ATI 5970 comes out to play, completes ATI's lineup

Wednesday 18th November 2009, 07:37:00 PM, written by Rys

On an otherwise unremarkable Wednesday, ATI let loose the Radeon 5970, possibly the longest consumer-oriented card in history.

Technically, it's what you'd expect based on the prior X2 parts ATI produced: 2 Cypress GPUs placed on the same PCB, linked by a PLX bridge, each with its own 1GB of GDDR5. However, unlike in previous cases, clocks had to be sacrificed in order to achieve a somewhat more palatable 294W TDP: whilst the hardware itself is pretty much what you'd get with a 5870, frequencies are those you'd find on a 5850.

In spite of the X2 suffix being gone, a casualty of the quest for higher marketability, make no mistake, AFR remains the preferred rendering method, thus making the need for more flexible control over Crossfire profiles rather apparent (we're told this will happen sooner rather than later).

You'll hear a bit about the 5970 being an overclocking demon, and about it allowing you to push voltages and clocks...whilst that's very nice, we've not yet gotten the memo about ATI's warranty being extended to cover such adventures as well, and we've also missed the presentation where you could return your board if it didn't achieve full 5870 clocks. As such, and until further notice, we'll consider the 5970 SKU for what it is, rather than what it might be outside of its intended usage scenario.

All that being said, the card's a rather fast little bugger, leaving no questions open about who's the alpha male of the GPU pack currently. Whilst we won't be covering it anytime soon, we have no qualms about recommending Damien's rather great piece over at hardware.fr. If French isn't your strong-point, you may want to check out Rage3D's take, which is also a nice effort. And last, but definitely not least, our friends from TechReport also have a thing or two to say about the twin-headed beast. Expect to see some mouthwatering performance, and perhaps one or two surprises (hint: Stalker: Call of Pripyat).


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