ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB Reference Card
The Radeon HD 5870 graphics reference card is a very cleanly designed and built component and moves a long way from the world of the HD 4870 and into the territory of NVIDIA’s GTX 295 and GTX 285. While for many card looks won’t matter one bit, there are still those that want to “feel” like they are getting a high quality piece of hardware with their cash. Though we do not have an HD 5850 card here for testing we are pretty sure its reference design is identical to the HD 5870 seen here.
The first thing to note about the HD 5870 card is that it is long; about the same length as the GTX 295 so be prepared to use up some space in your system.
It has a medium-gloss black finish with red accents that actually make the card look nice – nothing else really to say in that regard.
The back of the card has a black plate covering everything but the heatsink retention bracket that serves as both an aesthetic enhancement as well as a
heatsink. If you remember the HD 4870/4890 cards could get QUITE hot along the back during heavy use.
Here you can see the HD 5870 reference card next to the largest current-generation GPU, NVIDIA’s GTX 295.
The single can on the card pulls air in from the chassis and exhausts it out the front of the card where the display connections are located. Because the
heatsink is completely contained in the black casing air flow is actually quite good. The red openings along the back of the card are apparently only there
for show and are non functional.
The HD 5870 requires a pair of 6-pin power connections to operate – pretty much a standard now for high-end graphics cards. Unlike the GTX 295, AMD’s new
card does not require the extra boost of an 8-pin power connection.
CrossFire continues to be supported on AMD’s GPU platforms including support for CrossFire X with up to 4 GPUs in a single system. We only got our hands on
a pair of the cards so you will at least see dual-GPU tests on the coming pages.
The red plastic label simply reads “ATI Radeon” and adds another decorative touch to the design.
Here is where the juicy starts: there are four digital outputs on the reference design here including a pair of dual-link DVI outputs, a DisplayPort and HDMI
connection. The card supports up to three displays so you can combine the two DVI connections with either the DisplayPort or HDMI output.
A couple of notes on these outputs – if you already have some DVI-ready monitors and are looking forward to triple monitor support you might be disappointed
to learn that the DisplayPort connection requires an ACTIVE adaptor to be converted to a DVI connection. The adaptors are also expensive (around $100) and
are pretty hard to find right now. AMD says they are trying to address this but short of selling their own version I am not sure what pull they have in this
regard. Converting from dual-link DVI to DisplayPort, if you have more than one DisplayPort monitor, is a much easier task and only requires a less
expensive passive adaptor.
Taking the heatsink off of the HD 5870 requires the careful removal of quite a few screws but is fairly simple task overall. Under the hood you’ll find the
GDDR5 memory totaling 1GB and the Evergreen GPU in all its glory.
The Evergreen GPU is big, even on TSMC’s 40nm technology as the 2.15 billion transistors that make up the die size of 334mm^2. The NVIDIA GT200b parts being built on the 55nm process (about 1.4 billion transistors) are still significantly larger (490mm^2) and from what we are hearing
about GT300 (NVIDIA’s upcoming GPU) it will also be a larger die size.
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