Radeon HD 5770 And 5750 Review: Gentlemen, Start Your HTPCs

[greglouganis]

[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]Greg, just tried the 5850 with one PCIe adapter for you--doesn't work. High-pitched squeal is all you get there. Beyond that, hard for me to tell why one card needs two while the other needs one when they're so close in the actual power measurements.[/citation]

Arg! But thanks for checking Chris, you're the man! Not seeing quite enough potential improvement in switching to an HD 5770 (I couldn't care less about eyefinity, DX11, etc at the moment), so I guess I'll be hanging on to the GTS 250 until something significantly better comes around that only needs 1 PCIe connector, or until USB 3.0 & SATA 6G become widely available, which is when I intend to carry out my plans to build a new system ground up...

 

[cangelini]

Very welcome =)

 

[hardwarekid9756]

Two big keys:
Phys-X is a value-add and one worth noting. Is it as good as the value adds on the ATI chip? Not really, but if it were nVidia v. ATi and you're looking for gaming goodness, with 3 monitors and HTPC not on the agenda, the GeForce kinda has an edge.

Where does SLi Play into this? If we look past "value adds," i'd like to see, performance-wise, where SLi GTS250/GTX260 and 5750/5770 stack up next to each other (and 4870's for that matter, too.) It'd also be nice to have a nVidia reference card in there, something on price-point with the 5850.

I just think that nVidia earns their fair share in the charts, is all. I'm not really hyped up on them, but I like seeing comparison between vendors as much as from within.
And, out of curiosity, couldn't you use something like a stacked bar graph to show CF/non-CF and Generation-over-generation? having bars overlaid on bars feels like it could be quite useful.

 

[XD_dued]

[citation][nom]anamaniac[/nom]We does WC3 only support 4/3 and 5/4 aspect ratios and a max of 1280x1024... why hasn't someone fixed that yet? It still has a decent userbase...I think one of the first games I will use my super widescreen on is Oblivion...[/citation]

Sorry for off topic, but i run wc3 at 1600x1200, looks great. Great article though, i hope to pickup a 5870 within near future.

 

[louiecog]

[citation][nom]greglouganis[/nom]...so I guess I'll be hanging on to the GTS 250 until something significantly better comes around that only needs 1 PCIe connector, or until USB 3.0 & SATA 6G become widely available, which is when I intend to carry out my plans to build a new system ground up...[/citation]
I think I will be doing this same thing. Once those two techs become widely available I will look into a new build. At that point, the Eyefinity 6 monitor cards will probably be out and possibly nVidia's new cards will be on the horizon as well. So prices will be down most likely.

But this comparison gets me excited. I always love reading about how a new card stacks up to previous cards.

 

[Summer Leigh Castle]

I was anticipating the 5770 to perform at least on par with the 4870 but considering the $160 price(even with the features), I think it was a miss. Do we know if there will be a $200 58x0 card?

 

[cangelini]

Not according to ATI's little page one road map, Summer, but who knows--customer demand has a way of changing these companies' priorities ;-)

 

[aneasytarget]

[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]For sure--I've looked into this and would be happy to implement, but haven't had much luck. Any Excel gurus able to get only certain axis labels bolded without changing the entire series?[/citation]
From the Excel 2007 help file

TickLabels Object

Represents the tick-mark labels associated with tick marks on the specified chart axis. This object isn't a collection. There's no object that represents a single tick-mark label; you must return all the tick-mark labels as a unit.

 

[aneasytarget]

The way to add a bold tick mark, is you would have to insert a text-box shape over the tick mark label, with a solid background. You can then format the text inside the tick mark label in any manner you choose.

 

[rick_h]

[citation][nom]zipzoomflyhigh[/nom]Are you serious? Any card today can render DIVX, and transcoding. Get real. That would be waste of time. The HTPC refernence was about the extremely low power consumption and great cooling system.[/citation]
Yes, the power consumption is slightly lower, but what makes this card a special for A/V is the HD audio coming out of the HDMI port. The 4000 series had plain 48Khz AC3 audio. The 57XX has a high bit rate(hopefully beyond 48Khz) over HDMI and in addition to AC-3 it supports AAC, Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio formats. So if you have a 4XXX card like me, the better sound quality support should be compelling. So why did the author leave this out?

Rick

 

[cangelini]

Heya Rick--check out page 3!

 

[aford10]

Nice! But expensive.

 

[skora]

I hate reading articles late and there being 5 pages of comments that I'm not going through. So if this is already questioned, I apologize, but if youre saying the 5770 is good for someone that updates their rigs once a year, are we really going to see any Dx11 games by then to justify spending more now for less performance? If I had to spec out a GPU for someone that planned to upgrade in a year, the 4870 would still be tops on my recommendation.

 

[TerFar]

Note that PowerDVD v9 Ultra, will pass Dolby TrueHD through an HD4670 over HDMI to your receiver.

So unless you need the power, the HD4670 with PowerDVD v9 respresents a great solution for HT setup.

 

[Guest]

Might be a great card, but absent proper linux support, I won't buy another ATI card. I have a 4770 and ATI has yet to update Catalyst to install in Fedora 11 (or anything with a recent kernel). Additionally, their installation breaks on kernel update. Nvidia isn't perfect, but it's acceptable.

 

[terr281]

skora: Dx11 games "should" be around beginning 1st quarter 2010.

(My opinion):

Further, a single 5770 purchased now in combination with a MB capable of 8x/8x Crossfire, would be a good investment. In a year, you purchase a second 5770 (at lower prices than today), and you have successfully upgraded your mainstream system.

In a year, buying a 2nd 4870 may not be plausible at decent prices, and it will not be Dx11 capable.

(End opinion)

In short, it is always a gamble with technology. My opinion is betting on Dx11 games next year, Nvidia not coming out with a "game breaking card to blow Ati's 5xxx series out of the water," the 4870 not being around in a year, the 5850 not reducing its price quickly, the (hypothetical) 5830 being on par or lower in performance and price than a 5770...

Welcome to technology.

 

[Guest]

what they didnt test is how it fares in crossfire against the other 5000 series gpu's and nvidias offerings. however if anyone is interested i happened to stumble across one such review of its crossfire prowess.

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=20684

and to sum it up in two words kick ass

 

[Guest]

How do these new cards stack up to the GTX280OC cards?

 

[amiman]

If 2 year old Nvidea is still holding out against new ATI, that gives me reason to wait for next Nvidea.

 

[anamaniac]

Sorry for off topic, but i run wc3 at 1600x1200, looks great. Great article though, i hope to pickup a 5870 within near future.

It's not officially supported.

Also, runnign at any other aspect ratio is horizontal stretch instead of hort+

 

[sidel]

Can anyone tell me if these cards are selling as good as the 4800 cards that they are replacing ? maybe AMD should have went with the 256 bits

 

[sidel]

Can anyone tell me if these cards are selling as good as the 4800 cards that they are replacing ? maybe AMD should have went with the 256 bits

 

[geok1ng]

its nice to have new life at sub-$150 , but some people are looking for the replacement of the 4870X2- the 5870 simply does not have the bang to justify an upgrade.

 

[cory1234]

5850 still looks like the better deal. Already picked one up

 

[torque79]

I wish they werent dual slot cards. I don't need 2 dvi ports for my HTPC, in fact I need 0.

I would love to know how that commenter managed to output HD audio via HDMI from a 4xxx series card with powerdvd9 ultra. I just get 2 channel PCM on my yamaha rxv1900 receiver (HDMI 1.3 ports and it supports all HD audio, their latest receiver product line).

THG staff: were you using a special version of PowerDVD 9? When you say you were "working with" Cyberlink, were they providing you hotfixes or anything which are not integrated into normal Powerdvd9 Ultra?