The battle between ATI and Nvidia has been a long and bitter one that at one point seemed like Nvidia had emerged victorious only to now find the opposite is closer to the truth. These two giants have the entire consumer GPU market between them (ignoring Intel’s onboard graphics option on some motherboards and Intel’s forthcoming Larrabee GPU which we cannot predict the performance of yet) with very different strategies.

Nvidia went for the high end where margins are higher but volumes lower while ATI consolidated their “bread and butter” mainstream market. At the end of the day, ATI was able to offer a better price/performance solution while Nvidia was left struggling with insufficient product differentiation and even had to result to marketing trickery through renaming existing product offerings.

ATIs strategy has been so successful that low end success has allowed them to challenge at the high end and now ATI graphics cards offer the best performance as well as the cheapest entry points. Nvidia have no answer until their much speculated “Fermi” product is released some time this year.

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The GPU

Unlike the 4800 series, the 5800 series is encased in a sheath that is 9.5″ long on the 5850 and 10.5″ on the 5870. Two 6-pin PCIe connectors provide power to the card (these must both be used) though no 8-pin connector is required.

This is a dual slot design and has 4 connectors on the plate (1 HDMI, 1 Display Port and 2 DVI) and all this restricts space for vented air from the hefty cooler.

The shroud does not extend to the back as with the 5870 so you can see the PCB and GPU heatsink retention bracket. Like the 5870, the 5850’s cooler has a barrel fan that draws air into the shroud, where it is forced through the heatsink and partially exhausted from the system through vents in the card’s mounting plate. Two more vents at the back of the card also direct some air that is vented within the system.

Test Setup – removed to save space – please refer to html version of article for details.

Test Configuration – removed to save space – please refer to html version of article for details.

System Hardware – removed to save space – please refer to html version of article for details.

We selected Far Cry 2 (first person shooter), HAWX (air combat) and Resident Evil 5 (horror) for our tests as they are newer titles that are suited to benchmarking and make most systems struggle.

The real purpose of this review is to see DX11 and the benefits that are unique to the ATI 58XX and 57XX series. It’s tricky to test to see how much of a speed difference DX11 makes as there are no real reliable DX11 benchmarks but as a showcase of DX11 quality the situation is much better. We used Unigine’s Heaven Benchmark and can only convey the quality to our readers via YouTube.

The improvement in quality is apparent for all to see.

This next video shows the effects of Hardware Tessellation. The technical white paper on this feature is enough to send the most avid technophile to sleep but there’s no denying the benefits of the end result.

If you have a DirectX 11 card then you can download the demo for yourself at http://unigine.com/download/

Test Results

First we will look at the dependency of this GPU on the system processor and the importance of having multiple cores to get the best graphics performance.

The results show fairly linear scaling as we go up in cores. It should be noted that synthetic tests such as SiSoft Sandra will scale quite well and are mainly useful as an indication of bottlenecks and to see what programmers can achieve if they overcome the hurdles they face.

The processor multimedia results also scale well although real-life differences will not be as pronounced as this chart indicates.

Interestingly, the memory bandwidth results show that a single core cannot make full use of available capacity and is particularly the case for the AMD Phenom 2 architecture. Dual core or higher is required to overcome this limitation.

Despite this test favouring processors with HyperThreading (i.e. Intel ones) there is a huge difference in performance between the two architectures. While two cores are fine for the i7-870 here, the AMD X4 630 needs at least 3 to put in a reasonable showing. Since graphics performance is similar (same GPU after all) the limitations lie with the processor. This bodes well for the forthcoming Clarkdale dual-core processor but it will be necessary to see this repeated in real-world benchmarks to draw any firm conclusions. The AMD X4 performance scales better though, so when using all 4 cores there is not a huge difference between the Phenom 2 X4 630 and the i7-870 despite the latter being 3 times as expensive.

Far Cry 2 has a very useful built-in benchmarking tool with many configurable parameters.

First thing to note is that this game is playable with 8x AA on any number of cores (fortunately a single-core Phenom 2 does not exist). We will test at varying resolutions later on.

HAWX is a bit of a strange game but provides a consistent benchmarking function. At 1280×1024 with 8x AA on the highest settings we can see that a 2-core i7-870 outperforms a Phenom 2 X4 630 with all 4 cores at maximum. There does however appear to be a bottleneck that could be resolved with more efficient programming.

Two things are noteworthy. There is a bottleneck on the i7-870 performance but its high enough to not be an issue. More importantly it takes the Phenom 2 X4 630 at least 3 cores to match the performance of a single i7-870 core but with all 4 cores active can match the best the i7-870 has to offer.

Now we have compared differing numbers of cores, it’s worth showing the performance of the above games with all 4 cores active but at differing resolutions to show the maximum performance that can be expected from the Radeon HD 5850.

Suddenly, things are not so bad and both processors can run at good speeds at all resolutions. If we had not tested with different numbers of cores we would not be able to tell from the above results that a 2-core Lynnfield runs this game just as well as a 4-core one and that the AMD processor needs at least 3 cores to keep up. The games is playable at all resolutions.

Performance is virtually identical across differing resolutions hiding the issue with a single AMD core. This is a game that will not tax even basic systems let alone a decent platform with a Radeon HD5850.

Here the AMD Phenom 2 X4 630 outperforms the Intel i7-870 slightly at higher resolutions but hides the previous results showing poor performance with 1 and 2 cores. Very playable at all resolutions.

Conclusion

We’ve seen that performance is good at all resolutions on either Intel or AMD platform but also looked deeper to see the benefits that multi-core processors bring to maximise the potential of the Radeon 5850. We can extrapolate here and can state that Crossfire or X2 cards (such as the 5970) will need at least a quad core processor to make the most of them. In the case of the of the Radeon HD 5850 any modern system will be sufficient to avoid CPU bottlenecks.

The purpose of the review has been to avoid endless comparisons against many different cards and the marketplace is so crowded that it’s confusing for consumers to differentiate between the old and new offerings (no thanks in part to Nvidia’s rebadging of old products with new nomenclature).

The key conclusion is that the Radeon HD5850 offers better price/performance than any competing product and will be a worthy component in a high end system (5870 and 5970 are available for those wishing to go the extra distance). More importantly is the provision of DirectX 11 and the new features which promise to add greater realism and for which there are no competitors at present.

Anyone looking for a graphics card that is cutting edge, plays all the latest games at high settings and is as future proof as its possible to get right now, will find this product to be ideal. We have no hesitation in recommending the Radeon HD 5850 and applaud AMD/ATI for leading the industry with new and innovative features.

Amar is the founder and Editor of The Hardware Review (http://www.hardwarereview.net).

Several months ago ATI took the performance lead from Nvidia when they launched their 5800 series of GPUs and then launched a mainstream range (the 5700 series). Some may be puzzled by the launch of the 5670 now but it fits in nicely with ATIs product differentiation strategy and fulfils two key criteria. Firstly, the Radeon 5670 comes in at below the crucial $100 mark which is very significant psychologically and also presents a viable upgrade path to users with older systems as it does not require additional power from a PSU other than that supplied by the PCI-E motherboard slot. ATI are also quick to point out that less than 10% of PC users have 1920×1080 or higher displays and tat 66% of the market have graphics cards costing less than $100 making this a significant contributor to profitability. Next month will see the launch of the 5500 series and the 5450 (low profile with passive cooling – ideal for HTPCs) giving ATI a complete range of DirectX 11 solutions across all market segments.

ATIs strategy has been so successful that low end success has allowed them to challenge at the high end and now ATI graphics cards offer the best performance as well as the cheapest entry points. Nvidia have no answer until their much speculated “Fermi” product is released some time this year. ATI now have come full circle in an attempt to sweep away any vestiges of resistance from Nvidia based on price in certain categories. Will this be the final nail in the Nvidia coffin?

Specifications – removed to save space – please refer to html version of article for details.

It is immediately apparent that the 5670 is about half the feature set of a 5770 which in turn was half that of a 5870. This is a good specification for a mainstream card aimed below the $100 mark so let’s see where this fits in to the existing ATI product range:

For an extra $30 it is possible to purchase a 5750 which on paper will give a substantial boost to performance but ATI are adamant that the two reasons mentioned in the Introduction are big enough to make the market for the 5670 a huge one. GDDR5 memory should make up for the narrower memory bus width when compared to the 4800 series.

The Architecture

Given the savings in real estate over the 5700 series and the 40nm process we can assume that costs are low enough to give ATI significant room to maneuver should Nvidia come out with a competing product at the $100 mark. The main current competitor seems to be the GT240 and we will focus on this during our testing.

The GPU

Gone is the shroud of its bigger siblings in favor of a small (and actually very quiet) cooler and the power requirements are such that no external power is required from the PSU beyond what the motherboard can provide. It is a single slot card and weighs very little.

The back is very plain and the cooler does not extend to a back plate.

Here we can see the reason why air is not vented out the back of the card – there is simply no room in a single slot card with 3 connectors! ATI have not skimped in this area and the 5670 has the same connectors as cards in higher ranges, including Eyefinity support for 3 displays.

Given the budget nature of the Radeon 5670, we decided to use our AMD system for running tests as it is closer to what we would expect the purchasers of this card to use (if someone can afford an i7-870 then they are likely to pick a Radeon 5800 series card or at least a 5700 series one).

Test Results – DX10

Firstly we will start with DX10 testing and move onto DX11 in the next section (the range of DX11 games is still limited at present although many are in the pipeline for release this year).

The 4670 is now effectively obsolete (something which will be apparent in all the benchmarks we are showing in this article) but will probably be discounted in price until stocks run out for those who can’t stretch to a 5670 and/or are unwilling to wait until the 5570 is available next month. The GT240 with GDDR5 memory provides significantly more competition than its DDR3 version (another theme that will run through our benchmarks) but not enough to come close to the Radeon HD 5670.

The situation is repeated at the high settings.

And also at the extreme setting (we will see if games are playable at high settings and determine the “sweet spot” for this card).

Our first real game and is perfectly playable at all resolutions.

Which is not the case for Battleforge as no card can manage the elusive 30 fps needed for smoothness. A glitch prevented our 4670 from completing its run at 1280×1024.

The game itself cannot hit the 30fps mark with any card but the Radeon 5670 comes closest.

The Radeon 5670 effortlessly manages 60+ frames per second at all resolutions.

Only the Radeon 5670 can manage 30+ fps at all resolutions. We will come back to STALKER when we look at our DirectX 11 testing.

This is a game that does not really strain modern cards and there is little to choose between the contenders in this benchmark.

Both ATI cards outperform the GT240 here and both manage over 30fps at all resolutions.

Test Results – DX11

Moving on to DX11 testing we will see how it compare with DX9, DX10, DX10.1 and what sacrifices have to be made to activate the new features of hardware tessellation and contact hardening shadows.

Those games that support DirectX 11 do show a very real increase in performance over the DirectX 10 settings. Do bear in mind that this is with the extra “eye candy” features of DX11 turned off so that we can do a like for like comparison.

Turning on the two key features shows that there is a slight performance penalty in DirectX 11. Given the increase in realism afforded we consider it to be a price well worth paying. For historical comparison we can see a much bigger hot going from DX9 to DX10 and DX11 but no-one would go back to DX9 after being spoilt with the benefits of DX10 and now DX11 unless on a very low end system facing unplayable frame rates.

Analysis and Other Benefits

The Radeon 5670 is not just about playing faster and ATI want to emphasize the quality benefits their new technology brings to the mainstream. One of these is hardware acceleration in video playback and they illustrate this with Adobe’s upcoming Flash player with support for hardware acceleration.

The difference is startling and shows how important this feature can be if widely implemented. Let’s hope that ATI keep pestering the relevant software developers until they all have this level of support by default.

The real purpose of this review is to see DX11 and the benefits that are unique to the ATI 5XXX series. It’s tricky to test to see how much of a speed difference DX11 makes as there are few reliable DX11 benchmarks but as a showcase of DX11 quality the situation is much better. We used Unigine’s Heaven Benchmark and can only convey the quality to our readers via YouTube.

The improvement in quality is apparent for all to see.

This next video shows the effects of Hardware Tessellation. The technical white paper on this feature is enough to send the most avid technophile to sleep but there’s no denying the benefits of the end result.

If you have a DirectX 11 card then you can download the demo for yourself at http://unigine.com/download/

Conclusion

Another key milestone has been reached by ATI and they now have a DirectX 11 offering in the largest graphics card market segment, much to the chagrin of Nvidia who seem to have taken a dive and are waiting for the count to reach 8 before standing up – a dangerous strategy considering that any miscalculation may result in them being counted out before they can respond.

So how does the Radeon 5670 fare? It wins hands down against the Nvidia GT240 which is its competitor at that price point and it remains the only DirectX 11 solution in its category. The 4670 can be picked up for around the $70 mark at present (while stocks last) and will be an option for those unable to afford the 5670 until the 5570 is released in a few weeks time.

More significantly, a Radeon 4850 can be picked up for $99 and is actually faster than the Radeon 5670 which presents a bit of a conundrum for buyers. Do they go for performance alone or should they opt for the cutting edge feature set? Ultimately it is a choice of personal preference but studies are already showing that the rate of adoption of DirectX11 over DirectX10 far exceeds that of DirectX10 over DirectX9 so if something more than a stop-gap solution is required then we would recommend the Radeon 5670.

The Radeon HD 5670 is an important step in ATI’s top to bottom marketing strategy and is a powerful force on its own merit but given the fact that it has no competition (other than perhaps some ATI cards reaching their end-of-life) it really is the only logical choice for new budget systems and for upgrades to older systems. Most importantly, it brings DirectX11 to the masses and serves the consumer by tipping the balance in the “chicken and egg” situation that stifles software developers from taking advantage of new features until they become mass market.

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