ATI 5870 – Installation of the “Beast”

Monday, February 15, 2010 by Island Dog | Discussion: Personal Computing

As you might have read in my earlier post , I received an ATI 5870 video card and I had to nickname it “the beast”, because this sucker is big, and that’s just how I like it.  I’m upgrading from an ATI 4850, which is another fabulous video card, but I’m certainly not going to deny myself the opportunity to try out this latest one. 

If you are interested in all the fancy numbers, you can view the technical specs here , but here are the main features from the ATI site.

  • Get unrivalled visual quality and intense gaming performance and for today and tomorrow with support for Microsoft® DirectX® 11
  • With ATI Eyefinity technology get the ultimate immersive gaming experience innovative ‘wrap around’ multi-display capabilities
  • Tap into the massive parallel processing power of your GPU with ATI Stream technology and tackle demanding tasks like video transcoding with incredible speed
  • Feel the brute strength of more than 2 teraFLOPS plowing through the most demanding games
  • Experience the speed, responsiveness and performance of ultra-high bandwidth GDDR5 memory
  • ATI CrossFireX™ technology with multi-GPU support offers advanced scalability

ati5780_2 ati5780_3

As you can see in the images above, this is obviously a dual-slot card, meaning it’s going to take up two spots on the back of your PC.  This wasn’t a problem for me as I don’t have any other PCI cards installed, but it’s something you need to take into consideration.  Installation was quick, just make sure both slots are free, snap in the card, and hook in the power.  After making sure it was securely in, it was ready to go.  Next step was booting up and installing the latest Catalyst drivers, which is a straightforward installation and I didn’t run into any issues whatsoever.

ati5780

On the card it has two DVI outputs, an HDMI output, and a DisplayPort output.  In my current setup I have two 22” widescreen monitors hooked up to the DVI ports.  I’m still contemplating on what to do with the HDMI port. Anyways, after the driver installation I had to go into the display properties and easily configure Windows 7 to setup the dual-monitors to display as I want them to which is the main monitor on the right, and the second on the left.

I just installed this a day ago, so I’m going to break it in for a bit, and then follow-up with a review on the performance of the card from a user point of view, not the super technical number crunches you often see. 

First Previous Page 1 of 5 Next Last
TheDarkKnight2008
Reply #1 Monday, February 15, 2010 8:16 PM

Your beast is tiny, sorry to say.  That picture only has it go past the ram sockets...  Stupidly large gtx 260 goes another 2-3 inches...  Beast more in performance (And the 5xxx series rocks) then size.

 

Btw, you should try some eyefinity.  My 5770 plays Fallout 3/left 4 dead 2/tf2/bioshock 2 on highest settings (except no aa) at 3600x1600 on a pentium d 805, I'm betting that 5870 could run crysis at amazing resolution.

Jafo
Reply #2 Monday, February 15, 2010 8:48 PM

ID...google the Res Evil 5 Benchmark 'demo'...and run that.  It'll give a 'real' Gaming performance benchmark...

[Mine gets ave 106fps at 1680x1050 32bit DX10]

OMG_Splitshadow
Reply #3 Monday, February 15, 2010 8:56 PM

106 fps... your eyes can't see any difference much past 50 can they?

TheDarkKnight2008
Reply #4 Monday, February 15, 2010 9:01 PM

Splitshadow
106 fps... your eyes can't see any difference much past 50 can they?

Oh no....

Your eyes can see into the hundreds of fps.  Action wise you can see into 100 fps.  Very fast action (IE, fast cars) it's easy to see up to 100-200 fps. When you take into account flashing lights that flash many times per second, your eyes can see 500 fps or more.

RemV
Reply #5 Monday, February 15, 2010 9:31 PM

Please, PLEASE don't turn this into another of the internet's billion "how many FPS can your eyes discern" topic.... So many disagreements, SO much misinformation...

On topic:

That's a sweet card, my GTX285 still does me proud, but I'm interested in what the next gen can grind out for sure. 

OMG_Splitshadow
Reply #6 Monday, February 15, 2010 9:52 PM

Please, PLEASE don't turn this into another of the internet's billion "how many FPS can your eyes discern" topic.... So many disagreements, SO much misinformation...

I looked it up, and the answer is no. 

Jafo
Reply #7 Monday, February 15, 2010 11:21 PM

I looked it up, and the answer is no.

Correct, however it's 'just' discernible with a 50 hertz television to detect the flicker....where 100hz is 'clean'....though more often than not 60 hz is enough.

Games are not televisions, they are generating images in 'real time' so IF/WHEN there is a particular graphics-intensive render/scene the framerate will lag...and if there is insufficient 'headroom' you will definitely see it as stagger if/when you slow to 25fps or there-abouts.

If you can AVERAGE around 100fps in gameplay there is a very good chance you will not at some stage or other be waiting for the screen to draw while your enemy caps yo ass ....or you understeer into the armco ...

Neil Banfield
Reply #8 Tuesday, February 16, 2010 10:29 AM

You can't do anything with the HDMI port if you are using the DVI ports.

For three monitor mode you would need to use a Display Port monitor as one of the monitors.  I have a HP LP2475w for this purpose.  Ideally all three monitors would have the same native resolution too so you could use them in eyefinity mode.

TobiWahn_Kenobi
Reply #9 Tuesday, February 16, 2010 11:00 AM

Oh god, it is another "how many fps can you see" thread...

 

As for you, ok, so YOU can only see lets say 50 fps.

Me, I can tell the difference between 50 and 80-100 fps, not in the middle of my sight but at the edges where the discrepancy between the changing position of an object becomes visible. In films you have mostly fluid motions (mostly because many people agree 48 fps would be better, let alon 96) because you have the effect of ghost images called motion blur. so movement seems fluid even though it is jumpy. In computer games, you lack the ability to do some serious motion blur, hence many gamers consider the minimum speed at which to play FPS 60 fps. the minimum!

I can't probably tell any difference if the speed is greater 80-100 fps, but that will change when you use a much bigger screen with a much higher resolution (think 4x4 meters and 8192 horizontal pixels)

Why do you think IMAX HD and 3D use 48 fps even though they have motion blur as they are film?

Aesir Rising
Reply #10 Tuesday, February 16, 2010 12:47 PM

Here are some concepts, phrases, and fragments that anyone wanting to speak authoritatively about perception thresholds of the Mk II Human Eyeball really should know about:

* analog

* digital

* individual threshold of perception

* illusion of motion

* Application/game frames per second

* Monitor vertical refresh rate

* CRT monitors

* progressive and interlaced scanlines

* For the US audience (and perhaps a handful of other countries) 120hz AC, 60hz flourescent lighting, 60hz default Windows v-rate for CRTs, and sympathetic waves.

On topic: I bought a 5770 a few weeks ago. I like it.  This really says quite a bit more than otherwise indicated - as it's my first ATI card in bleems - never wanting to use them after a poor time with an under-performing 9250 (or something like that) and giant fat overweight driver configuration utility named Catalyst.  But nVidia can't really compete on features or specs at a given price point right now for new card purchases.

YorgashX
Reply #11 Tuesday, February 16, 2010 12:50 PM
Hey thought we agreed not to make this a "how many FPS you can see" topic. So anyways, nice card, I guess I'll stick to my HD 4870 X2 + HD 4870 trifire for a while longer, still 5xxx rocks nowadays, and will do so more when DX 11 will finally start kicking in more games. Not to mention, i had to do some serious DIY jobs w/ my computer case to let my HD 4870 X2 consume all the space it wants BTW, a ThermalTake Armor case is still not enough if you don t wanna dispose of HDD case.
YorgashX
Reply #12 Tuesday, February 16, 2010 12:59 PM
Well as for my 75 Hz 1600x1200 res 20" monitor I don't mind at all if game's stuck at 75 FPS, so I prefer v-syncing all my games. It gets less annoying this way. Also, with less FPS drop (even if it's a drop from 120 to 75 FPS, it still matters) it's much more fluent for me to play at ~75 FPS all the time.
JSpencer2000
Reply #13 Tuesday, February 16, 2010 1:06 PM

LOL. My Nvidia GT 275 is about 10-12 inches long. I had to move a hard drive to get that mofo in.

mickeko
Reply #14 Tuesday, February 16, 2010 2:10 PM

Ewww, stock cooling. I hope it's better than the last dozen or so generations... I prefer things that doesn't soulnd like a smaller jet.

TobiWahn_Kenobi
Oh god, it is another "how many fps can you see" thread...

 

As for you, ok, so YOU can only see lets say 50 fps.

Me, I can tell the difference between 50 and 80-100 fps, not in the middle of my sight but at the edges where the discrepancy between the changing position of an object becomes visible. In films you have mostly fluid motions (mostly because many people agree 48 fps would be better, let alon 96) because you have the effect of ghost images called motion blur. so movement seems fluid even though it is jumpy. In computer games, you lack the ability to do some serious motion blur, hence many gamers consider the minimum speed at which to play FPS 60 fps. the minimum!

This only applies if your monitor updates at more than 60Hz though, which is unlikely with a LCD or LED monitor. As far as I know even 100Hz+ TVs will still update a computer signal at 60Hz. This means that if you can tell the difference between 60 and 100FPS, it's definetely not because you see "more" frames in the game.

Fuzzy Logic
Reply #15 Tuesday, February 16, 2010 2:51 PM

ID...google the Res Evil 5 Benchmark 'demo'...and run that. It'll give a 'real' Gaming performance benchmark...

[Mine gets ave 106fps at 1680x1050 32bit DX10]

187.6 @ 1600x900

Fuzzy Logic
Reply #16 Tuesday, February 16, 2010 3:44 PM

Just added my overclock - I usually have that off cause the pc acts like a mini fan heater... - i7 920 @ 3.67Ghz, mem @ 1451Ghz with 2 x 4890s in crossfire, and...

... 228.4 fps

Adequate

TheDarkKnight2008
Reply #17 Tuesday, February 16, 2010 5:57 PM

This lovely topic takes 'e-peen' to a whole new level...

And with that said... my gpu is longer then all of yours!

JSpencer2000
Reply #18 Tuesday, February 16, 2010 8:12 PM

I on the other hand dont mind if i get a steady 30fps. As long as its steady. Im not a user who cares if I get 100 more fps then what my eye can ever see. lol

Jafo
Reply #19 Tuesday, February 16, 2010 9:03 PM

I on the other hand dont mind if i get a steady 30fps. As long as its steady.

That 106fps average had a minimum around 70fps so there was/is sufficient headroom to make staggering 'unlikely'.

Same benchmark test on  supposedly one of the fastest/best AGP cards released showed an average of 21.9fps at 1280x1024 32bit DX10 with a minimum around 10fps maybe. [both resolutions were native to their respective monitors].

DethAdder
Reply #20 Tuesday, February 16, 2010 9:27 PM

I was running Bioshock with FRAPS up, DX10 everything max at my monitor's native 1440x900 clamped at 60FPS due to v-sync. At one point it dropped down to the mid 40s for a few seconds and I would of never knew if it I hadn't seen the counter. Maybe my eyes are just getting old, but unless I get a huge dip in something it just doesn't seem noticable. Think I'd rather have a game using enough of my stuff to keep a smooth 45-60FPS rather than have a whole bunch of unused potential I paid for just sitting there. Of course as time goes on that potential will get used for those cards that can do 100+FPS now, but they will also be a lot cheaper by then .

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