Okay, so over the last few weeks we have established (see here and here) that ATi's brand new Radeon HD 5870's are somewhat competent. In a nutshell, Team Red has successfully taken the crown of “fastest single GPU graphics card” and won the race for DX11 compliance (erm, DX11 games, feel free to arrive by the dozen if you could...). Most importantly, this has all been rolled into a ~170W TDP package that is almost as quiet as the mouse that's raiding my packs of McCoys in the cupboards. Ho hum, perhaps somewhat competent is a bit of an understatement after all. For the first of it's generation, ATi seem to have done a rather good job especially when one compares previous graphics card generations and think about the times when it wasn't until the graphics card in question was "refreshed" as an improved solution that an initially half baked product was now just right. We can actually take a page straight out of ATi's books as far as that one is concerned and it wasn't particularly long ago. Think Radeon HD 2900XT followed by the HD 3850/3870 that soon followed. Very much the same core architecture, but improved core clocks and a die shrink that finally made it a sensible option. Let's not dwell on the past however as we're meant to be complementing Team red for releasing a quality product that depending on how nVidia's "Fermi" DX11 graphics card pans out may send them back to the glory days of the performance leading Radeon 9700 Pro and also the infamous GeForce FX 5000's....that were infamous for all the wrong reasons...

 

I'm not here to brown nose ATi till the cows come home however and as the title may suggest we are not talking about just one Radeon HD 5870. We're revisiting ATi CrossfireX but now with a pair of their finest sitting on our table. I wish to cast your mind back to 2004, which saw the introduction of Multi GPU technology for the gaming masses. It went by the name of nVidia SLI technology. ATi followed suit with it's own "Crossfire" technology that worked by means of a slave card and a complex “crossfire edition” card, where both were then linked externally and outside of the case. Truth be told, Crossfire was somewhat unpopular because of this but this soon changed just over a year later when they brought out their value for money Radeon X1950 Pro graphics card, which took inspiration from nVidia's SLI Bridge. Since then, Crossfire had gained much needed attention and popularity and a couple of generations later, here we are with the technology embedded in our Radeon HD 5870 samples and so this brings me back to the review. Why settle for just one HD 5870 when you can have two? Is such a monstrous pairing the answer to a truly fluid gaming experience in just about everything? With a pair of 1600 stream processor cores ploughing away with two dedicated banks of 1GB GDDR5, we believe that this could be very interesting indeed.

 

 

 

It goes without saying but Gigabyte need no introduction thanks to a wide range of motherboards, coolers and obviously as a top tier graphics card partner as well. The brand is an add in board partner for both ATi and nVidia based video cards and has sold both reference based cards and their own derivatives of the same that feature custom PCB's, Heatsinks and varying Memory IC's. With years of experience under their belt, one would be tempted to feel optimistic about the quality of this particular product. Let's turn over to examine the Gigabyte Radeon HD 5870 1GB.

 

So what do we have to say? It would seem that ATi are on the road to success with their new Radeon HD 5870 graphics cards. With two Radeon HD 4890 graphics cards performing similarly to a single HD 5870, the ideal pattern of GPU progression seems quite apparent. What's more is that with the exception of the heavily CPU bound Microsoft FSX game, ATi's CrossfireX technology seems to scale very well in all of the games tested. They are far from impractical too, thanks to low idle power consumption as well as respectable load power consumption, which has resulted in low noise levels. You will naturally require a quick processor to complement the pairing and if you're the oddball that plays Flight Simulator X, I think you'll find that elaborate CrossfireX setups will do you no favours.

 

While it's fair to say that the vast majority of games really do not command so much GPU power in most situations, we have at least established that two HD 5870's still scale admirably well. Such power however is acquired at a considerable price too. Around 600-620 of your finest pound sterling to be exact, so it stands to reason that you will certainly have to think quite hard before biting the bullet. Whether, one can justify the cost is another matter as it will naturally depend on the rest of your system configuration and as previously mentioned, whether one plans on following the multiple monitor route. Till then, you could even buy one HD 5870 and consider the purchase of another at a later stage as the prices of these products can only drop...that is when nVidia pulls a finger out and unleash their supposed monster.

 

Speaking of competition, I'd like to return to ATi's “sweetspot” strategy, which usually entails the release of three graphics card ranges within the first quarter of a new generation release. In the case of the “5” series, it commenced with the “Cypress” range of graphics cards, consisting of the £200 and £300 HD 5850/5870's. Next and most recently was the arrival of “Juniper”, dubbed the HD 5750 and 5770 range which sits at a more pallatable £115-135. What about #3? Well, you may have been looking at it...ish. The third graphics card of the RV8xx core iteration is infact a dual GPU, “X2” style graphics card and assuming it's core and memory clocks are similar, it should perform very much like our CrossfireX setup. The near future is indeed looking rather interesting and from what we have gathered, the future is also looking rather speedy. Is it worth waiting for HD 5870 CrossfireX performance in a single package? It's debatable as of course, it will depend on pricing and what implications it may have on how much a single gpu variant will cost in the near future but for now, it's hard to say that you would go terribly wrong by emptying your wallet on these.

 

All in all, the Gigabyte HD 5870 CrossfireX has achieved exactly what previous Multi GPU offerings have in the past. Unbeatable performance at a just as unbeatable pricetag, As the configuration worked without hassle, delivered within games and did not turn the test machine into a GE90-115B powerplant, there isn't a lot that's going against opting for such a pairing. Really, so long as money permits, it appears to be a very good proposition. What the likes of upcoming DX11 hits have to say about it however remains to be seen.

 

The Good

  

 

We would like to thank Gigabyte for supplying their Radeon HD 5870 1GB GDDR5 for review. You can discuss your thoughts about this system in our forums.