http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/...b_performance/
The Radeon HD 5970 is AMD’s "fastest" video card. This is not a single-GPU video card like the Radeon HD 5870. The Radeon HD 5970 video card consists of two Radeon HD 5870 (down-clocked) GPUs connected via CrossFireX on a single board. While both GPUs retain all the specifications internally as a Radeon HD 5870, the performance has been reduced by core frequency reduction and memory frequency reduction. But worth mentioning is that many people find the 5970 very easy to overclock by large margins. There is also only 1GB of GDDR5 available per GPU. This memory video RAM limitation can cause high resolutions with antialiasing to run out of local video memory, since memory is not shared on the video card. Each GPU needs its own frame buffer space. The only way to fix this issue is to use more memory per GPU, but the 5970 doesn't have it.
In our evaluation of the GeForce GTX 580 last week, we did not compare it to the Radeon HD 5970. The reason being is that pricing on the 5970 was higher when we began the evaluation process by a full $160. The 5970 ended up being directly comparable to the GTX 580's pricing towards the end of our process. The GeForce GTX 580 is currently going for $499 online. The Radeon HD 5970 can be had now for $469.99 after $30 MIR. This is an excellent deal compared to past pricing, and we wanted to see how performance stacks up against the new GTX 580.
04-05-2011, 09:21 AM
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