AMD have released the specifications on their new 5 series graphics cards. Using the RV870, it’s not surprising that the middle card has been named the Radeon HD 5870. The chip works at 825MHz with 1600 shaders double that of the RV770 and perhaps indicating a speed of double the older chip.
The chip has 2.1 billion transistors which again again over double the RV770 (956 million). The GDDR5 memory is clocked at GHz but using quad mode this relates to 5.2GHz providing a massive 150GB/s of bandwidth. At load, the card is a bit of a power guzzler at 180W but fortunately at idle the power consumption drops down to around the 27W mark.
So, the 5870 would appear to be about double that of the 4870 but it’s hard to tell at this moment.
The 5850, the cheapest card of the range, has a core speed of 725MHz and just 1440 shaders. The GDDR5 memory is at a lower 1000MHz with a bandwidth of 136GB/s and 32ROPS. It’s not as fast as the 5870 but definitely quicker than the DX10 4870.
Both these cards are set for release on the 23rd September but the most expesnive card – the 5870×2 – is set to be released a little later.
