So whose buying an Ati 5xxx gfx card when they are out :).

There are quite a few differences between the 4 and 5 series cards and as such the drivers will be different as well. Simply saying everything has been doubled is a very simple way of looking at it and isn't strictly true either as many of the features have had a redesign since the 4 series.

[boroboi]

The only major change in architecture comes in the form of DX11 support and the features inherantly involved with it.

As i stated, the shader clusters have been reconfigured and have been optimised, but architecturally, the same hardware is being used in the 5xxx series except it's fabbed at 40nm.

Saying everything has been doubled may be simple, but it's what's actually happened.

Naturally there are going to be changes as they improve the card and it's features, but as a new architecture, it certainly isn't one.

Aside from the amount of "working" shaders increased in the clusters, the main power comes because a) Shaders have been increased by 100% (in theory you'll get more than that because they have more shaders in the cluster able to do the simple tasks b) TMUs doubled from 40 to 80 and c) ROPs doubled from 16 to 32

The hardware is already supported in the drivers, eyefinity has been supported now for a while in their drivers, the only things they'll really need to work on are the implementations of DX11 and a few tweaks and optimisations.

We shouldn't be seeing issues due to driver immaturity. Nvidia on the other hand, that is a new architecture for the most part and will have all of the problems that come with it.

[adzii_nufc]

Atm Using The GTX 295 and I see no Reason For Most of you To Upgrade?

I run Every Game Perfectly But ran Nearly Every game fine on My old comp

New comp 8GB DDR3
AMD PHENOM II X3
Nvidia GTX 295

Old comp

4GB DDR2
AMD Phenom I x3 8550
Nvidia 8800

Dont fix something that aint broken

But hell Buy it for bragging rights

[punky]

There are out now. Here's a review:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3643

£300 on the shelf I promised myself I would not pay that kinda price again and there is no way I will. Give it time and they will drop to £200 hopefull maybe in 6 to 12 months but they have no competition at present

[boroboi]

It's well worth the £300 price tag.

It out performs Nvidia's best single GPU offering and is also cheaper than it.

Bang for buck, which is what AMD/ATI is all about.

[damien c]

Originally Posted by boroboi

It's well worth the £300 price tag.

It out performs Nvidia's best single GPU offering and is also cheaper than it.

Bang for buck, which is what AMD/ATI is all about.

sorry but it is not cheaper £300 compared to anything from £250+ for a gtx285 and £300 for a gtx295 which outperforms the, 5870 but only just but that is a dual gpu card.

it is good and is worth the money now but i won't be buying one as my gtx280 is still performing well enough for me, will see what happens next year.

my next upgrade is to core i7 then next year graphics, but by then these will be cheaper and the next model will be out by then from both nvidia and ati so i can, then choose which performs best problem is only 2 cards sli'd is beating this on it's own so nvidia need to pull the thumbs out.

I dunno what to think on initial looks at benchmarks I thought it looked top but they crossfired it. As a single GPU it needs to be under £200 quid if you ask me. As damien says the 295 GTX is competition at this price break

Perhaps with better drivers maybe we will see

damien the only way you will want sli/cf is if you buy a new TV . The res the one you have now uses will not challenge a single card

[The Hitman]

Originally Posted by boroboi

It's well worth the £300 price tag.

It out performs Nvidia's best single GPU offering and is also cheaper than it.

Bang for buck, which is what AMD/ATI is all about.

Buy me 2 and I will call you friend

Is it a complete 295 killer no it isn't and only the most optimistic expected it to be. That said it runs the 295 close in a few games and does manage to beat it in some so it is by no means a slouch on performance. Also there will be some performance improvement with later driver releases and overclcoking these might squeeze out that advantge the 295 does have over it at stock. But thats forgetting dx11 support not massively important now but who knows in a few months, lower power consumption and should be a little less heat as well.

I also think £300 is overpriced with £250 being more realistic and it will drop in time how fast is the issue too long and the refresh will be coming and people will hold out for that. If you have one of the top end cards of the last generation i don't think there is enough here to make anyone upgrade straight away. All in all it's a good card offering the best single gpu performance by a margin and is only going to get better so i think ati have hit the mark they were aiming for.

I will still wait for the x2 to come out as thats when i am getting my card but this looks ok for now if your on something lower then a 4890 or gtx280.

well DX10 games hardly look any better than if you play the same game in DX9. So I am doubting DX11 will make a huge difference but I hope to be proved wrong

[Druchii]

Originally Posted by zing

well DX10 games hardly look any better than if you play the same game in DX9. So I am doubting DX11 will make a huge difference but I hope to be proved wrong

Hardware Tesselation
Better HDR Texture Compression

And so on...
It should be good, and this year alone 5 games will be supporting it, including the new STALKER.

External interference with the dx10 standard did massive damage to that and turned developers off it also the lousy (and mostly undeserved) reputation of vista played it's part as well. I think dx11 will be far more widely adopted by developers and of course win7 is being warmly recieved so completely different to dx10 at this point. That said all dx api's are usually the same story so much potential so short in the practical execution but iam hoping 11 will be something good god knows we need something on the pc to get some decent games out on it rather then ports from console.

Originally Posted by Druchii

Hardware Tesselation
Better HDR Texture Compression

And so on...
It should be good, and this year alone 5 games will be supporting it, including the new STALKER.

didnt like the last STALKER lol

With you on that Zing i didn't think that much to it either hopefully the next one will be a big improvement.