ATI Radeon HD 5870 CrossFireX Review --- TheThirdMedia Hardware

Time to Upgrade

From our results, we can see that two Radeon HD 5870 cards can work as well, if not better than two Radeon HD 4870 X2 cards. Bearing in mind that a single 4870 X2 boasts dual 4870 chips, this is in fact not a fair match at all - four GPUs on two Radeon HD 4870 X2 cards versus two GPUs on the pair of Radeon HD 5870. This is a testament to the sheer might of the new Cypress XT chip.

Overall, there is little to separate the two cards. Across most of the benchmarks, both multi-GPU setups produced comparable, if not identical, scores. So as far as outright performance is concerned, it is a stalemate.

Elsewhere, however, there's much to suggest that a dual Radeon HD 5870 setup is the more feasible one. First of which is availability and pricing. Radeon HD 4870 X2 have been pretty rare of late, which is no surprise given that the original Radeon HD 4870, whose chips it uses, has been superseded by the newer Radeon HD 4890. And even if you were lucky enough to find a Radeon HD 4870 X2, price is in the same ballpark as that of the cutting-edge Radoen HD 5870. In such instances, there is no reason why anyone would pick the HD 4870 X2 over the newer HD 5870.

Other considerations such as thermal and power requirements also put the Radeon HD 5870 at an advantage. The older RV770 chips were infamous for being hot, so imagine having not one, not two, but four in your system. As our experience tells us, the internals of the casing becomes unbearably warm, even in a casing as free-flowing as the Storm Sniper casing from Cooler Master. Of course that is not to say that HD 5870 wasn't warm, but it was significantly less so than the two Radeon HD 4870 X2 cards.

The insane power requirement of the Radeon HD 4870 X2 pair also puts it at a severe disadvantage. As shown in our setup, a pair of Radeon HD 4870 X2 requires nearly twice as much power to operate compared to a Radeon HD 5870 CrossFireX setup. Therefore, where performance per watt ratio is concerned, the newcomer easily trumps everything else (for the moment at least).

What about performance comparisons across the X38 and X58 setups? Well, it would seem that our Intel X38 system with the Core 2 Quad is showing its limitations. Discounting the synthetic benchmarks which normally scale with CPU power, tests on Far Cry 2 and Dawn of War 2 have shown that performance on a new Intel X58 setup with its powerful Core i7 processor is noticeably faster.

The upcoming Radeon HD 5870 X2 should be titanic, but to get the most of it, you'll need to update your system too.

Interestingly, Anandtech did a comparison with on the Radeon HD 5870 in CrossFireX on both P55 and X58 to find out if there's any difference, and the tests suggest that while the X58 is noticeably quicker, the difference is only a paltry 2% to 7%. Where our tests are concerned using a different comparison scale of an X38 and X58 systems, we saw some huge gains on the X58 system especially on Far Cry 2 and Dawn of War 2. And as developers begin to optimize games for the new generation of Intel processors, we think that the older Core 2 processors will no longer be sufficient. If your intent is to get the upcoming Radeon HD 5870 X2, you'll definitely need an Intel X58 setup with a high speed Core i7 processor to stretch it to its limits.

In summary, our tests have demonstrated the potential of the upcoming Radeon HD 5870 X2, and have shown that you'll need a modern high-end system preferably using a high speed Core i7 processor to fully enjoy and extract the power that two Radeon HD 5870 cards in CrossFireX can provide. The upcoming HD 5870 X2 should be a real cracker and if ATI can do more to keep the HD 5870 X2's power consumption and operating temperatures lower than what we've seen here, all the better. So keep your fingers crossed for it in the coming weeks ahead.



	TheThirdMedia Hardware → Video Guide → Video Article > ATI Radeon HD 5870 CrossFireX Review