Performance-7/10
Probably what ever matters and main reason for its existance.After all the reviews start streaming out using beta drivers and still showed rather admirable performance.
With performance on par with GTX285 from nvidia,with a mainstream card, you may think AMD have executed this generation smoothly. Unfortunately things isnt as rosy as it seems from the surface.Yes the pricing for its performance is unreachable by competitors but one have to delve deeper into its architecture.
More than double amount of transitors compared to previous AMD flagship and at least 175% more than GTX285, it has 1600 processing units, in fact it has double of everything from texture units to raster unit, except... The memory controller.With AMD marketing machine promising a double performance level of previous generation parts, one would expect a 4870x2 performance.Reading the way i lead you to this point, yes you are right, it didnt.It is especially glaring to see the performance benefit from this theortical computing power showing depressing returns from flaghip derive from this new architecture, which is the HD5870.With almost close to 30% theortical performance cut from its flagship,little HD5850 performed much closer to its marketed computation power in real application.No, i m not the first person in the world complaining about the performance of HD5800.It could run everything in the market like a dream, other than some inefficient coding frankenstein like crysis.Its just, they arent performing as expected,somewhere deep within this 2billion silicon powerhouse, theres a huge bottleneck.It could be the 256bit memory controller,1gb of memory,unmature drivers or the processor logic could no longer efficently distribute workload among its 1600 units.
As mentioned earlier,the 2 teraflop 5850 performed closely with a 2.7teraflop 5870 which either solution you choose, still offer the best performance single card configuration in the market.Its just, after all the ranting, disappointing...
Features-9/10
Supersampling antialiasing is back.Eyefinity for multi monitor gaming on windows at DRIVER level.Newest Directx, which no other company is capable to produce.Other minor features given pretty jargons but doesnt do anything significant for you to notice, so what more do we need?Free 3d stripper desktop rendered on DX11 and tessalation?(i dont mind actually :3 )
Thermal-8/10
Auto fan works pretty well where it idle at 22% and load up to 37%.Anything above 40% fan speed is unbearable and 100% makes you nostalgic of FX5800(no i m just kidding).Max out at 80C in most intensive gaming and idle at 48C.Furmark and OCCT still makes AMD cards go crazy at close to 90C while the GPU VRM report a smoldering hot 100C in less than 5mins.But you didnt plan to get this card just to play furmark, or did you...
This is probably the coolest high end card make in recent memory and here is a chart to prove it, LOL.
Value-10/10
399SGD for HD5850 while 600SGD for HD5870, which means HD5850 cost 66% while performing 80% in contrast of HD5870.Nuff said make your own choices.
Package-8/10
Its a reference design, every vendor is carrying it with only stickers to deffrentiate.And sapphire probably got the most fugly of them all.But who cares, it has the basic wires you expect to recieve and a cdkey for dirt2 when its out.
Overall-9/10
After all the complains and disappointment, its still the best card to get in its price range.And it have many thanks to it competitor's failure to bring any directx11 card to the market in time.At 399SGD, it crushes GTX285 in every games and have some much more value added features and future proofing.To know whether this hardware is executed efficently we have to wait for the release of competing DX11 solutions, but till then, AMD have win the war this christmas.
The card
Pretty long card, get alittle messy while installing
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