DailyTech - DirectX 11 Goes Mainstream with ATI Radeon HD 5770 & 5750 Launch

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Hardware DirectX 11 Goes Mainstream with ATI Radeon HD 5770 & 5750 Launch
Jansen Ng (Blog) - October 13, 2009 10:57 AM

29 comment(s) - last by 7Enigma.. on Oct 15 at 7:09 AM

Radeon HD 5770

Radeon HD 5750

ATI targets Windows 7 upgrades and new builds

ATI launched the first DirectX 11 parts less than a month ago. The Radeon HD 5870 and 5850 have been very popular due to their outstanding performance and future-proofed features. However, at MSRPs of $379 and $259 respectively, these cards occupy price points that many consumers are unwilling or unable to afford.

With the Windows 7 launch a little over a week away, ATI is preparing to serve the mainstream performance market by introducing two new cards. The Radeon HD 5770 and the Radeon HD 5750 with 1GB of GDDR5 will be introduced at $159 and $129 respectively. A 512MB Radeon HD 5750 version will also be introduced at $109. All cards in the Radeon 5700 series will have two DVI outputs, a HDMI output, and a DisplayPort output. Up to three monitors can be driven at the same time using a single card.

The Radeon 5700 series cards use a brand new 40nm chip previously codenamed Juniper. It consists of 1.04 billion transistors on a 166mm² die, much smaller than the 334mm² of the RV870 Evergreen chip used in the Radeon 5800 series. This enables ATI to hit the major pricing sweet spots in the $100-$200 range.

Currently the Radeon HD 4890, 4870, 4850, and 4770 video cards are major sellers in that range. Based on nomenclature alone, a consumer might believe that the Radeon 5770 directly replaces the Radeon 4770. However, the Radeon 5770 is similar enough in performance to the Radeon 4850 that it will start to replace it as production ramps up. Our sources have indicated that there are tens of thousands of 5700 series video cards hitting retailers today, with many more already enroute across the Pacific Ocean.

The Radeon 4770 was the first card sold by ATI that used chips produced on the 40nm process. It will move into a lower price point, while the Radeon 4850 which uses GDDR3 memory will slowly disappear. The Radeon 4890 and 4870 will stick around for a while, but don't expect them to last beyond the first quarter of 2010 as ATI will continue transitioning production away from the 55nm node. All 5800 and 5700 series video cards use chips built using a 40nm process in Taiwan at TSMC.

ATI also plans to release another high end enthusiast graphics card within the next month. Codenamed Hemlock, it is expected to be released as the Radeon HD 5870 X2. New chips targeted for the early part of 2010 will bring DirectX 11 to the value and integrated markets. The Redwood chip is expected to debut as the Radeon HD 5600 series, while Cedar will be targeted mostly at OEMs.

With many consumers looking for a video card upgrade or building a new system thanks to the launch of Windows 7, ATI is in a very strong position with next generation hardware. NVIDIA is preparing their response, but we will have to wait for now.

	Radeon HD 5870	Radeon HD 5850	Radeon HD 5770	Radeon HD 5750	Radeon HD 4870	Radeon HD 4850
Stream Processors	1600	1440	800	720	800	800
Texture Units	80	72	40	36	40	40
ROPs	32	32	16	16	16	16
Core Clock	850MHz	725MHz	850MHz	700MHz	750MHz	625MHz
Memory Clock	1.2GHz (4.8GHz data rate) GDDR5	1GHz (4GHz data rate) GDDR5	1.2GHz (4.8GHz data rate) GDDR5	1.15GHz (4.6GHz data rate) GDDR5	900MHz (3600MHz data rate) GDDR5	993MHz (1986MHz data rate) GDDR3
Memory Bus Width	256-bit	256-bit	128-bit	128-bit	256-bit	256-bit
Frame Buffer	1GB	1GB	1GB	1GB / 512MB	1GB	1GB / 512MB
Transistor Count	2.15B	2.15B	1.04B	1.04B	956M	956M
TDP	188W	151W	108W	86W	150W	110W
Price Point	$379	$259	$159	$129 / $109	$140-$160	$109-$129

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The 57XXs are more or less 48XXs with DX11

By Amiga500 on 10/13/2009 11:09:15 AM , Rating: 5

They do not move things on as much as I personally had hoped. Perhaps in hindsight, ATi might have wished they had put a 192-bit wide memory bus on the Juniper chips.

It gives Nvidia some room to breath (albeit very, very little). Perhaps, that is is not altogether a bad thing - we need AMD to shore up their finances, but we also need Nvidia to be able to provide continued competition on the GPU front - I've little faith in Intel's LRB at this point.

RE: The 57XXs are more or less 48XXs with DX11

By StevoLincolnite on 10/13/2009 11:14:53 AM , Rating: 2

quote:
ATi might have wished they had put a 192-bit wide memory bus on the Juniper chips.

ATI 5xxx cards don't seem to be memory bandwidth limited.

Plus by having a 192bit memory bus, it would make the card more expensive to manufacture, thus if nVidia -did- come out with a massively more competitive card to combat them, ATI wouldn't be able to drop the price to insane lows.

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RE: The 57XXs are more or less 48XXs with DX11

By sc3252 on 10/13/2009 11:36:08 AM , Rating: 5

I would agree that the 5770 isn't memory bandwidth limited if it was as fast as a 4890, but it isn't. In fact its a little slower than a 4870 in quite a few games. Hopefully we are just seeing driver bugs right now, since the 5770 line doesn't look that appealing unless you need a low power card.

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RE: The 57XXs are more or less 48XXs with DX11

By Mitch101 on 10/13/2009 11:56:18 AM , Rating: 3

What I took away from it is that the 5770 is an Ideal card if you have a 22" monitor with 1680x1050 screen resolution.

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RE: The 57XXs are more or less 48XXs with DX11

By Danish1 on 10/14/2009 3:15:32 AM , Rating: 5

It's no surprise 5770 is slower/equal to the 4870, next-gen discount cards aren't made to beat the previous top of the line.

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RE: The 57XXs are more or less 48XXs with DX11

By Belard on 10/14/2009 4:03:28 AM , Rating: 3

Did you notice in the Anandtech review how in FarCry 2, the 5770 is a tad above/around the 4870.

So driver issues can improve over time. It you compare the 4670 when it first came out and how it is today, its quite different. It used to be between the 3850/3870 (closer to 3870), but now its usually a bit faster than the 3870.

Or the GeFore 8600GT. When that $220 card first came out, it was barely faster than the $140(by then) 7600GT (but 8600GT was DX10)... the 8600series is kind of like todays 5700s... ho-hum. But the 8600s were expensive. Fast forward 2 years and the 8600GT is a much faster card now, faster than the GF7900 usually. But it still gets stomped by the 4670.

The 5770 is about on par with the 4870... but if it improves by 10% in the next few months while lowering in price down to $125, it'll be an excellent value. the 5750 is almost $100.. when it gets around $80, it'll be sweet.

I'm betting we'll see a $200 (or $50 less) 5830 card to fill in the gap... and make use of failed 5850/70 GPUs. :)

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RE: The 57XXs are more or less 48XXs with DX11

By Mitch101 on 10/14/2009 8:59:58 AM , Rating: 3

Im a strong believer that video cards should be reviewed again 6 months after release because the drivers mature and bugs are worked out. So I always check the review date of the article. Otherwise you might be basing your purchase on the initial release drivers not hardened drivers that have had issues corrected in the field.

I believe ATI found a better way of doing some texture compression one year that lead to a nice speed increase. As well NVIDIA likes to hold back a few percent performance in drivers until ATI is about to release a new video card so that can close the gaps a little more.

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RE: The 57XXs are more or less 48XXs with DX11

By 7Enigma on 10/13/2009 11:51:25 AM , Rating: 5

Wrong. 58XX cards are not, 57XX cards clearly are if you look at the data.

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RE: The 57XXs are more or less 48XXs with DX11

By StevoLincolnite on 10/13/09, Rating: 0

RE: The 57XXs are more or less 48XXs with DX11

By 7Enigma on 10/15/2009 7:09:02 AM , Rating: 2

Already using the same memory as the 58XX ones (this is actually surprising as Anandtech's review mentions) so you're not going to see a bump there (typically mainstream cards get slower DDR2/3 chips so you could see a big increase...but not in this case). If you look closely you'll see that the speeds the stock cards are running are actually GREATER than the 5850 (1.2 and 1.15GHz vs. 1.0GHz for the 5850). This tells me that they knew performance was really hurt by the halving of bus width and so they needed to put some really nice ram to bandaid the situation. Really, when was the last time a mainstream card had the same ram as the flagship card? I think it could actually be a first!

Secondly, they already have 512 meg and 1 gig on the cards, what other configurations do you feel will increase the performance? They are BANDWIDTH limited, NOT memory-size limited.

And this brings us to the reason why your initial post was so wrong....there is no way a Sapphire or HIS can increase the memory bus width, sure they can try to OC the memory to overcome the bottleneck, but we don't know yet how much room there really is for improvement, and we all know once you start to OC the power consumption goes up very quickly.

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RE: The 57XXs are more or less 48XXs with DX11

By jonmcc33 on 10/13/2009 11:15:52 AM , Rating: 2

nVIDIA is already suffering. The longer they delay their DX11 solution the more people will switch to Radeon HE 5800 series graphics cards.

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RE: The 57XXs are more or less 48XXs with DX11

By sc3252 on 10/13/2009 11:39:22 AM , Rating: 4

I think the bigger issue that may happen for Nvidia is developers targeting ATI hardware now that it is in the open instead of Nvidia hardware.

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RE: The 57XXs are more or less 48XXs with DX11

By jonmcc33 on 10/13/2009 11:49:18 AM , Rating: 2

Are you referring to PhysX? That would be true.

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RE: The 57XXs are more or less 48XXs with DX11

By sc3252 on 10/13/2009 11:56:05 AM , Rating: 2

I was thinking more how game engines are made. Nvidia had a big jump on ATI when the 2900xt finally came out, if ATI has the same type of lead it might mean a reversal where more game engines are programed for ATI since they will probably control more market share in DirectX 11 than Nvidia. Of course I always figured they would have a big lead in games because of the Xbox 360, but that didn't happen...

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RE: The 57XXs are more or less 48XXs with DX11

By Amiga500 on 10/13/2009 11:58:44 AM , Rating: 2

Indeed. Good point.

It is quite well known that ATi's approach requires a much more optimised software engine interface, whereas Nvidia's is more general, and able to take any engine and perform reasonably well with it.

An analogy would be ATi's Ferrari compared to Nvidia's Audi R8... the Ferrari (ATi) is quicker, if you get it set-up right and drive well, whereas the R8 (Nvidia) is far more accessible, but doesn't quite have the ultimate performance potential.

If ATi can get the developers on-side, then we would see ATi's regularly outperform the GeForce line in a manner similar to DiRT and DiRT 2.

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RE: The 57XXs are more or less 48XXs with DX11

By Sazar on 10/13/2009 3:00:58 PM , Rating: 2

I think the Skyline GT-R would have been a better v/s for the Ferrari :D

But fair point.

Still, considering that AMD's solution is running pretty much everything pretty well, it doesn't seem to be as much of a finesse solution as you make it out to be. It appears to be able to run all games pretty well.

There are some areas where it trips up, but on the whole, the performance is pretty good, top to bottom, right now with AMD, especially when you factor in the price.

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RE: The 57XXs are more or less 48XXs with DX11

By someguy123 on 10/14/2009 12:16:39 AM , Rating: 3

I don't think the issue is with nvidia having a more streamlined API, i think the issue is that nvidia was willing to work closer with devs, give more money or parts, and had more marketshare. The difference in baseline performance before optimizing for whatever company's API should be negligible.

the person above you talking about ATi going "open" is that they're creating their physics engine on an open platform (openCL). since this platform is royalty free, developers are likely to have better support for ATi products.

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RE: The 57XXs are more or less 48XXs with DX11

By someguy123 on 10/14/2009 12:19:33 AM , Rating: 2

edit: should be supporting an open platform, not just creating a physics engine.

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RE: The 57XXs are more or less 48XXs with DX11

By Belard on 10/14/2009 4:24:05 AM , Rating: 2

Not just that, but Nvidia is ending their GTX 2xx line before the GTX300 comes out. They can't compete against the 5850/70 cards. The GTX 2xx are already sold for far less than planned (thank the 4800s).

Even the 5800GPUs are still smaller than the GTX2xx, yet much faster. How many people are going to pick a slower $300~350 card when the $250 5850 smokes it?

But it should mean that Nvidia once Nvidia is OUT of the chipset business, that we'll see SLi open up for ALL intel and AMD chipsets... for free.

After all, better to SELL two GPUs than 1 or none at all.

So... the GT220 may very well be the LAST DX10 card to come out. The G92 will most likely continue (9800/9600) for quite a while until the GT3 series comes out.

My have the tables turned... AMD didn't bother to compete with nVidia on the high end with the 2900 and 3800s.

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RE: The 57XXs are more or less 48XXs with DX11

By omnicronx on 10/13/09, Rating: 0

RE: The 57XXs are more or less 48XXs with DX11

By Rhl on 10/13/2009 4:50:04 PM , Rating: 2

If you actually read his post, you'd see that he said Radeon 57xx's, not the 58xx's. But good job going on a rant by misreading the post entirely.

God, I wish DailyTech had a big thumbs up emoticon.

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Salivating but Waiting.

By Mitch101 on 10/13/2009 11:23:35 AM , Rating: 2

Im waiting on a few things. My Current card is a 3870.

1-The NVIDIA DX11 cards if they are price competitive. Price wars benefit both sides for the consumer.

2-Some DX11 Game performance after all its hard to rate a DX11 card without a DX11 title.

3-Support for additional applications/enhancements like Video Encoding, Physics, Anti-Virus, Adobe. I have to think this might influence my decision this time around. Would be willing to sacrifice a few FPS if there is a bonus in some other apps I am planning on running.

RE: Salivating but Waiting.

By Spivonious on 10/13/2009 11:29:43 AM , Rating: 2

I'm waiting for a game that will force me to upgrade from my 3850. I am still using my once top-of-the-line CRT, so I normally play at resolutions at or below 1280x960. I could run Crysis on max settings at that res and still have it be playable. Sure, sometimes it would get a little choppy, especially if lots of things were happening, but I can put up with that.

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RE: Salivating but Waiting.

By 7Enigma on 10/13/2009 12:00:19 PM , Rating: 2

1. You are going to be waiting a long time. Nvidia's first cards are going to be the high-end (as all graphic card releases tend to be), with the lower-end coming later.

2. BattleForge (but yeah you'll probably have to wait until Q3 2010 for a large number of good games)

3. This is definitely where I see the next-gen battlefield. I've said it at launch of last gen (48XX series and GT200) that for MOST gamers we've pretty much hit the performance limit required. Screen sizes/resolution are not increasing at near the rate that graphics hardware is and very few people are gaming above 22-24" displays. With the loss on real need for more performance (of course new games will at some point tax older hardware), the shift will need to be towards other applications.

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RE: Salivating but Waiting.

By wifiwolf on 10/13/2009 6:12:49 PM , Rating: 2

I agree with most of your post but on 3rd point.
There was less power needed until now that most people look for big HDTV or at least 22" monitors.

There's another thing - Eyefinity - Anyone (on the business side) ignoring this is failing a lot since this is good opportunity for LCD vendors for a new market that most gamers and professionals will look for in less than a year.

You have a good point but I think this is the reason ATI has pulled this new technology.

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Good For ATI

By Trisagion on 10/13/2009 11:36:11 AM , Rating: 2

It's good to see ATi still at the top of the game and focused on doing what they do best. I think nVidia has lost its way a bit with CUDA and with trying to build a supercomputer out of their GPUs. Granted Fermi will do well at games as well, but they seem to be more interested in university computer farms at the moment.

RE: Good For ATI

By kattanna on 10/14/2009 3:28:51 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
but they seem to be more interested in university computer farms at the moment

for a very good reason.... $$$

after all i have been reading over the months about them, im getting the feeling that nvidia might be shifting its focus away from consumer oriented gear, and more towards workstation/supercomputer type of gear. and its probably going to be a good move for them. they will be able to make fewer parts, yet make MUCH more per chip then they do now selling to a consumer market.

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Mid-range please!

By dagamer34 on 10/13/2009 12:40:00 PM , Rating: 2

I'm waiting for the low-profile 5650 so I can get Dolby Digital TrueHD/DTS Master Audio in my HTPC!

RE: Mid-range please!

By therealnickdanger on 10/13/2009 1:07:48 PM , Rating: 2

Agreed, I'm all for waiting for the lowly 5630 or lower - whatever gets me the full A/V experience for the least amount of money/power/heat.

I'll get a 5850 for playing games on another machine, but for now, I'm just waiting for a lowly HTPC-capable card.

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