Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 1GB GDDR5 Review

Conclusion

There is a lot that should be said in this conclusion so I’ll get right down to it. The Sapphire HD 5870 is simply one of the most powerful cards available on the market. Is it the undisputed king of the GPU world? No, but it doesn’t have to rely on the somewhat shaky ground of a dual GPU platform to get the job done and as such the HD 5870 makes itself that much more appealing. Between the single cards of the last generation to this new bruiser, we are seeing a jump in performance the likes of which hasn't been seen since the dawn of the G80.

Using the HD 5870 to play DX9 games on a 22” monitor is like using a flak cannon to hunt down an offending mosquito or running a Ducati in a unicycle race; basically, it’s overkill to an extreme degree. This card begs to be used in current DX10 and upcoming DX11 games at high resolutions and IQ settings where it’s rendering prowess can be put to good use. Using it for anything less is a waste of epic proportions. Indeed, this provides a great lead-in for my next point: the true potential of the HD 5870 hasn’t even been realized yet. The fact of the matter is that most poor performance scenarios for today’s GPUs are the fault of poorly coded games rather than a lack of processing horsepower. In addition, the drivers for the HD 5870 are still in their infancy as evidenced by its performance in some areas versus the similarly-spec’d HD 4870X2. What will DX11 bring? We’ll just have to see. More importantly, will the potential of this card ever be truly utilized in a gaming market that is increasingly leaning towards consoles that are three generations behind the time.

Indeed the benefit of a single GPU card over one with two GPUs became abundantly apparent through some parts of this review. If anything, the HD 5870 really showed the inherent difficulties with cards like the GTX 295 and HD 4870X2 which both live and die by their drivers rather than raw horsepower. While both dual chip cards outperformed the HD 5870 on a regular basis, they couldn't shake their limitations in order to deliver a killing blow. If anything, our results should also make it apparent that only reporting average framerates means dick all when it comes to comparing GPUs. A gamer could have the a totally smooth gameplay experience until that one intense scene where performance drops like a stone. We've all had it happen to us and those situations continue to be the bane of the dual GPU cards' existence.

Unfortunately, there are still many of unanswered questions about the HD 5870 and a lot of them hinge on the fact that the very applications it has been designed for haven’t even been released yet. This is technically a card built for the DX11 environment with aspirations of OpenCL greatness but we have no idea how it performs in either. For all you and I know, DX11 titles like Aliens vs. Predator and DiRT 2 are resource-hogging leeches that will bring the HD 5870 to its knees.

We may as well continue our love song by saying that the HD 5870’s performance per watt is just deranged, off the wall and plain stunning to behold. It needs less power than a GTX 285 but it blows the Nvidia card away when it comes to pure gaming performance.

As we said, being the first to market with a DX11 card without any DX11 games is a huge risk both for ATI and for early adopters who have no idea how the products they buy will perform in future applications. That being said, based on what we have see, there shouldn’t be any issue at all. These next few months of ATI domination on the DX11 front are critical for them to get a foothold in what could be a very lucrative market if the API the 5000-series is geared towards gains popularity.

To sum this up on a more personal note, I have to pay the HD 5870 the highest compliment I can bestow on any piece of hardware by saying that I wouldn’t hesitate to use it in my own system. It truly is a technological marvel and we can only hope at this point that AMD / ATI carries through with their promise to bring OpenCL applications to their GPUs. If they do, Nvidia will be facing an uphill climb before their answer to the 5000-series even sees the light of day.



Pros:

- Epic performance for a single GPU card
- Efficient
- Very quiet
- Good connector options
- Included games within the Sapphire Accessory package


Cons:

- Have to wait for DX11 games to see its true potential
- Widespread adoption of OpenCL won’t be quick