ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5000 is DX11 on the Go

By Marcus Yam
published

Are you ready for DX11 on the road?

AMD was first to the market with its DirectX 11 desktop part, and now it's also the first to the mobile space with the introduction of the ATI Mobility Radeon 5000 series: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5800, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5700, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5600 and ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5400.

This top-to-bottom family of notebook graphics will also bring ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology to the portable space.

As Loyd Case points out in his coverage of CES, AMD’s product numbering scheme is a little confusing as the Mobility Radeon HD 5870 has half the shader units of a desktop-class Radeon HD 5870. AMD insists that "5800" means it's the fastest of its class, not that the name itself with it carries any quantifiable information.

Swipe to scroll horizontally
Header Cell - Column 0 Mobility Radeon HD 5800-SeriesMobility Radeon HD 5700-SeriesMobility Radeon HD 5400-Series
Transistor Count1.04 billion626 million242 million
Stream Processors80040080
Video Memory1GB GDDR5/3 (or DDR3)512MB / 1GB GDDR5/3 (or DDR3)256MB/512MB/1GB GDDR5/3 (or DDR3/2)

Earlier this week, AMD announced that it extended its Vision branding initiative to businesses with the "Vision Pro Technology" banner, which aims to help businesses "increase productivity and gain competitive advantage by enabling visually stunning communications, marketing and sales materials."

More on CES 2010.

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
28 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Holy Smokes, Batman!

    I can just see adding this to my laptop if it were possible. :D
    Reply
  • if this doesnt solidify ATI as the leader i dont know what will. and as for nvidia it will take them another year or so just to get fermi small enough to even think about going into the mobile space so you can count them out of the mobile market for that time.
    Reply
  • gamerjames
    Wow, I remember a few years back thinking ATI was done for, what a comeback ;D

    ATI leading the way
    Reply
  • Pei-chen
    njkid3if this doesnt solidify ATI as the leader i dont know what will. and as for nvidia it will take them another year or so just to get fermi small enough to even think about going into the mobile space so you can count them out of the mobile market for that time.This isn't 5870 in a notebook, this is a whole new chip named Mobility Radeon HD 5870.

    Anandtech has a more coverage of this release.
    Reply
  • icepick314
    Earlier this week, AMD announced that it extended its Vision branding initiative to businesses with the "Vision Pro Technology" banner, which aims to help businesses "increase productivity and gain competitive advantage by enabling visually stunning communications, marketing and sales materials."

    just how much graphics power do you need to show Powerpoint slides?
    Reply
  • B-Unit
    njkid3if this doesnt solidify ATI as the leader i dont know what will. and as for nvidia it will take them another year or so just to get fermi small enough to even think about going into the mobile space so you can count them out of the mobile market for that time.A year? You wish. They still haven't gotten GT200 that small, the mobility GTX280 is based on G92b (AKA 8800GT/GTS, 9800GT/GTX, GTX250)
    Reply
  • -Fran-
    icepick314Earlier this week, AMD announced that it extended its Vision branding initiative to businesses with the "Vision Pro Technology" banner, which aims to help businesses "increase productivity and gain competitive advantage by enabling visually stunning communications, marketing and sales materials."just how much graphics power do you need to show Powerpoint slides?
    Does your slide has h264 video or a 3D model in it? Just kiddin', lol.

    I'd like to have a 5670 just to play decently WoW/MW2/GRID/DiRT2 at an affordable price on the go. I hate to travel long distances watching my breath taking PP's in it (lol). Did I mention I carry 2 truck batteries on my briefcase just in case? lol

    Cheers!
    Reply
  • shotgunpadre
    yes! yes! a million times yes! I hope they get released unlike asus k51 with hd 4860. 1 billion transistors mean half the energy consumed and half the heat released so it's not very bad.
    Reply
  • fulle
    The specs on the mobility 5870 are basically on par with a desktop 4870... which, in a chip that fits into a laptop thermal and power envelope, is freaking amazing.
    -The first rumored benchmarks on this pretty baby supposedly put performance at 5770 level in 3DMark scores, which makes sense, because the 4870 performs about the same in 3DMark benchmarks. Overall, this is more like a 4870 in specifications, with the 5770 powersaving features and improved manufacturing process (40m). So, if this was a desktop part, it would be slightly superior to either a 4870 or 5770. For a laptop part, this should be easily superior to the 55nm G92 based Nvidia 280m.

    With most gaming titles being multi-platform (read console ports), it should be possible to have a perfect, smooth gaming experience on a laptop now. Of course, if you have about $1700, that is.
    -Its good to see Asus in the mix tho, they seem to price their laptops fairly, even if they have high end parts like this. (If Alienware had the first mobility 5870 in a laptop, they'd charge 3k).
    Reply
  • fulle
    *Wish there was an edit.

    -God damn it. I looked at Anandtech's spec sheet, and its got a bus width of 128-bit. I suppose that makes some of the things I said above, kinda... silly. *sigh*
    Reply