According to our own sources, the new HD 5870 offers over 1600 Stream processors. Amazingly AMD doubled the number of SIMD units from 10 to 20. Since every SIMD unit contains 16 5-D units and a Quad-TMU overall, that means we count 1600 stream processors and 80 TMUs. We are talking about a new videocard whose core speed is at 850 MHz and whose 256-bit GDDR5 runs at 1200 MHz – all for the suggested retail of $399! AMD is expecting HD 5870 to come close to the performance of a HD 4870-X2 or GTX 295.
There is a new feature that is called “eyefinity†which means that 3 LCDs can be simultaneously supported at 2560×1600, with options for future cards to support up to six LCDS!!
The HD 5870 die size is slightly over 330 MM2 and packed with over 2 billion transistors. This translates into one beast of a card with just over 150 GB/second bandwidth. It is very likely that the 8X + 8X PCIe CrossFire slots of the new p55 motherboards for Core i5 will become saturated with two of them.
What is outstanding is that we are hearing that the HD 5870 will perform at just over 26 watts at idle and peak below 190 watts maximum!! That is quite a challenge for Nvidia to meet or beat in their own upcoming GT 300 series as the performance to watt ratio is outstanding.
What is also new to watch for in HD 58X0 series besides DX11 capability is that there is a new AA/AF algorithm, where everything on the render back end has been doubled. As a benefit for gamers, that means much less of a performance hit when going from no AA to 4xAA or perhaps even from 4xAA to 8xAA.
The new HD 5850 will launch on September 23 also. We hear it is priced below $299. HD 5850 will sport 1440 stream processors and it will have lower clockspeeds than its big brother. We are hearing somewhere around 700/1000 MHz and it can also display simultaneously on 3 LCDs at up to 2560×1600 resolution.
Finally, you can expect the HD 5870-X2 to be released in the second half of October.
