Date:
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Category:
GPU / Video Cards
Manufacturers:
AMD
Author:
Brent Justice
Editor:
Kyle Bennett

AMD ATI Radeon HD 5970 Video Card Review

Just when you thought there was no way to outdo the 5800 series, AMD gives us the ATI Radeon HD 5970. It has two GPUs on a single PCB and brings with it CrossFireX in a single PCIe x16 slot. We show you if it is worth your hard earned cash.

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Test System Setup

We will be using a Gigabyte EX58-UD5 motherboard, an Intel Core i7 920 Overclocked at 3.6GHz, and 6GB of Corsair TR3X6G1600C8D Dominator DDR3.

While it might be "overkill," we use the Core i7-920 processor at 3.6GHz in an attempt to keep prevent our evaluation from being CPU limited. Obviously, we make every effort to not use CPU limited games for video card evaluations, but the i7-920 at 3.6GHz seems to put many peoples’ minds at ease when it comes to that subject.

Article Image

For comparison, we are using Radeon HD 5850 CrossFireX which adds up to the same price as the Radeon HD 5970. We are also including a Radeon HD 5870 so you can see how much faster the Radeon HD 5970 is.

We are using the latest drivers provided by AMD, which are Catalyst 8.663.1 Beta 4. Also note that Windows 7 Ultimate x64 RTM is being used.

Evaluation Method

We evaluate what each video card configuration can supply us in terms of a playable gaming experience while supplying the best culmination of resolution and "eye candy" graphical settings. We focus on quality and immersion of the gameplay experience rather than how many frames per second the card can get in a canned benchmark or prerecorded timedemo situation that often do not represent real gameplay like you would experience at home. Then we will follow with apples-to-apples testing in with minimum, maximum, and average framerates.