The Breakdown:

This will be a straight comparison between these two above cards. It is unbiased with no agenda or “BS” whatsoever! There are people out there who believe that some sites get paid off by big companies to present their product in a good light, well not us. We will bring you honest results which we stand behind and would not be ashamed to show anyone at anytime. You will be able to find correct figures for the system and settings we used. All systems will be a little different, so keep this in mind.  Don’t go off on a tangent because a game is a few FPS different than yours.

Test System:

Overclocked:

*Red = ATI, Green =Nvidia*

3dMark:

Bad Company 2:

World in Conflict:

Synthetic Benchmarks:

3dMark:

FurMark:

Unigine – Heaven v2.1

Unigine – Tropics v1.3

Unigine – Sanctuary v2.3

Game Benchmarks:

*All tests ran at the applications highest allowable detailed settings*

Battlefield – Bad Company 2:

Call of Juarez:

Champions Online:

Company of Heroes:

Warhammer – Dawn of War II:

Dirt 2:

Far Cry 2:

Final Fantasy XIV:

Fuel:

Tom Clancy’s – Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter:

Just Cause 2:

Mass Effect 2:

Call of Duty – Modern Warfare 2:

Operation Flashpoint 2 – Dragon Rising:

Risen:

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:

1920×1200

1920×1080:

1680×1050:

1600×1200:

Street Fighter IV:

Team Fortress 2:

Wings of Prey:

World in Conflict:

Temperatures:

Computer Case

Tech Station

Temperatures were pretty even until we moved into the overclocked settings. Running at stock speeds, the two cards run at about the same temperature, with Nvidia taking the slight lead in load temperature. However, the 5870 does have a commanding lead in the idle/web surfing tasks with a 14-16C difference. I think this probably comes as a shock to most people, seeing everyone talks about how hot the Nvidia cards are in every aspect. The GTX480 was very respectable at stock speeds, but where the 5870 shines is in the overclocking. You can run this card fully overclocked and not turn your room into a sauna, the same cannot be said for the 480, with it hitting 99-100C during testing!

Power Consumption:

Notice in the test below that this is total system power consumption. We tried our best to push the load as much as possible on the video card and nothing else. We ran FurMark at the highest settings our system would allow and we feel this gives the most reliable readings on GPU load and on how much wattage the cards put out without stressing other components in the system too much. (Total consumption measured at outlet.)

As you can see from the chart above, the 5870 wins the power consumption tests hands down. With the 5870 overclocked, it is still under max load wattage of the stock GTX480. With the 480 overclocked, it raises some eyebrows with the amount of watts that the card eats up. This could be a problem for someone who is not expecting that much load and does not have an adequate power supply. Just be aware of this before buying.

Fan Noise:

We would have to say this is pretty much a tie between the two cards. They are both quiet during basic use, and then, they both get extremely annoying once the fan kicks in and you hit a higher percentage of fan use. So knowing how both fans sound, we could not give the edge to either of the cards. You could always water cool both cards and then you would no longer have to worry!

Conclusion:

As you saw from all of the gaming and synthetic benchmark tests we ran on the two cards, the GTX480 seemed to be in the lead for the majority of them. We thought the HD5870 would put up more of a fight than it did and we were wrong! The 5870 got “beaten up” for the most part and we almost felt bad. It was like putting a college freshman up against a well-seasoned senior in football. With that said, though, the 5870 is still an fantastic card. Yes, it did get beat, but if you look at the numbers it was cranking out, they were still very impressive, and it will easily run any game on the market without a problem. For the most part, the 480 will be able to boast of a few extra FPS while running the same games. We are guessing that the extra boost in performance is why the GTX480 costs $499, while the HD5870 is a little cheaper at $429 (these are MSRP prices of course).

There were a few bright spots for the HD5870, such as when we ran the power consumption and temperature tests. The 5870 was definitely the big winner in both of these tests. The idle power consumption of the overclocked GTX480 is actually superior to the overclocked 5870. This was a big surprise to us once we saw the final numbers on power usage. Just keep in mind how much power the GTX480 uses while overclocked under load as this could cause a potential system failure if your PSU is not up to snuff. Temperatures were also a big plus for the 5870. The stock idle temperatures were very low, but where it really shines is once we overclocked it. The max temperature we saw was only 84C, however, when we overclocked the GTX480 we saw a massive jump in temperatures with a max temperature of 100C! That is just a bit too high for us to feel comfortable while gaming for extended periods of time.

Overall, both cards were extremely impressive! You cannot go wrong with either choice, however, there are a few give-and-takes with both cards when considering the temperatures, power consumption, and price versus the game performance. It may also depend on how you feel about the cards and your brand loyalty, which personally we feel shouldn’t come in to play, but some can be more passionate in this regard. We can safely say that both cards will have no problem playing any game on the market. We are hoping this review will help you in your decision on which card or brand may be best for you. The results above were 100% legitimate and without biased opinions or personal agendas presented in the article. Take it for what it is; the truth between the two graphics cards.

ATI 5870+5850 CrossFireX

I’ve been playing around with two mismatched GPU’s in CrossFireX. Namely a reference model HD5870 from Asus and a custom PCB HD5850 from XFX. Perhaps not the most common setup, as most would much rather go for two identical cards. But if you happen to stumble upon the odd card, then why not give it a try, right?

Hardware & Software

Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P
AMD Phenom II x6 1090T BE
Kingston HyperX LoVo 1866 MHz 2×2Gb
Asus ATI Radeon HD5870 1Gb and XFX ATI Radeon HD5850 1Gb
Chieftec 1200G-DF

Windows 7 x64 Ultimate
Catalyst 10.6 + 10.6 CFX profiles

System settings remained the same for all runs.

Asus HD5870 to the left and XFX HD5850 to the right.

Below you’ll find a few game runs together with 3DM06 and Heaven Benchmark. For the game benchmarks I used Fraps to record 30 seconds worth of data (MIN, MAX and AVG FPS) while navigating a set route in-game. The average values where then calculated from multiple runs, which is shown in the charts. I included the results from a single HD5870 as well, for reference.

Battlefield Bad Company 2
Single player level Upriver
1920×1200 / DX11 / Max quality / 4x MSAA / 16x AF / HBAO

Half Life 2
Single player level Water Hazard
1920×1200 / DX9 / Max quality / 8x MSAA / 16x AF

Left 4 Dead 2
Single player campaign The Passing, chapter 3: Port
1920×1200 / DX9 / Max quality / 8x MSAA / 16x AF

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat
Single player campaign, indoor and outdoor environments in Pripyat.
1920×1200 / DX11 / Max quality / 4x MSAA / 16x AF

3D Mark 06
Default settings
ATI HD5870

ATI HD5870 + HD5850 CrossFireX

Heaven Benchmark 2.0
1920×1200 / DX11 / High Shaders / Normal Tessellation / 4x AF
ATI HD5870

ATI HD5870 + HD5850 CrossFireX

Final Thoughts?

Visible gains in all tested games and benchmarks, so no doubt its a viable option running mixed cards. But would have been interesting to see how this setup would stack up against two 5850’s. I’d still recommend running matched cards where possible. But as mentioned at the top, if you happen to have an extra card just lying there collecting dust or get the chance to get one real cheap, then go for it!

Packaging:

The ASUS ENGTX 480:

Specifications and Features:

Specifications:

• Graphics Engine NVIDIA GeForce GTX480
• Bus Standard PCI Express 2.0
• Video Memory GDDR5 1536MB
• Engine Clock 700 MHz
• Shader Clock 1401 MHz
• Memory Clock 3696 MHz ( 924 MHz DDR5 )
• RAMDAC 400MHz
• Memory Interface 384-bit
• D-Sub Max Resolution 2048 x 1536
• DVI Max Resolution 2560 x 1600
• D-Sub Output Yes x 1 (via DVI to D-Sub adaptor x 1 )
• DVI Output Yes x 2 (DVI-I)
• HDMI Output Yes x 1
• HDCP Support Yes
• Adapter/Cable Bundled 1 x DVI to D-Sub adaptor
• Software Bundled ASUS Utilities & Driver
• Design Garage&Supersonic Sled
• Note The card size is 11” x 5.5” inch

Features:

• NVIDIA PhysX™ ready
• Microsoft® DirectX® 11 Support - Bring new levels of visual realism to gaming on the PC and get top-notch performance
• Microsoft® Windows® 7 Ready - Enable PC users to enjoy an advanced computing experience and to do more with their PC
• SLI Support - Multi-GPU technology for extreme performance ode
• Take Your Game Beyond HD -Dual-link DVI able to drive the industry’s largest & highest resolution flat-panel displays up to 2560×1600

Test system:

Overclocking Software and Results:

ASUS SmartDoctor Overclocking Software:

ASUS SmartDoctor is included as one of the utilities on your ASUS driver CD. Once installed and running, you will be greeted with the above screen. This is where you can tweak the voltage on the card. You will also be able to change your core speed and memory from this area as well. Our one complaint with the software is the GUI. It looks so 90’s compared to other software on the market that does the same thing. We think the GUI could use a nice revamping to give it a better and more up to date look.

In the ‘Settings’ area of SmartDoctor you can see two different sections. The Fan Control section is very easy to customize and will let you set how fast your want your fan running at certain specific temperatures. This is a very simple way to tweak the fan settings to get the most out of your card. The other screenshot (right) let’s you put alarm settings on your video card’s temperatures. This may help keep your mind at ease during long gaming sessions.

Overclocking:

Overclocking the ASUS GTX480 was actually very simple. After a few minutes of tinkering with the card, we finally got our max overclock of 852MHz core and 3696MHz memory (stock) with 1.138v. We are pretty sure the card has a lot more to give. However, without being able to get the temperatures under control on air, we could not go any further. With a 859MHz core clock we saw artifacts and reached a whopping 102C. If we were able to put the card under water, we are pretty sure we could squeeze a little more out of it. One thing we did notice, in the picture (below), every time we tried to overclock the memory, even the slightest bit, we would get this error. With this error message, it made the memory impossible to push any further than it already was. This is a little disappointing, but what can you do?

Overclocked Game Benchmarks:

3dMark:

Battlefield – Bad Company 2:

Stock

CPU @ 4GHz // GPU @ 852/3696

World In Conflict:

Stock

CPU @ 4GHz // GPU @ 852/3696

We will let our charts do most of the talking, however we would like to point out one thing from the charts above. As you can see in the Bad Company 2 comparison, it increased minimum FPS from as little as 4 to as high as 21 FPS. These are huge gains, we feel, as minimum FPS is where you will see all of your lag and stuttering. If these numbers are high, like they are in Bad Company 2, it will severely limit the lag/stuttering in your game play which will make your gaming a much more enjoyable experience.

Synthetic Benchmarks:

3dMark:

FurMark:

Unigine – Heaven V2.1

Unigine – Tropics V1.3

Unigine – Sanctuary V2.3

Game Benchmarks:

*All tests ran at the applications highest allowable detailed settings*

Alien Breed – Evolution

Battlefield – Bad Company 2

Call of Juarez:

Champions Online

Company of Heroes:

Warhammer 40K – Dawn of War II:

Devil May Cry 4:

Dirt 2:

Far Cry 2:

Final Fantasy XIV:

Fuel:

Global Agenda:

Tom Clancy’s – Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter:

Grid:

Just Cause 2:

Mass Effect 2:

Call of Duty – Modern Warfare 2:

Operation Flashpoint 2 – Dragon Rising:

Risen:

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:

1920x1200

1920x1080

1680x1050

1600x1200

Street Fight IV:

Team Fortress 2:

Wings of Prey:

World In Conflict:

Temperatures:

The testing conditions were as follows.

• Ambient Room Temp: 27-28C
• Ambient checked before and after tests.
• Card left idle at test settings for 20 minutes to get back to idle temperature.
• Tested on both our tech station and inside a computer case.
• Load temperatures checked with FurMark and Bad Comapny 2

Tech Station

Computer Case

With the charts above, you should notice two things right away. The temperatures from the tech station to the computer case were almost exactly the same. Once extra volts are applied to achieve a higher overclock, the card starts producing unbearable heat. It heated up our lab noticeably in about 15 minutes of just running the overclocked tests that you saw above. With the card reaching 99-100C fully overclocked, it can be safely said that it is the hottest card we have ever tested! Playing a game with this card is not too bad, however if you play games for extended periods of time while overclocked, it will most likely become unbearably hot in the room. Trust us! We would highly recommend water cooling or other high-end aftermarket cooling for this card if you plan to overclock it. With that said, as long as you run it at stock settings, the card seems to keep the temperature at a very respectable level.

Power Consumption:

Notice in the test below that this is total power consumption. We tried our best to push the load as much as possible on the video card and nothing else. We ran FurMark at the highest settings our system would allow. We feel FurMark gives the most reliable readings on GPU load and on how much wattage it puts out without stressing other components in the system too much. (Total consumption measured at outlet.)

With the tests above, you can see just how much wattage you can expect to use during gaming/benchmarking. This should assist you with your PSU shopping and the uncertainties that it always brings. You can now refer to the chart above and make a better decision on how many watts your PSU needs to be able to deliver. The chart will also give you an idea of what to expect from the much loved energy bill you get every month. As you may have noticed with stock settings, the load is not too high at 442w. The shocker here is what we ran into when we had the card fully overclocked and fully loaded.  This beast eats through 682w of raw power!  You should have seen our jaws drop when we saw it hit 682w! Such a leap in power consumption was not expected, but that appears to be the nature of the Fermi architecture.

Fan Noise:

One of the main areas in which high performance GPU’s have issues is the noise created from the fans trying to keep the GPU cool. Once again, this is sadly the case for the GTX 480.  However, a bright spot in this negative aspect is that the fan does not create a high pitch squeal/scream like some of the other cards we have tested. Though it is loud and rather obnoxious when it hits high speeds. We will stick with our opinion, previously stated in other reviews, that a single fan cannot adequately cool a monster card like the GTX 480, nor will it ever be quiet at high speeds. Multi-fan solutions seem to be the best way to go from what we have seen/tested. We will say that the fan does a great job of cooling and keeping the noise level under control the majority of the time and especially when at stock speeds. A gaming session, unfortunately, will bring out the sometimes obnoxious noise that the single fan creates. You can get around this to a certain extent by running the card at stock settings.

Conclusion:

Overall, the ASUS ENGTX 480 did an amazing job! It took everything we threw at it, chewed it up and gave us an outstanding performance in the games that we tested it with. We are keen on minimum FPS, as we feel this is one of the most important parts of gaming. The GTX 480 kept the minimum FPS levels at a very respectable and playable level in all of the games tested. This is a big plus because while others may be hitting a lag spike here and there, you are not! We figured there might be a game or two that would give this card some problems, but frankly we were wrong. Even when we tested every game under maximum allowable settings, the GTX 480 kept on kickin’!

We will have to dock the card some points however, for the extreme fan noise and high temperatures. The fan noise is not too bad and as we said earlier, you can tweak the settings and run the card at stock speeds which should be perfectly fine in regards to the noise levels. We just cannot say the same if you begin to overclock the card, and you will definitely need a water cooling setup to keep your sanity. Really though, the major concern we have with the card is the outrageous overclocked temperatures (100C… really?). These cards have not been on the market long enough to find out just how such heat will effect the card over the long term. So, if they can handle the heat and last for years and years, then more power to them, but only time will tell on that. We would also like to point out that when the card runs at stock settings, we have no gripe with the temperatures and this is how the consumer should look at the card.

Having said all this, we would not hesitate to recommend this beast to our friends. The voltage tweak is a great tool and comes in very handy to get the most out of this card that you can. The temperature issues when overclocking can be easily solved by using aftermarket cooling, which most enthusiasts purchasing this card will want to do anyway. The performance of the ASUS ENGTX480 is impressive! It can take on any game on the market and asks for more! This is huge for us because there are some amazing games out there now and after this year’s E3, we know they are many many more to come. This is one card you can’t go wrong with from a performance standpoint.

The ASUS GeForce ENGTX480 receives the TechREACTION.net Gold Silicon Award!

Thank you to ASUS for the review sample! You can find this card at most any online retailer, including NewEgg!

Packaging:

The 5770 Hawk:

Specifications & Features:

• ‧Microsoft DirectX 11 Support
• ‧ATI Eyefinity Technology
• ‧ATI Stream Technology
• ‧40 nm Process Technology
• ‧Advanced GDDR5 Memory Technology
• ‧2nd Generation TeraScale Engine
• ‧Microsoft Windows 7 support
• ‧ATI CrossFireX™ Technology
• ‧Enhanced Anisotropic Filtering
• ‧Accelerated Video Transcoding
• ‧HDMI 1.3 Support
• ‧Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio Support
• ‧ATI PowerPlay™ Technology Enhanced Support for GDDR5 memory
• ‧ATI Avivo™ Technology Enhanced Unified Video Decoder 2 (UVD 2)
• 7+1 phase PWM design

• - World’s first HD 5770 with 7+1 phase PWM for better overclocking capability.
  - 7 phase PWM for GPU on Hawk provides 100% more current compared to 4 phase PWM on reference HD 5770.
• Twin Frozr II Thermal Design
  - Dual PWM fans and triple heatpipes.
  - Temperature is 13℃ lower than reference cooling design.
• Over-voltage function of GPU.
  - Use afterburner to overclock HAWK, increase performance up to 20%.
  - GPU Voltage can be increased up to 1.35V
• Military Class Components.
  - Hi-C Cap provides more precise GPU voltage and has better stability.
  - SSC (Solid State Choke) for No Buzz noise.
  - All Solid CAP for longer lifespan.
• V-Check Points.
  - Hawk series has built-in voltage measurement points.
  - Get accurate voltage of GPU and Memory on the fly.
  - Additional cables to hold multimeter probes.

Test Setup:

Overclocking Software and Results:

Afterburner Software:

The MSI Afterburner software is incredibly easy to use. It’s very self-explanatory and with just a few clicks here and there you can tweak almost anything you would like. You can set custom profiles and even your very own custom fan speed settings. This is a really nice addition to the software because it limits the requirement of 3rd party programs and the added congestion on your computer. MSI did a great job combining all of the options in one easy to use program!

Overclocking:

Stock voltage OC 961/1372

1.3v OC 1005/1372

1.35v OC 1016/1372

Overclocking the 5770 Hawk using the Afterburner software was a breeze. Settings were easily changed and the software gave us a nice range to play with. The final overclock of 1016/1372 was, needless to say, interesting. The Sapphire 5770 we tested had an overclock of 960/1435. With the Hawk, it seemed to offer a little give and take, having a slightly higher core clock, but a lower memory clock frequency. Although any overclock is a plus given that it is not guaranteed, we were just expecting more on the memory front with the voltage control and great software from MSI.

Synthetic Benchmarks:

3DMark:

FurMark:

Unigine: Heaven

Unigine: Tropics

Game Benchmarks:

*All tests ran at the applications highest allowable detailed settings*

Batman Arkham Asylum:

Battlefield – Bad Company 2

Bioshock:

Champions Online:

Company of Heroes:

Call of Juarez:

Far Cry 2:

F.E.A.R.2: Project Origin

Fuel:

Just Cause 2:

Modern Warfare 2:

Operation Flashpoint 2 – Dragon Rising:

Risen:

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. :

Resolutions:

1920x1200

1920x1080

1680x1050

1600x1200

1400x1050

1440x900

Star Trek D-A-C :

Team Fortress 2:

Torchlight:

Warhammer 40000 - Dawn of War 2:

World In Conflict:

Wings of Prey:

Twin Frozr II:

The Twin Frozr II is a fantastic looking cooler. It has a crowd-pleasing look and great performance to top it off. We just wish more companies would put more effort into cooling their cards  instead of just throwing on the generic cooler. The dual PWM fans are a nice touch. Having two fans instead of the standard one will help to dissipate heat at a greater rate without comprising on noise levels. MSI does claim that the Twin Frozr II is s full 13 degrees Celcius cooler than the reference design, and as you will see next, this may be true under the right circumstances.

Temperatures:

The testing conditions were as follows.

• Ambient Room Temp: 24-25C
• Ambient checked before and after tests
• Card left idle at test settings for 15 minutes to get idle temperature

*Sapphire 5770 Comparison*

Overclocked 960/1435

Temperatures were impressive from what we received in our testing. While the numbers were achieve aren’t exactly the 13c that MSI claims from the Twin Frozr II, they were close. We can say without a doubt that the Twin Frozr II is definitely better than reference design coolers. How much better? Well, it really depends on the environment in which the card is being run. The Twin Frozr II makes it’s biggest improvement over the reference design with the fans running at low speeds, as you can see from comparing the charts.

Voltage Monitoring:

In the picture above, you can see the 5770 Hawk runs 1.61v for the memory. This never changes in idle or overclocked states.

With the card sitting idle, you can see a nice low .96v is being used for the core voltage. If you are into power saving features, then you should like this, even if the savings are minimal.

You may have noticed the same thing we did if you looked at the pictures above. The multimeter is reading .03v higher than what the Afterburner software is showing us. This was consistent, so you could work with it and know for sure how many volts you were pushing through the card. But this should be a reminder to all who go by strictly software readings when overclocking and playing with voltage; it usually isn’t 100% accurate.

Power Consumption:

Notice in the test below that this is total power consumption. We tried our best to push the load as much as possible on the video card and nothing else. We ran FurMark at the highest settings our system would allow. We think FurMark gives the most reasonable readings on GPU load and how much wattage it puts out without stressing other components in the system too much. (Total consumption measured at outlet.)

With the tests above, you can see just how much wattage you can expect to use during gaming/benchmarking. This should assist you with your PSU shopping and the uncertainties that it always brings. You can now refer to the chart above and make a better decision on how many watts your PSU needs to be able to deliver. The chart will also give you an idea of what to expect from the much loved energy bill you get every month. Even with the card taking the system up to 239w while overclocked, this is still a very reasonable number for most people.

Fan Noise:

We did not have a decibel meter handy at the time of testing.  When you crank up the fans to 100%, the real cooling power is unleashed. However, unlike the Sapphire 5770 we tested, there is not an annoying whine from the fans. You can hear the blowing of the air, but it does not have the same high pitched scream. We are glad that MSI took control of the noise level with the two PWM fans in the Twin Frozr II. This is an extremely nice addition to the 5770 series.

Conclusion:

Well, we took this card for a ride and tested it with anything and everything we could find.  After all was said and done, this card proved to be an extremely impressive product. It has confirmed everything and proved that the first review of the previous 5770 we tested was not a fluke. It took monster games and held them in check. Yes, we know that there are better 5 series cards out there, but for the price, you would be hard-pressed to find another card that puts out this much power. It handled high resolutions with high settings, 8x AA and 16x AF, and kept on going. The “wow” factor we saw with this card is that it can run any game out on the market without bogging down. There may be some games that you may not get to run at max resolution and max settings, but the 5770 can hold its own, especially if you tweak it a little like we did here.

Overclocking the card was hassle free and easy. With the increased heat dissipation of the Twin Frozr II cooler, the 5770 Hawk gives you plenty of headroom to overclock. However, one thing we think could be improved upon is the Afterburner software in regards to it’s voltage readings. This is not a major fault in the software, but it would be nice to get even closer to the actual voltage that you enter.  

Aesthetically speaking, we think this is one of the best looking cards on the market. MSI did a great job in the overall design of the card and the Twin Frozr II! Another great feature of this card worthy of mention is the presence of built-in voltage measurement points, or V-Check points as MSI calls them. With this feature, you can always keep an eye on the actual voltages you put into your card while overclocking simply by touching each of the points with a simple multimeter. Overall, the 5770 Hawk is an extremely strong contender at the $150 pricing point.

The MSI Radeon HD 5770 Hawk 1GB has earned the TechREACTION.net Gold Silicon Award!

]]> http://www.techreaction.net/2010/05/16/msi-radeon-hd-5770-hawk-1gb/feed/ 3 http://www.techreaction.net/2010/04/04/review-sapphire-radeon-hd5770-1gb-pci-e/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=review-sapphire-radeon-hd5770-1gb-pci-e http://www.techreaction.net/2010/04/04/review-sapphire-radeon-hd5770-1gb-pci-e/#comments Mon, 05 Apr 2010 00:07:50 +0000 The Duke http://www.techreaction.net/?p=5373 With the much anticipated release of the 5xxx series a success on many levels, the ATI crowd has much to celebrate. The new 5 series cards put ATI back on top of the video card market. They can now boast about the amazing DX11 compatibility and the Eyefinity technology introduced with the higher end 5 series cards. The 5770 is in the middle of the pack for the new generation of cards, with the 5970 in the lead and the 5450 bringing up the rear. All in all, ATI has to be loving the massive success these cards have brought them. With talks of a new 2 GB version for the 5 series coming in the near future, ATI has set an extremely high standard for Nvidia to try and match.

Packaging:

The 5770:

Specifications:

Features:

• ATI Eyefinity
• Advanced GDDR5 Memory Technology
• 40nm Process Technology
• ATI Stream Technology
• ATI Avivo HD (DVD/HD-DVD/Blue-ray Playback)
• ATI CrossFireX™ Multi-GPU Technology
• PCI-Express 2.0
• Dual-Link DVI
• HDMI
• DisplayPort
• Microsoft DirectX® 11
• OpenGL® 3.1 and 3.2
• Shader Model 5.0
• ATI Catalyst Control Center™
• Accelerated Video Transcoding
• Dolby® TrueHD and DTSHD Master Audio™ Support
• Anti-aliasing features
• Multi-sample anti-aliasing (2, 4 or 8 samples per pixel)
• Up to 24x Custom Filter Anti-Aliasing (CFAA) for superior quality
• Adaptive super-sampling and multi-sampling
• Gamma correct
• Super AA (ATI CrossFireX™configurations only)
• All anti-aliasing features compatible with HDR rendering
• Physics processing support
• ATI PowerPlay™
• Windows® 7 support

Test System:

Overclocking:

When starting the overclocking, a few things came up, so we decided to let the Auto-Tune function in CCC make the recommended overclock while we were gone. Little did we know that it takes its sweet time in doing this. About five hours later it was finally done. We took the settings that Auto-Tune gave us and tried to push it even higher.  We thought maybe the program would be geared toward the safe side.  However, come to find out, it gave us max overclocking results. Without flashing the BIOS, or anything like that, we hit the ceiling with the clocks posted above.  We ended up with a really nice 13% and 20% overclock on the GPU clock and memory clock, respectively. This is not bad at all, especially for the average user who would like a little more muscle in games. Especially considering the fact that you can use the Auto-Tune function and get max settings; anyone can now overclock their cards like a pro.

Synthetic Benchmarks:

3DMark01

3DMark03

3DMark05

3DMark06

FurMark: AA8x

1920x1200

1680x1050

1280x800

Unigine Heaven: DX11, HIGH, Tesselation-Enabled, AA8x, AA8x

1920x1200

1680x1050

1280x800

Game Benchmarks: *All details set to HIGH*

Batman Arkham Asylum: AA-8x AF-16x.

1920x1200

Bad Company 2 – AA8x AF16x

1920x1200

1680x1050

1280x800

Company of Heroes – AA-enabled  AF-NA

1920x1200

1680x1050

1280x800

Call of Juarez-  AA-4x DX10

1920x1200

1680x1050

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Far Cry 2 –  AA-8x AF-NA DX10

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FUEL:  AA-8x AF-16x

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Tom Clancy’s HAWX – DX10 AA8x

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Just Cause 2: AA-8x AF-16x

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Modern Warfare 2: AA4x AF-NA

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S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:  AA-4x DX11

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CPU @ Stock // GPU @ Stock

CPU - Stock GPU - 960-1435

CPU-4.1 GPU-stock

CPU-4.1 GPU- 960-1435

1680×1050

CPU @ Stock // GPU @ Stock

CPU-Stock GPU- 960-1435

CPU-4.1 GPU-stock

CPU-4.1 GPU- 960-1435

1280×800

CPU @ Stock // GPU @ Stock

CPU-Stock GPU- 960-1435

CPU-4.1 GPU-stock

CPU-4.1 GPU- 960-1435

Team Fortress 2: AA8x AF16x

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Torchlight:

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World In Conflict:

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Power Consumption:

Notice in the test below that this is total power consumption. We tried our best to make the load as much as possible on the video card and nothing else. We ran FurMark at the highest settings our system would allow. We think FurMark would give us the most reasonable readings on GPU load and how much wattage it puts out without stressing other components in the system too much.

With the tests above, you can see just how much wattage you can expect to use during gaming/benchmarking. This should help you with your PSU buying needs and the uncertainties that it always brings about. You can now refer to the chart above and make a better decision on how many watts your PSU needs to be. The chart will also give you an idea of what to expect from the much loved energy bill you get every month. Even with the card taking the system up to 277w while overclocked, this is still a very reasonable number for most people. It has definitely improved over the power hungry ATI/Nvidia cards of old.

Temperature Testing:

Testing Conditions:

• Ambient Room Temp: 24C
• Ambient checked before and after tests
• Card set at test settings for 15 minutes to get idle temperature

Video Card @ Stock

Video Card @ 960/1435

After finishing the tests, we notice one major difference. The 5 series card temperatures are leaps and bounds ahead of the old 4 series! Finally, ATI got the temperatures under control and these cards can no longer be used as a substitute to fry up some eggs. With the vast improvement in heat dissipation, once again, it is a viable option to run crossfire and not have your room feeling like a sauna after a few hours of gaming.

Fan Noise Level:

We did not have a decibel meter handy at the time of testing. However, you really don’t need one because there is a definite line where you will start to notice the fan. We have found this line to be in the range of 53%-58%.  You will notice, without a doubt, that the fan is moving air. When you crank up the fan to 100%, the real noise is let loose! There is no way a normal person can sit in the same room for an extended period of time at this speed. It drove us crazy while we messed with it for a few tests, and that was only for about 10 minutes. Maybe some people like the sound of a jet engine coming from their case? We could certainly do without it, so suffice to say you will not want to leave the fan running at 100% for long periods of time.

Final Thoughts:

Also be sure to check out TestFreaks for more reviews on the Sapphire Radeon HD5770 1GB.

]]> http://www.techreaction.net/2010/04/04/review-sapphire-radeon-hd5770-1gb-pci-e/feed/ 4 http://www.techreaction.net/2010/03/27/pax-east-interview-with-nvidias-bryan-del-rizzo-on-the-gtx400-series/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=pax-east-interview-with-nvidias-bryan-del-rizzo-on-the-gtx400-series http://www.techreaction.net/2010/03/27/pax-east-interview-with-nvidias-bryan-del-rizzo-on-the-gtx400-series/#comments Sat, 27 Mar 2010 06:03:19 +0000 EnJoY http://www.techreaction.net/?p=5617 After the Nvidia GeForce GTX 400 series launch event, I was lucky enough to grab an interview with Nvidia’s Senior PR Manager of Consumer Products, Bryan Del Rizzo.  Bryan was kind enough to give us sometime and answered each of my questions in a detailed manner, which we appreciated.  Here is what he had to say…

(UPDATED: Bryan was very tired when he did this interview with me and made a mistake in mentioning that the GeForce did not contain hardware functionality for Double-Precision.  What he meant to say was that the GeForce does not use ECC, where-as the Tesla parts do)

TechREACTION.net: What are your thoughts on the delays that Fermi was plagued with?

Bryan Del Rizzo: I mean, this is a chip that was designed from the ground up for DX11.  It wasn’t an after thought, we didn’t take our old architecture and just tack on DX11 and then just, you know, bring it to market.  This is a completely new design, a completely new architecture.  It took us longer to get it to market than we expected, we would have liked to have it to market when Windows 7 shipped back in October.  But we weren’t able to do that, so we were late, and we admit that.  But sometimes the wait is worth it.

TechREACTION.net: Were the causes of these delays things that you anticipated internally given the immensity of the architecture?

So, yes and no.  When you’re talking this complex a level of silicon, you never really know.  You can design everything on paper first, and then you really have to wait for the silicon to come back. You have to test it, you have to make sure it validates and it’s working the way you think it is.  If it’s not, you have to go back, you have to make some tweaks to the silicon, and that just takes time right?  So I mean, it’s just a matter of doing business.  You generally never go to production with the first rev of the silicon anyway, if you do, you are awfully lucky.  It is what it is right? We’re not looking back, we’re looking forward.

TechREACTION.net: Given the presentation today, it’s pretty clear that you guys are putting a strong focus on gaming.  But originally, before the product was officially launched, people were talking about how the GPU was really geared towards Tesla environments.

Bryan Del Rizzo: Yea, it’s funny because, we had a show last year called the GTC (GPU Tech Conference), and so we launched the Fermi architecture, which we think of Fermi as the foundation for all of our chips, right?  The issue is though, you can have Fermi-based chips in a bunch of different markets.  You can have them in Tesla which is HPC (High Performance Computing), servers and things like that.  You can have them in Quadro, which is content design, and GeForce, which is consumer based right?  So we have this GTC, which is primarily an HPC conference, with engineers, designers, developers and guys doing cool stuff with GPU’s, but it’s not gaming centered.  So people came to GTC or they looked at the presentations for GTC, and they said “Well, what the crap?  Nvidia’s leaving the gaming market?”  Haha, no!  It wasn’t a gaming conference, it was an HPC conference.  So people didn’t grasp that, they need to understand that we’re doing all of this great stuff, and a chip can have many forms and functions, it can have many flavors.  For some reason a lot of people didn’t seem to get that.

TechREACTION.net: So they figured it just had one thing it was geared toward and that was it?

Bryan Del Rizzo: Yea, and the chip we’re designing for GeForce is dramatically different than the chip we’re designing for Tesla.

TechREACTION.net: In what ways?

Bryan Del Rizzo: Just in terms of the capability, functionality, things like that.  And the usage model for what you’re doing with GeForce is not the same as what you’re doing with HPC.

TechREACTION.net: So there are hardware differences between GeForce and Tesla then?

Bryan Del Rizzo: Of course, the easiest one is double precision.  There aren’t any games, there aren’t any user applications today that use double precision.  But in the medical markets, in the HPC field, that’s dramatically important to them.  So we’re not going waste the time and waste silicon space, and all that kind of stuff, providing a feature to gamers and incurring a cost for them, that they don’t need or possibly want.

(UPDATE: Bryan was very tired when he did this interview with me and made a mistake in mentioning that the GeForce did not contain hardware functionality for Double-Precision.  What he meant to say was that the GeForce does not use ECC, where-as the Tesla parts do)

TechREACTION.net: Some news sources have suggested that there are more Fermi-based GPU’s due sometime in June / early Summer. Is there any credibility to that?

Bryan Del Rizzo: Well, actually there probably is because I think one of our executives in the financial offices said that you can expect other variants of the GeForce family sometime in the second half of this year.  So, based on what they said that probably is true.

TechREACTION.net: Can you give any insight into if these would be mainstream parts, or another high-end refresh?

Bryan Del Rizzo: It could be all, or any of the above.  Certainly if you are looking at what Nvidia brings to market, they have a top to bottom product company right?  Clearly the GTX 480, 470 fit into a higher end of the market, a higher end of the enthusiast class.  So you can figure that we’re going to have some more mainstream products with that, and you can figure that we can probably fit some cool stuff on top of that as well.  So, expect the unexpected.

TechREACTION.net: Previously you’ve had dual GPU cards such as the GTX 295.  Do you have any plans to do the same thing with the GTX 480 GPU?

Bryan Del Rizzo: So we can’t comment on that today, we haven’t announced any product.  But I have to kind of laugh because when we launched the GeForce GTX 285, there were a lot of rumors that said we couldn’t do a dual GPU product with that chip.  They said it was architecturally impossible, it was too power hungry, it would just be impossible to do.  And of course we brought the GTX 295 to market; it did really well!  (laughs)  So, if you look at the history of Nvidia, you can probably pretty much figure out what we’re going to do, but I can’t give you a confirmation on that today.

TechREACTION.net:  The other day, SemiAccurate, another technology blog, reported that Nvidia was forcing resellers to purchase 80 pieces of your GT2XX series cards in order to get GTX 400 series cards.  I have to ask, is there any truth to this that you are aware of?

Bryan Del Rizzo: If you look at the accuracy of that site, I think there’s a reason why it’s called SemiAccurate. Actually, I’d probably say it’s really “not accurate”.  Given the immense fabrication of stories on that site, you know, it is what it is.  Let me say this, if you go to Google and you search for Nvidia stories, stories from that site come up as either satire or parody.  So, I’ll leave it at that.

TechREACTION.net:  Ok, fair enough, thanks.

Moving on…  No specs were given in regards to the TDP during the launch event, and the official reviews are just going live now.  The rumors currently standing say that the GTX 480 is sitting at 250w TDP, is this accurate?

Bryan Del Rizzo: Yes, based on the press kits that we give out, for the GTX 480 it is 250, and I think for the 470…I need to double check, but I think it’s 215 or something like that.  So it’s slightly higher than what the GTX 285’s or 295’s were.

TechREACTION.net:  Did you guys have to do anything exotic with the cooling solutions in order to get them to run with stability?

Bryan Del Rizzo: Yea, I mean, it’s a bigger chip…it’s 3 billion transistors, so you gotta be crafty in terms of how you keep things running and cooling.  It’s a 4 heat pipe design on the GTX 480, the 470 is smaller so you’ve got to keep that in consideration.  But, you also have to build yourself a great case around it, right?  There’s a lot of great chassis, from companies like Thermaltake, there’s builders like Main Gear, I mean if you’re building these great high performance PC’s, it’s standard cooling, standard air flow, standard stuff that you have to do.  So it’s not like it’s radically different. I think some people are trying to make a big deal of it, but I think as an enthusiast you’re probably less concerned about that than you are about performance.  If you want balls to the wall performance, it’s a slight trade-off right?  It’s slightly more heat, for awesome features, but basically just awesome performance, so take your pick.  And if you don’t want that, and you don’t want the 480, then you can sit down with the 470, and that just comes down to user preference and stuff like that.

TechREACTION.net: What would you say is the GTX 4 series greatest performance feature in regards to gaming?

Bryan Del Rizzo: Tough question because I don’t know if you’re talking about gaming today or gaming in the future.  Clearly we built the chip on DX11 tesselation, we have 16 tesselation engines that are scalable.  So basically what that really means, the more tesselation in the game, the more performance you get out of the GPU.  Versus say, the competitor products on the market today; they have a single tesselation unit.  So what that means is if you have various degrees of tesselation, the tesselation performance stays flat.  It doesn’t matter what GPU you have from them, you’re just gonna get the same level of tesselation performance.  Which really doesn’t do much for the developer, developing a game.  Developers, well…they wanna crank shit up right?  I mean, that’s the whole point of having a scalable architecture.  So I think for me, tesselation is killer, it’s key to next generation titles, but they need the performance under the hood to drive that.

TechREACTION.net: So you think, for future titles especially, that tesselation is going to be a huge feature?

Bryan Del Rizzo: Yea, because I mean, the DX11 titles on the market today don’t really take advantage of tesselation to a great degree.  I mean, they claim DX11 support, but until the developers have an architecture where they can actually harness the power, and really play around with tesselation levels, I think this is what GTX 480 does.  When you combine things like that with things that we’re doing with ray-tracing, things like 3D Vision Surround, or just even 3D Vision.  Our goal here is to change the level of the experience that you get.  It’s not too much about running a benchmark, it’s about how you experience the game, how you immerse yourself in the game, how you feel in the game right?  Everything we’re building has that objective in mind, and I think that’s what we’re delivering.

TechREACTION.net:  From a marketing perspective, would you say that 3D Vision is the most promising feature for you from a marketing perspective?

Bryan Del Rizzo: Well, 3D is hot.  We’ve been shipping 3D Vision for about a year now.  And the cool thing that we do with GeForce, for developers, they almost really don’t have to do any work for 3D because we can do all of the graphic work ourselves in the GeForce graphics driver.  So, all we’re really doing is intercepting the signal to the game, and instead of rendering it once, we’re actually rendering it twice, once to the left eye and once to the right eye, and then it syncs up and comes out as 3D.  So from that perspective developers don’t actually have a lot of work.  What happened last year though is that they finally got a hold of our technology, they started playing with it and they said “Holy shit, this stuff looks great!”.  It’s the first time that they’d seen a compelling 3D stereoscopic solution on the PC.  People think of 3D, and they have this in their mindset, back in their head, they think of the red and blue paper glasses right?  And everybody thinks that looks like shit.  And it does, right?  And that’s the experience people are used to, so until they actually try it…  You know, the one thing I can say is that it’s really hard to articulate and talk about it, you really have to see it.

TechREACTION.net:  You do.  We saw it today and it was extremely impressive.

Bryan Del Rizzo: It is.  So we do all the real-time conversion ourselves in our driver, but developers like THQ and Blizzard and the folks that did Batman, and just a bunch of other developers, have gone back in and enhanced and optimized there games for it.  That means they’ve fixed the depth, they rendered all of the backgrounds at the right depth level.  They’ve made things look intrinsically more interesting when you get up close.  You have the screen effect, in games like WoW, Batman and RE5, stuff will come off the screen at you as well.  That’s a completely different experience right?  So, we’re thankful that the developers like the technology, we’re thankful that they are putting those customizations into the game, because today it’s really about how does the consumer experience it.  And if you play it on 2D and then you play it on 3D, you don’t want to go back to 2D.  If you play on a single 3D screen, and then you play it on three 3D screens, you don’t want to go back to the single screen.  It’s just complete immersion, right?  It’s a whole new way to play the game.

TechREACTION.net:  So would you say that a feature like 3D Vision gives you an edge over the competition?

Bryan Del Rizzo: I’ve always thought that we’ve had the edge on our competition anyway, because we’re driving development of all of these cool technologies that developers take advantage of.  3D Vision specifically of course is one we’ve talked a lot about, ray-tracing,  and tesselation.  I mean, all of this combined just puts us head and shoulders above what our competition is doing.  So at the end of the day it’s not about running a single benchmark and saying..”well we’re faster at x percentage”, it’s about…yea we want to be the fastest GPU on the planet obviously, right?  And we are, but at the end of the day, it’s more about how our consumers are experiencing the games that they’re playing.  And as long as we can drive the development and evolution of that, then we are doing our jobs.

TechREACTION.net:  Sounds good Bryan.  Thanks so much for your time!

Keep your eyes peeled on this page, be sure to digg and retweet, and we’ll see you at PAX!

Nvidia Fermi Launch Event Updates:

6:08PM – Waiting for show to begin…fans going crazy with noise makers.

6:11PM – “Please take your seats, show will start in 1 minute”

6:13PM – Drew Henry (General Manager, GeForce GPU’s) is coming on stage to begin the event…

6:14PM – Drew is telling everyone how awesome us gamers and Bostonians are.

6:15PM -  Nvidia snuggies are confirmed for giveaway….lol

6:17Pm – Here comes the spin, discussing why Fermi was delayed.  “We wanted to make something great for gamers”.

6:19PM – Showing off Fermi.  “The GeForce GTX480…is something you are really going to be delighted with.”

6:20PM – ” It’s the most complicated GPU we have ever built.”  3 Billion transistors.

6:21PM – “And we have the GeForce GTX470..it’s little brother, also a great gaming GPU.”

6:22PM – Performance Numbers: GTX480 compared to 285, “sometimes more than 2x performance, no less than 1.5x”

6:23PM – “2x performance in overall gaming is cool, but it’s not just a GPU for gaming.”  “We’ve invested a lot in physics, to allow you to blow things up. “  “Up to 2.5x the gpu physx processing performance of the last generation”

6:24PM – “Real-time interactive ray tracing…”  Is this a Larrabee conference?

6:25PM – New Nvidia “Crank that S#it up!” t-shirts.

6:26PM – This next part is in 3D.  Now he’s talking about he feels the PC can lead the industry in 3D, with 3D VISION.

6:27PM – EA’s Gordon Van Dyke here now, showing off BF:BC2 in 3D.  Showing how they were able to incorporate 3D VISION into their latest hit.

6:28PM – Showing BC2 in Nvidia 3D Surround, that’s three screens, full 3D.  Looks VERY impressive actually.

6:29PM – Showing BC2 jungle fight scene with the militants when you hold out in the shack.  Again, very impressive, but the full surround sound is certainly adding to the effect.

6:30PM – Basically 3D Vision Surroind is 3D Vision meets ATI’s Eyefinity.

6:31PM – Going to show WoW in 3D Vision now.  Allll of the nerds are going berzerk.

6:32PM – Little LOL as the frame rates totally suck as they are in flight mode in WoW in 3D Vision Surround.  Not sure what that’s about…but they say it’s fresh support, just added, so perhaps it’s still in “beta”.

6:33PM  – Jesse Addly (?) from EA.  Does Tech Dev at EA for the PC platform.  So, engine development.  Going to talk about Need For Speed now, also in 3D Vision Surround.

6:34PM – Ooooh, going to show off real-time ray tracing, with cars in Need For Speed.  It’s in 2D, but it’s showing you interactive Ray Tracing, in what looks like a few frames under 30fps.  It’s allowing you to customize a ray traced car in game.

6:36PM – This is a downloadable app with the entire NFS Garage inside, you can customize and collect your cars, add your creations to in-game NFS.

6:37PM – Apparently this app will ship with every GTX480 and GTX470, so a bundled app, but not a full game by any means.  Interesting.

6:38PM -  “Working with the guys in the game industry is really important for us.”  “Often times what we’ll do is put together technology demonstrations to show what they can do with our technology in their game”

6:39PM  – Next up “This is what we call Super Sonic Sled”.  This is a full game they are going to include with every GeForce card.  This is the rocket sled demo everyone saw a few weeks ago.  It’s in full 3D Vision Surround.  All the latest DX11 technology and lots of tesselation.

6:40PM – Showing off different parts of the game world they created.  Showing off the rocket sled, Barney (the sled driver), the millions of pieces of the bridge that gets destroyed.  Showing the details in wire frame as well, so the viewers have an idea of the complexity.

6:42PM – They are using the chicken gun that they have implemented in the game to blow off pieces of the rocket sled, which destroys the sled as he takes off.

6:45PM – Added a million particles to the bridge and blew it up to show the capability of the GPU’s Physx processing.

6:47PM – Next up Metro 2033.  Louis Giglioti (?) from THQ to discuss.

6:48PM – “Let’s see the game…”  Metro 2033 running in full 3D Vision Surround.  Lot’s of game background talk, the author, the story, blah blah..go read the review.

6:53PM – Ok, that demo is finally over.  Just a game promo essentially.

6:53PM – “With this generation architecture, we have them in full production, full launch today, the reviews will be posted in about 10 mins. ” And they will be in stores in about 14 days.

6:54PM – Something with green nailpolish on their 3d glasses just won a GTX 480.  Now they are tossing out tosses. I just punched out some nerd to get one!  “Sucks to be you nerd”  j/k…or am I?

6:55PM -  Show is clearing out, it appears it might already be over, even though it hasn’t been officially stated yet.

6:56PM – It’s over, good night.

Be sure to check our Interview with Nvidia’s Bryan Del Rizzo here

Test Setup

Hardware

• Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P
• CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE (4,2GHz CORE/2,9GHz IMC)
• RAM: 2x 2GB OCZ Platinum (1550MHz 6-6-6)
• Monitor: LG W2600HP-BF 1920×1200 pixels
• GPU: Two ATI HD 5770 1Gb (Crossfire) & one ATI HD 5870 1Gb

Software

• MS Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit
• Catalyst 10.3 February preview (driver package 8.71.3-100205a-095620E)
• Fraps
• Battlefield Bad Company 2
• Aliens vs. Predator
• Borderlands
• Half Life 2
• Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2

The FPS where recorded over a 20 second period using Fraps. Multiple runs where completed for each game, and the average values where then calculated for each game and GPU setup. Vertical Sync where disabled for all tests. And the highest possible quality settings where used, unless else is noted.

Battlefield – Bad Company 2
1920×1200, 8x MSAA, 16x AF, HBAO, DX11

(x-axis = seconds, y-axis = fps)

It’s pretty close, but the 5870 managed to push out a few more FPS. Very much playable on both setups. But guess a few more FPS could always be desired for online play.

Aliens vs. Predator
1920×1200, 16x AF, DX11

(x-axis = seconds, y-axis = fps)

At a first glimpse this looks like extremely poor, or no Crossfire support at all. However, I made sure that both 5770 GPU’s where active during testing. And after some additional research, this does indeed seem to be a reasonable result in AvP on two crossfired 5770s…  The 5870 is really flexing its muscles in this one!

Borderlands
1920×1200, 16x AF

(x-axis = seconds, y-axis = fps)

I where not able to bypass a FPS limit of 62 in this game. But decided to include the chart anyway, as both card setups stayed under that limit most of the time.

Half Life 2
1920×1200, 4x MSAA, 16x AF

(x-axis = seconds, y-axis = fps)

Both setups managed to push out a healthy amount of pixels. And still, quite impressive graphics for such a old title!

Call of Duty – Modern Warfare 2
1920×1200, 4x AA, “Extra”

(x-axis = seconds, y-axis = fps)

Towards the end of the run when things heat up a little, the crossfired pair of 5770s closed the gap to their bigger brother. But the 5870 is still a head nonetheless.

Quick Final Thoughts
Well there isn’t much to say really. But if you have plans to grab one of these cards, then go for the 5870 if you can. But a pair of 5770s is still to be counted on, and it has proven to be a very potent setup. Nonetheless fun for the tinkerer! But I bet two 5870s is even more fun…

Be sure to check out TestFreaks for more expert reviews on the Radeon HD5770 & HD5870.

They took things much further though, by comparing those results with Radeon HD5870 and they came up with those:

There are many questions to be raised here, one being: why they have used such a low-end CPU for the testing. That is a potential bottleneck and if nothing else it lowers the score in 3DMark06 as this synthetic test is not very CPU friendly. Other issue could be with having not optimized drivers as this could seriously limit GPUs performance as we’ve all seen when ATIs 4xxx series came out. All the same, it will be exciting to see if those results will be confirmed once the cards are out and what will be ATIs reaction to them. Even more so, to see in the real world how the bigger brother GTX 480 will perform.

Features:

Integrated Graphics HD 4200

• DirectX 10.1 support
• 2nd generation Unified Video Decoder (UVD 2.0)
  • Full hardware decode acceleration of H.264/VC-1/MPEG-2
  • Hardware decode acceleration of a secondary video stream (Picture-in-Picture) (10-20% CPU usage decrease)
• Improved ATI Avivo Video Post Processor
  • Enhanced DVD up-conversion to HD
  • Automatic dynamic contrast adjustment
• Multichannel LPCM over HDMI (no PAP, no HD audio bitstreaming

Test System:

• AMD X4 965 @ Stock
• MSI 785GM-E65
• 2×2GB Gskill Eco
• Corsair HX 750W
• 500GB WD Black

Test List:

• 3DMark06
• 3DMark2001 SE
• Call of Juarez
• World in Conflict
• Far Cry 2

Lets get to the interesting screen shots I have for you!

3DMark06:

Once the test got done running and the scores came up I could not help but laugh. 1804? I refreshed! Still 1804! Did I just set a world record? I was so close to the world record I could smell it! Now you may say “I must have the nose of a bloodhound if I can smell that far.”  Well I did just have surgery to fix my nose from when i broke it and was 80% closed on one side. Maybe that doctor hooked me up with a great sniffer! Either way, I will give it to you, because I am 37,512 points behind first place.

3DMark2001 SE:

Now we can look at another monstrous performance put out by my HD4200.  At 13,300, I was not exactly blown away but this. A stock setup with an Nvidia 280 GPU can run around 60k. Yes, you would be a fool to think the IGP would be anywhere near the 280, but still we can dream! If we can’t dream we can complain like any good unread computer user will do and does about lack of performance.

Call of Juarez:

Now with the manufacturer claiming the HD4200 is fully Dx 10.1 compatible, I felt the need to see how it would do. You can claim Dx 10.1 all you want Mr. Manufacturer but with this test I ran and a few more to come, Dx 10.1 tore your GPU a new one! Now, you find me true gamer, hell find an average gamer, who can play a game at and average FPS of 3.8 and I will streak through the snow!  So claim all you want about the greatness of being Dx 10.1 compatible, but users will find themselves forcing Dx 9 wherever possible.

World in Conflict:

With World in Conflict I wanted to try something different. I turned everything to the lowest settings possible to see if that would help anything. As it turns out, it did not change anything. Still a staggering, migraine inducing average of 2 FPS. Is there anything more that needs to be said? I don’t think so, the pictures say it all!

Farcry 2:

Now with this test, you can see a little light at the end of the tunnel. With Dx9 enabled and the settings you see above the HD4200 GPU was able to crank out an eye popping 26.33 average FPS. However, when I turned up the graphic details to ‘High’ the IGP gets torn apart once again with an average FPS of 7.46.

Final Thoughts:

Overall, if you expect this IGP to be able to do much more than play Pacman, then you are sorely mistaken and need to do A LOT more reading! However, if you love Pacman and web surfing then this would be a perfect money saving solution for your build. The HD4200 definitely has its place in the computer world, but just needs to find its niche in the low-end computer user section. Once it does, it could really be a solid addition to a web browsing computer. Building grandma a computer? HD4200 is highly recommended! Building a high-end computer to play all the new games on maxed out settings? I will back hand you if you even consider this option. Also, if you are seriously considering the HD4200 for your high-end gaming rig, just send me a check because you do not deserve a high-end computer! For what the HD4200 is, it does its job very nicely. Being the first of its kind to be fully Dx 10.1 compatible shows a bright future for the 4xxx line of GPU’s.

Note:

Stay tuned for overclocking results in the 2nd part of the review.