360° Coverage XFX Radeon HD 5870 Video Card Review
Filed under: Reviews | Computer Hardware
XFX Radeon HD 5870 Video Card Review
Dec 7 2009, 12:00am CST | by Shane McGlaun
Today I am going to check out the ATI HD 5870 video card. This card is one of the highest performing ATI video cards in the line and offers gamers lots of performance. If you have a video card on your holiday wish list, the XFX Radeon HD 5870 may be exactly what you need.
Benchmarks
Features & Specifications
The XFX Radeon HD 5870 has a core clock of 850MHz and a memory clock of 4800 MHz. The car has 1GB of GDDR5 memory and supports DirectX 11. The video card requires two 6-pin power cable connectors. The card was built on the 40nm process and support ATI CrossfireX and plugs into a PCI Express 2.0 slot.
Test Machine
I will be testing the XFX Radeon HD 5870 in my ATI test system with the following specifications:
- CPU- Phenom II X4 965 BE
- Mainboard- Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P
- Memory- 4GB RAM
- HDD- 1TB
Benchmarks
To test the XFX Radeon HD 5870 I will be using 3DMark06, 3DMark Vantage, Crysis, and Call of Duty: World at War. The first test up is 3DMark06.3DMark
The XFX Radeon HD 5870 scored 18925 3DMarks on the benchmark and has a SM2 score of 7301, a HDR score of 9702, and a CPU score of 4665. On 3DMark Vantage, the total score for the video card was P14023. The XFX ATI 4770 I reviewed last scored P11513 for comparison.Crysis
The first gaming benchmark up was Crysis. I ran the game at 1920 x 1200 with 2x AA and all settings on medium, Fraps recorded the following frame rate data while playing from the initial beach insertion to the first encounter with enemy soldiers on the beach. For comparison, the HD 4770 I reviewed had an average frame rate of 46 at the same settings.- Min- 56 fps
- Avg- 81 fps
- Max- 114 fps
Call of Duty: World at War
The last gaming benchmark for the XFX Radeon HD 5870 was World at War. I ran the game at 1920 x 1200 with 4x AA and all setting on except dual video cards and Vsync. Fraps recorded the following frame rate information:- Min- 71 fps
- Avg- 88.79 fps
- Max- 93 fps
Final Thoughts
The XFX Radeon HD 5870 video card performed very well in my testing. I was very impressed with the video card and the XFX Radeon HD 5870 will give similar offerings form NVIDIA a run for their money for sure. The card is rather loud when operating at full capacity, but extra noise is a small price to pay for the performance the video card delivers. The card does require two slots and a pair of 6-pin power connectors. It was also a tight fit inside the mid-tower chassis that my video card uses because of its physical length. If your case is not very deep, the XFX Radeon HD 5870 may not fit. The card comes bundled with a coupon for the free Dirt2 racing game.Verdict
Conclusion
Pros
- Great performance
- Nice bundle
Cons
- Card maybe too long for some cases
- Loud
Verdict
The XFX Radeon HD 5870 offers loads of performance and works very well for gamers that like high-performance video cards. The XFX Radeon HD 5870 is a fantastic video card with the best performance I have tested.9.010Sponsored Update
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Shane McGlaun
Leading our review center, Shane McGlaun (Google) knows technology inside out. His
extensive experience in testing computer hardware and consumer
electronics enable him to effectively qualify new products and trends. If you want us review your product, please contact Shane.
Shane can be contacted directly at shane@i4u.com.
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