the beginning of the article, we went through some trouble to get prepared for the arrival of this dual-GPU monster, which basically implies that we built a test rig for the new card and those to come.


With Intel having recently updated its entire line of mainstream desktop components, we decided to build a new platform on the fresh P55 chipset and the latest LGA 1156-compatible processors. The Gigabyte board we chose was designed to provide support for both NVIDIA SLI and ATI CrossFireX multi-GPU technologies, while the support for USB 3.0 and SATA 3.0 connectivity will enable us to work with future devices and storage solutions. In addition, we went for the Lynnfield-based Core i7 860 quad-core processor running at 2.8GHz, coupled with 4GB of DDR3 memory from Kingston. A 750W Corsair power supply was there to help us run the high-end rig and deliver the necessary juice to power AMD's dual-GPU monster.

Aside from that setup, we also took advantage of a couple of applications that are typically used for benchmarking and recording the performance of graphics cards and other computer hardware. This includes the famous 3DMark Vantage application, but also a couple of games. We need to note that, for these tests, we used the special Radeon HD 5970 graphics driver that is available through the company's driver support page. We also took advantage of no less than three 24-inch monitors, that we used to get a sense of what the company's ATI Eyefinity technology can provide, in terms of gameplay.

Test System:

Intel Core i7 860 2.8GHz processor
Gigabyte P55A-UD4 motherboard
Radeon HD 5970
4GB Kingston DDR3-1333MHz memory
Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB SATA hard drive
Integrated Audio and Network
Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit Operating system
ATI Catalyst 9.11 and special Catalyst driver for Radeon HD 5970
3DMark Vantage v1.0.1
Dirt 2
Crysis.

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