AMD's Dual GPU Radeon HD 5970 is Fastest Ever

By Marcus Yam
published

Not bad if you have $600 sitting around.

You may have already noticed on our front page that there's a new king of the graphics card industry tested today.

AMD today announced the ATI Radeon HD 5970, which it calls the fastest card ever created thanks to pairing two HD 5870 GPUs together. After we put it to the test, we're going to agree with this claim (until the next best thing comes along, of course).

The ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics card delivers nearly 5 TeraFLOPS of compute power. Grab two of them together in CrossFireX and you're looking at nearly 10 TeraFLOPS.

"With the arrival of the ATI Radeon HD 5970, the fastest graphics card in the world, we’ve cemented AMD as the unquestioned graphics leader," said Matt Skynner, vice president and general manager, AMD Graphics Group. "With the holiday shopping season right around the corner, the new card, coupled with the awesome power of ATI Eyefinity technology, is the ultimate setup for serious gamers."

For the full story, we're going to hand you over to Chris Angelini's full review complete with benchmarks.

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.
55 Comments Comment from the forums
  • jerther
    It is monstrous!!!
    Reply
  • ecnovaec
    ughh I love that they make such an awesome card, but HATE HATE HATE catalyst software!!!
    Reply
  • ewood
    They named it the 5970 and it has underclocked 5870 gpus. Think when/if they go through a die shrink or get the power a little more under control they will release a 5990 with GPUs that are under clocked? eh eh?
    Reply
  • MrHectorEric
    You're going to need a lot of room in your case to fit this thing in. I doubt it'll fit in any mid tower case. Also you better be running more than one monitor, otherwise there will be power you won't be able to use.
    Reply
  • pbrigido
    I would love to get one, but man do I hate paying the price for new tech.
    Reply
  • megamanx00
    Seems like a great idea, so long as you can fit two foot long GPUs into your case and have a good 1200W PSU. I'll be happy if I can get a 5850.
    Reply
  • jn77
    I have a full tower case and want 2 of these with display port connectors for my 6x 24inch dell lcd's, but at $1200 for 2 of them... I can wait, I think $650 for 2 of them and I might bite.
    Reply
  • It's so long that you need to saw a hole in the back of your computer case for it to fit! :D
    Reply
  • logitic
    I love the sleeper GPU when system is idle or not gaming. ATI is really showing how green they are this time around. To bad I already own two Vapor-X 5870's. Hehe
    Reply
  • mikepaul
    I hope they start making motherboards that ANTICIPATE 2-slot video cards. My ASUS MB has one 4x PCiE that is now covered by half of my GTX285. Maybe the next computer I buy/build will have something less unique to cover up with one of these...
    Reply