AMD Radeon HD 5870 Adds DX11, Multi-Monitor Gaming

Vigile writes "Few people will doubt that PC gaming is in need of a significant shot in the arm with the consistent encroachment of consoles and their dominating hold on developers. Today AMD is releasing the Radeon HD 5870 graphics card based on the Evergreen-series of GPUs first demonstrated in June. Besides offering best-in-class performance for a single-GPU graphics board, the new card is easily the most power efficient in terms of idle power consumption and performance per watt. Not only that, but AMD has introduced new features that could help keep PC gaming in the spotlight, including the first DirectX 11 implementation and a very impressive multi-monitor gaming technology, Eyefinity, which we discussed earlier this month. The review at PC Perspective includes the full gamut of gaming benchmarks in both single- and dual-GPU configurations as well as videos of Eyefinity running on three 30" displays."

PC gaming is in need of a significant shot in arm

[Anonymous Coward]

ATI's last 4800 generation was already faster than anything you could get on a console and could do multi-monitor.

I'm not sure why an even faster graphics card would give you that needed shot in the arm. Or if your assertion that PC gaming needs anything is correct.

As far as I'm concerned, PC gaming doesn't need a shot in the arm any more than consoles need a mouse and keyboard.

Missing the point

[sxltrex]

The summary misses the point of why consoles are gaining so much ground in the gaming world. The main reason consoles are so popular is because the hardware never changes. Most people (like myself) don't want to have to go out and buy the latest and greatest graphics card to run a new game. With an XBOX 360 or PS3 I know that if I buy a title for that platform, it will work. Yes, there are certain exceptions like hard drive requirements, etc., but for the most part it is true. The stability also allows developers to get the most out of the hardware, and generally by the end of a consoles life expectancy, the games are getting very, very good.

There will probably always be a market for the hardcore gamers, but the average, casual gamer would rather play an XBOX 360 at 720P on their big screen than play at double the resolution on a screen a quarter the size.

A shot in the arm? How about cooler chips?

[wonkavader]

"Few people will doubt that PC gaming is in need of a significant shot in the arm with the consistent encroachment of consoles..."

I know I don't count, but I resent the assumption that everyone cares. I don't care. I'd never buy a console to play games other than Wii sports.

I assume GPUs will get better and better, as will CPUs, and I'll benefit But I'm still playing StarCraft 1, and I just want a higher resolution interface for the same screen -- I know people think it affects the balance, but I'd like to see the zerglings when they're a little further away.

I don't think PC gaming needs a shot in the arm. I think it needs well designed games that stand the test of time.

But it would be nice if we could get the kind of power we can get for a reasonable price (sub $1000 PC including graphics) today to run cool without fans.

Bologna

[JoeSixpack00]

The lack of PC games has very little to do with architecture changes. The perception that you always have to upgrade when a new generation of games arrive is little more than computer machismo, and just because you can't max everything out doesn't mean you need a new PC. I played Doom 3 perfectly fine on a GeForce Ti 4800 SE, and I played Crysis rather enjoyably on a Radeon HD 3870, even though everything was set to medium. The problem is most PC gamers' ego can't handle the not being able to play with "everything maxed out", so they feel the need to upgrade.

The reason consoles are gaining so much ground is no one wants to waste money on the PC. Why spend millions of dollars on developing a title when 25% of the user base is going to pirate it anyways? They can make the same game console only, and almost all hardcore gamers will purchase an XBox 360 for the games they're missing on the PC. I hate to finally admit it, but until we fully embrace an active activation system like steam to counteract piracy, PC gaming isn't going anywhere.

Re:PC gaming is in need of a significant shot in a

[tepples]

The kind of shot in the arm that PC gaming needs isn't at the high end but at the low end. If something better than Intel graphics became common on slimline PCs (as opposed to bulky towers), that would open up the market for gaming on home theater PCs.

Re:Bologna

[tepples]

The reason consoles are gaining so much ground is no one wants to waste money on the PC. Why spend millions of dollars on developing a title when 25% of the user base is going to pirate it anyways?

Not every developer is interested in "spend[ing] millions of dollars on developing a title". If you don't have millions of dollars, the PC can prove more profitable because there's a lot less overhead in obtaining a PC devkit than a console devkit.

Re:A shot in the arm? How about cooler chips?

[Kjella]

And you can't? Seriously, look at the graphs on the review sites, they're cranking it all up to 2560x1600 with max AA/AF with Ultra High quality. It's not like you can't play with anything less...

Re:Missing the point

[Sir_Sri]

It's cyclical. When the consoles first come out they look good. But for how long? At some point PC tools and PC hardware make consoles look antiquated. This new hardware is 4 generations later than console hardware, but some of those generations were more die shrinks than anything consumers care about. For the moment we're fluttering around equal quality between PC and consoles, the race to the bottom in PC prices and hardware has meant that trying to make a decent PC only game which both takes advantage of really good hardware, and runs on the walmart trash people actually have is nearly impossible. So you pick your market. If you're developing all your art assets to be fully cross platform you aren't going to invest a whole lot in the PC model. Until someone else does. Once someone (think farcry, Doom, etc) starts doing spectacular things on the PC which simply cannot be done on consoles the two groups diverge again for a while. And then a new generation of consoles comes out and they converge again. I would think the console makers will want either this gen or next gen hardware in their consoles (Xbox 3 and PS4), but time will tell.

Though the big difference between PC's and consoles is probably more about memory than GPU architecture. 3-4GiGs of ram on PC is becoming common, compared to 512 on the consoles, there's too much you can do with that much memory that you just can't do on a console, and that will probably drive divergence more than hardware tesselation or directx computing.

Re:PC gaming is in need of a significant shot in a

[RiotingPacifist]

I must be few people, as i doubt PC gaming needs a shot in the arm. The way i see it PC gaming has its market and consoles have theirs. For single seat games it is still (and always will be) the shit, except for a short period around the release of new consoles it is not lacking in the hardware department. The same way that the Wii didn't eat into "real" console sales, i doubt the console are eating into pc game sale, what they are doing is being played by a huge market of people who regularly enjoy playing with friends in the same room. It could be argued that PCs lack the software to play multiplayer in the same place (because the HW is there to do it with emulators), but tbh if your going to do that you need to plug it into a TV so either its expensive (laptop) or pointless (if you have a dedicated gaming box connected to you TV why not just call it a console).
If you don't play with local mates -> PC gaming
If you play with local mates --------> Console gaming
If you only play with local mates --> Casual Gaming

Despite these categories overlapping in terms of both games and players, they do not directly compete much.

No Core2 Tests

[kenp2002]

All those reveiws and not 1 of them tested a Lynnfield chip that I could find to see if the dual 8x pci-e slots get pinned when running a DX11 card in SLI. Not one review used a typical median computer that someone would currently own.

So after all those 'reviews' *cough advertisements* we still don't know if someone with a Core2 Duo at 3 Ghz can even feed that card effectively. No DDR2 systems, no Quad Core Core2 running DDR3... just the usual i7 Etremes that tell typical consumers anything. We don't know, after all those review if it's even worth buying based on a typical machine. ZZZzzzz....

If anyone can find a Core2 system tested with this new card let te rest of us know if any of us who don't own $1000 processors get a benefit...

Re:No Core2 Tests

[pwfffff]

This card costs more than the low-end i7s. Just buy one.

You can't buy the latest bleeding-edge
  graphics card and be a cheap bastard at the same time. It doesn't work that way.

Re:Missing the point

[Deosyne]

Yes, $380 for a video card that provides graphical performance that well supersedes the capabilities of the PS3, and possibly even the PS3's successor. Or you can actually compare a video card with very similar capabilities to the card in the PS3, the NVIDIA RSX "Reality Synthesizer" with a 550MHz CPU and 256 MB of DDR2, which would be an NVIDIA GeForce 9400 that you can pick up for about $50.