ATI Radeon HD 5970 2GB: The World's Fastest Graphics Card

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Benchmark Results: 3DMark Vantage

Right away we see that the Radeon HD 5970 isn’t going to be as fast as a pair of 5870s in CrossFire. The performance at 3DMark Vantage’s Extreme preset is actually closer to a couple of Radeon HD 5850s, though the 5970 maintains its edge thanks to its 1,600-shader GPUs.

What cannot be denied, though, is that the Radeon HD 5970 strips Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 295 of its “fastest discrete card” title, at least in this synthetic metric. And while a pair of GeForce GTX 285s in SLI breeze past the 5970 at the test’s Performance and High presets, ATI’s solution slips into the lead under Extreme settings.

Chris Angelini
Chris Angelini
Chris Angelini is an Editor Emeritus at Tom's Hardware US. He edits hardware reviews and covers high-profile CPU and GPU launches.
193 Comments Comment from the forums
  • cyberkuberiah
    today's a great day for graphics , as the bar's been raised again !
    Reply
  • IzzyCraft
    bawhaha i was waiting for this
    5970 picture of it in size comparison is priceless to me it's freaking huge card.

    But really how are they going to get 2 chips for 5970 when they can't even get 1 for 5870 :)
    Reply
  • notty22
    Wonder if this would get the same framerates as a 5870 in a AMD 965 system ?
    Reply
  • In your face Gt240 =P
    Reply
  • I'm getting more concerned with Nvidia these days. They keep playing with these low-end cards and haven't made anything all that great in almost a year. Hopefully Fermi doesn't turn into Itanic II.
    Reply
  • amdgamer666
    Sweet, another amazing card to drool at, too bad I can't afford it. Thanks for including CF'ed 5870's, that's what I wanted to compare it to the most. The release seems to coincide with the driver update. Everybody make sure to update your drivers to 9.11 :)
    http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx
    Also, because 9.11 is out, you can also try out Adobe's Flash 10.1 prelease to try out GPU-accelerated flash
    http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/
    Exciting times
    Reply
  • commodore64
    Wooww...4.3 billion transistors, low idle power, it's pricey but this baby has lots of potential :)

    I think ATI driven NVIDIA into a corner this time, i love the competition :)
    Reply
  • christop
    Sweet but can't see spending 600 on a card...
    Reply
  • 7amood
    commodore64i love the competitionThere is no competition yet >_< prices are way up there!!!
    Reply
  • Honis
    Good article!

    I'll wait for a price drop since there are 0 DX 11 games out currently. Hope this forces further drops in the 4870s.
    Reply