ATI has just announced its latest video card Radeon HD 5970. The new card is one of the first to support Microsoft DirectX 11 and Eyefinity multi-display.  The 5970 is based on a pair of Cypress GPUs linked on a single board by a PCI Express bridge for almost 5 TeraFLOPS of scorching power, and if that’s not enough for you then you can get 10 TeraFLOPS using the CrossFireX.  The card has already been put through the tests by several sites like HardOCP and Hot Hardware, and the outcome is as expected.  The card is a definite performance leader regardless of the application or a game that was thrown at it.  The power consumption is kept low in normal working environment.  When the card is going to hit store shelves, expect to pay a full retail price of $599 until the  demand subsides.  The card will be going on sale starting today.  For complete list of specs read the official press release below.

Press Release:

SUNNYVALE, Calif. –11/18/2009  – AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced the flagship installment in the award-winning line of graphics cards, the ATI Radeon™ HD 5970, the fastest card ever created.1 The new ultra high-end model joins a growing list of the world’s first and only graphics cards to fully support Microsoft DirectX® 11 technology and ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology.

Designed to support the most demanding PC games at ultra-high resolutions and image quality settings, the ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 has unlocked overclocking potential, granting access to every bit of power the card has to offer through ATI Overdrive™ technology.² Now shipping from retailers and available in the channel, the ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 also launches today in new Alienware Area-51, Area-51 ALX and Aurora desktop PCs.

Record-breaking overclocking capabilities take Dragon Platform technology to the forefront for users that demand the utmost control in performance tuning. The unrivaled overclocking capabilities of the ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 are enabled by the unique design of the card, which features advanced fan and vapor chamber technologies and a fully vented exhaust to keep the card cool and ensure overclocking headroom using ATI Overdrive™ technology.2 The formidable combination of AMD Phenom II processors, AMD 7-Series chipsets, and ATI Radeon HD graphics deliver comprehensive tuning, immersive entertainment, and outstanding value.

Enthusiasts can expand their field of view, ATI Radeon™ HD 5970, driving up to three displays at once, delivering an unmatched maximum resolution of 7680×1600 and creating an unparalleled game play experience.³ For the first time ever, ATI CrossFireX™ technology leverages the power of multiple graphics processors to deliver even more game performance in 20 of today’s popular titles when using ATI Eyefinity technology, with more to come.

The ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 graphics card delivers nearly 5 TeraFLOPS of compute power, ensuring superior performance in the latest DirectX® 11 games, as well as in previous versions of DirectX® and OpenGL titles. With the world’s most powerful graphics core built on 40nm process technology harnessing up to 3,200 stream processors, gamers can enjoy DirectX® 11 games now, such as EA Phenomic’s BattleForge™ and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:Call of Pripyat from GSC Game World, with many more titles on the way, including:

• Battlefield Bad Company 2 from EA DICE
• DiRT™ 2 from Codemasters, arriving December 1, 2009,
• Aliens vs. Predator™ from Rebellion,
• Update to The Lord of the Rings Online™ from Turbine,
• Update to Dungeons and Dragons Online® Eberron Unlimited™ from Turbine.

New features and functionality of ATI Stream technology allow users to harness the ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 graphics card to enhance their computing experience, helping to improve the performance of enabled media, entertainment and productivity applications.⁴ ATI Stream technology and the HD 5970 support both Direct Compute 11 and OpenCL industry standards for application acceleration.

Delivering full-fledged performance when needed, the ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 also leads in power efficiency by automatically powering down unused GPU resources when not in use, resulting in idle desktop power consumption as low as 42 watts.⁵

The ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 is supported by a wide range of add-in-board companies, including ASK, Asus, Club 3D, Diamond, Gigabyte, High Tech, MSI, Sapphire, Tul/Power Color, Visiontek and XFX.

To celebrate the launch of the ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 and to conclude a series of contests created to celebrate AMD’s 40th anniversary year, AMD is announcing the third and final contest designed to give back to AMD fans and supporters. Starting today, fans of AMD on Facebook will be able to enter to win one of 10 Microsoft Xbox 360s or one of 10 Wiis from Nintendo. One gaming system will be given away every weekday for four weeks. Full contest rules and details available online: www.amd.com/40years

“With the arrival of the ATI Radeon HD 5970, the fastest graphics card in the world, we’ve cemented AMD as the unquestioned graphics leader,” said Matt Skynner, vice president and general manager, AMD Graphics Group. “With the holiday shopping season right around the corner, the new card, coupled with the awesome power of ATI Eyefinity technology, is the ultimate setup for serious gamers.”

“The extraordinary performance of the ATI Radeon HD 5970 is a perfect match for the Alienware Area-51, Area-51 ALX and Aurora desktops,” said Frank Azor, senior product planning manager, Dell Gaming. “By offering this level of graphics capability as well as the visual and performance enhancements made possible by DirectX 11 hardware, gamers will benefit from enhanced image quality enabling an incredibly intense gaming experience.”

Supporting Resources

• Pictures: See photos of the ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 series graphics cards on Flickr
• Press kit: More information on the ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 series of graphics cards
• Product page: ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 series product information
• Contest: Enter the third and final contest in AMD’s 40th anniversary celebration for a chance to win one of 20 Wiis from Nintendo or Microsoft Xbox 360s. More information available online: www.amd.com/40years, or enter to win on Facebook.
• Twitter: Follow AMD graphics news on Twitter at @ATIGraphicsFacebook: Become a fan of AMD technology on Facebook

About AMD

Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) is an innovative technology company dedicated to collaborating with customers and technology partners to ignite the next generation of computing and graphics solutions at work, home and play. For more information, visit http://www.amd.com.

Some information has been leaked last week about the upcoming new GPU processors from ATI regarding the AMDs new high end HD 5870 and as you will see below the specs were on the money, so people that have already seen them will not be surprised.

The GPU that is being launched today is the ATI Radeon HD 5870, which is codenamed “Cypress.”  It will carry a target selling price is just under $400.  The same Cypress ASIC is also used to create the ATI Radeon HD 5850.  According to AMD there should be about 20% difference in performance between the 5870 and 5850 GPUs.  Later we should see “Hemlock” which will carry two of these HD 5870 GPUs in a single video card package, most likely to be called the Radeon HD 5870 X2, and should come at a much heftier price.

Here are some specs of these cards for your comparison:

As you can see, almost everything is doubled in the new GPUs compared to the 4800 line.  We will not get in to any benchmarks, but you can read some great reviews and testing that have been performed by HardOCP and AnandTech.

Based on the reviews of the above sites, we can conclude the following; the 5870 is the fastest single GPU card out.  The performance difference compared to GTX 285 is great although the price is slightly higher.  The performance of 5850 should be much closer to that of GTX 285 but at a much cheaper price of $259.  

I am sure AMD was shooting to beat the GTX 295 with their new 5870, but based on the benchmarks that is not the case.  The 295 and the 5870 are very close in performance, but it still can not be called the king.  Although NVIDIAs GTX 295 is still the faster card, it does however carry a $100 price premium with only about 10% performance gain.  For some of you this may not be enough to go for GTX 295, but for the rest of you who want the fastest may think twice.

Update:

This card is now listed at NewEgg for $379.99.  You can sign up for Auto notify once it becomes available.

Press Release:

World’s Most Advanced Graphics Processor Allows Consumers to Expand, Accelerate and Dominate Their PC Experience with First Full Support for Microsoft DirectX 11

SUNNYVALE, Calif.  –7/28/2009 

To meet the extreme productivity needs of today’s CAD, Digital Content Creation (DCC) and oil and gas professionals,  AMD (NYSE: AMD) announces that the ATI FirePro™ V8750 3D workstation graphics accelerator is joining the AMD line of ultra high-end professional graphics hardware.

• ATI FirePro™ V8750 3D workstation graphics accelerator brings the highest number of shader engines (800) with the highest memory bandwidth (115.2 GB/s) in the entire 3D professional graphics offerings today¹ which enables professionals to render incredibly complex models and photo-realistic images in real-time.
• The ultra parallel processing architecture of the ATI FirePro V8750 3D workstation graphics accelerator maximizes throughput by automatically directing graphics horsepower where it’s needed. Intelligent management of computational resources enables enhanced utilization of the GPU to enable real-time rendering of complex models and scenes with high frame rates when animating. This acceleration is accessed through ATI Stream technology, a set of advanced hardware and software technologies that enable a system to dynamically balance workloads by tapping a both the CPU and a GPU in a workstation to enable accelerated application performance.
• With ATI FirePro V8750 3D workstation graphics accelerator, applications that take advantage of the shader units and memory bandwidth perform significantly better than with competing solutions. For example, UG NX4 software from Siemens PLM performs up to 56 percent faster and Autodesk 3ds Max OGL runs 118 percent faster on ATI FirePro V8750 than the comparable competing solution.²
• Featuring 2GB of GDDR5 frame buffer memory, engineers and designers are free to focus on project work without concerns for memory limitations that have traditionally impacted professional applications.
• ATI FirePro V8750 3D workstation graphics accelerator offers thirty percent more bandwidth than the comparable competing solution¹, and it’s equipped with the latest memory technology, GDDR5, for superior bandwidth and power consumption.
• Two DisplayPort outputs, one Dual Link enabled DVI output and one Stereo sync output provide versatility and advanced features needed for advanced monitors and a high resolution support. In addition, with native multi-card support, users can see more and do more using four displays by adding a second ATI FirePro 3D graphics accelerator in the same workstation.
• ATI FirePro 3D workstation graphics accelerators have more than 90 certifications from independent software vendors and have undergone extensive testing to provide industry standard reliability.
• Concurrent with this product launch, AMD is also announcing the availability of ATI CrossFire™ Pro technology which enables users to combine the power of two discrete graphics cards to scale their application performance for maximum productivity. This capability which simply involves coupling the two graphics cards using an interconnect cable, is designed to provide a significant performance boost to CAD and DCC applications such as UG NX, Ensight, Maya and Teamcenter. In addition to ATI FirePro V8750, ATI CrossFire™ Pro is planned for availability on the mid-range and above graphics cards including ATI FirePro™ V5700, ATI FirePro™ V7750, and ATI FirePro™ V87003D workstation graphics accelerators. Initial support is provided for Windows XP (32-bit and 64-bit) with support for other operating systems scheduled to follow in the second half of 2009.
• The new ATI FirePro V87503D workstation graphics accelerator is available now at the MSRP of $1,799. ATI FirePro graphics accelerators are available from OEMs, system integrators and channel partners worldwide.

Supporting Quotes:

“Digital content creation and high end CAD users have been held hostage to high-priced solutions for advanced rendering,” said Janet Matsuda, senior director, AMD Professional Graphics. “The ATI FirePro V8750 3D workstation graphics accelerator delivers unparalleled performance and two GB of frame buffer memory for less than $1,800 MSRP. Creative and engineering professionals can now afford the powerful graphics they deserve.”

“We’re amazed at the performance boost to our already fast MachStudio Pro real-time 3D workflow and rendering product with the new ATI FirePro V8750 3D workstation graphics accelerator,” said David Koenig, CEO, StudioGPU.  “Powered by the new ATI FirePro workstation graphics accelerator, the MachStudio Pro non-linear real-time 3D finishing workflow enables design firms and 3D artists everywhere to power through big, complex projects amazingly fast. Thanks to the ATI graphic accelerators, small and mid-size studios can now work at the speed of thought to streamline workflow in a way that was impossible for the largest and most fully equipped production facilities as little as a year ago.”

You can read a Hothardware Review of this card.

Press Release:

For less than $1,800 MSRP, ATI FirePro™ V8750 3D workstation accelerator delivers exceptional computational power to tackle incredibly complex designs

EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 896MB PCI-E $130

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The GeForce GTX 285 is designed to work in 2008 and 2009 Mac Pro systems, both of which are equipped with PCI Express 2.0 interfaces.

Here are some of the card’s features:

• PCI Express 2.0 – Designed for the new PCI Express 2.0 bus architecture offering the highest data transfer speeds for the most bandwidth hungry applications.
• Two Dual-Link DVI ports – Able to drive the industry’s largest and highest resolutions flat-panel displays up to 2560×1600 with HDCP.
• 1GB of onboard DDR3 Memory – View high-resolution images and textures with this massive amount of onboard memory.
• OpenGL Optimization and Support – Provides top-notch compatibility and performance for OpenGL applications.
• 2nd Generation NVIDIA® Unified Architecture – Combines vertex, pixel, and geometry shaders for an overall more efficient architecture.
• NVIDIA® Purevideo HD Technology – High-definition video decoder and post-processor delivers unprecedented picture clarity, smooth video playback, and accurate color for movies and video.
• NVIDIA® CUDA™ Technology – Accelerates CUDA enabled applications using GPU’s processing cores. Delivering more performance than traditional CPUs.

Source: EVGA

On April 20th at NAB NVIDIA has announced that it will bring its most advanced highly anticipated professional graphics card Quadro FX 4800 to Mac Pro users.

To address the direct needs of the Mac user, the new Quadro FX 4800 GPU for Mac features a standard 3-pin stereo connector for true 3D stereoscopic imaging; critical to many core professional Mac applications. Designed, tested and built by NVIDIA to meet the ultra-high standards of the Mac community, the Quadro FX 4800 GPU dynamically allocates compute, geometry, shading and pixel processing power.

Other key features in the Quadro FX 4800 GPU for Mac include:

• Interactive Visualization of Large Models Offers a massive 1.5GB frame buffer and memory bandwidth up to 76.8 GB/sec. to deliver high throughput for interactive visualization of large models; high-performance for real time processing of large textures and frames; and the highest quality and resolution with full-scene antialiasing (FSAA)
• High-performance Visualization NVIDIA CUDA parallel computing architecture for NVIDIA Quadro GPUs enables breakthrough application performance to enhance creative expression in areas such as video, animation, photography and production
• Dual Dual Link DVI and Stereo Connectors Outfitted with a dedicated 3 pin min-din connector for stereo glasses support and up to two dual-link DVI digital connectors to drive the highest resolution digital displays available on the market
• Boot Camp Support  Access to native Quadro GPU accelerated professional Windows 3D graphics performance and features when using Apple Boot Camp

Pricing and Availability
NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 GPU for Mac has a MSRP of $1,799 USD, and will be available starting May 2009 through Apple.com and select Apple resellers.

Complete Press Release