Asus Radeon HD 5970 review

The previous cards from ATI which used two graphics processors were the HD 3870 X2 and HD 4870 X2. Both of these combined two processors onto a single board with phenomenal results. With the HD 5970, ATI may have changed its naming strategy, but not the basic concept.

One possible reason for the dropping of the X2 moniker is that the 5970's processors blend specifications from both the HD 5870 and HD 5850. On the plus side they have the 5870's full complement of 1,600 stream processors; however the clock and memory speeds are inline with the HD 5850, with a 725MZ core clock and 1GHz memory. This is probably due to heat issues caused by having two fast graphics chips in such close proximity. There's 2GB of memory fitted to the card: 1GB for each graphics chip.

Powering the HD 5970 requires a heavy duty power supply. AMD claims that the card can draw 294W at peak, that's more power than a lot of desktop PCs draw in total. It has both 6-pin and 8-pin power connectors, so you'll need a supply with both of these outputs.

All that power is certainly going to good use, though, as this is undoubtedly the fastest card we've ever seen. It was only limited by our PC's processor in our Call of Duty 4 test, getting identical scores at all resolutions. Crysis produced more meaningful results, thankfully, averaging at over 60fps even at 1,920x1,080 with 4x anti-aliasing. Only by increasing the detail to the incredibly demanding 'Very High' setting did we manage to trouble the card, but even then it returned a more than playable 44.8fps.

The HD 5970 is powerful enough to run any other game at the highest resolutions and detail settings, but then so is the HD 5870. In fact, in the vast majority of cases the HD 5970 is simply overkill. It may come into its own with upcoming DirectX 11 games, especially if you want to play them using ATI's triple-monitor Eyefinity system. Today, however, for the grand sum of £490 the HD 5970 is simply impossible to recommend. The HD 5850 is a far better choice for around £200, and you can always pick up a second card later and run the two in CrossFire if required.

Author: Seth Barton