ATI Radeon HD 5870 review

AMD's latest pixel pounder is the fastest single GPU graphics card on the planet

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ATI Radeon 5870 review
The ATI Radeon 5870 is now the fastest graphics card on the planet

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ATI radeon hd 5870 review

Beyond infinity

  • AMD is bigging up the new 5800's display-driving prowess. An upcoming version of the card known as the Eyefinity Edition will be able to drive no less than six screens thanks to a sextet of DisplayPort sockets. A nice trick, but really who is going to care?

Less is more

  • Despite the monster performance of the new 5870, AMD remains committed to delivering an ultra-high end board powered by a pair of 5800 series GPUs. It will no doubt be a performance powerhouse. But few will see the need for anything more than a single 5870.

Size matters

  • The new 5870 is a big old beast, longer than even the GeForce GTX 285. And yet it isn't a major gas guzzler. AMD says it has worked particularly hard on reducing idle power consumption, an effort that is not fully reflected in our power-at-the-wall testing.

More to come

  • The one thing that remains untested is ironically the 5870's defining feature, its support for DirectX 11. Despite the recent release of the final shipping version of Windows 7 and therefore the API itself, as yet there are no DX 11-compatible drivers or applications.
Jeremy Laird
Contributor

Technology and cars. Increasingly the twain shall meet. Which is handy, because Jeremy (Twitter) is addicted to both. Long-time tech journalist, former editor of iCar magazine and incumbent car guru for T3 magazine, Jeremy reckons in-car technology is about to go thermonuclear. No, not exploding cars. That would be silly. And dangerous. But rather an explosive period of unprecedented innovation. Enjoy the ride.