Here you can find all of the information about ATI. This includes their GPU’s, as well as their parent company AMD and the related software like the Stream SDK. In addition, we have information regarding CrossFire and EyeFinity hardware systems.
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Guru3D has a nine page review of the AMD Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity6 posted. As we described earlier, this card is no different than the regular AMD Radeon HD 5870 with the exception of its having 6 mini-DisplayPorts, and 2 GB of memory. Guru3D has posted several of its videos of the Eyefinity6 in action on YouTube, some of which we posted about recently, and even tested out using it in Crossfire mode (that is, using two Eyefinity6 cards together)!
So yes, we’ll look at Eyefinity6, we’ll build a nice frame that can hold the six Dell monitors we are using in this review and then will get our groove on. Now we’ll also show some performance numbers as we’ll not only use one, but two Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity6 cards, which we’ll setup in CrossfireX, but more overly I like this article to be a show case. As such we’ll record some high-definition footage and show you videos of a gaming in a MASSIVE monitor resolution of 5040×2100.
LegitReviews is reporting that XFX has designed a limited number of Radeon HD 5970 graphics cards with 4GB of on-board memory. This is simply a Eyefinity6 version of the Radeon HD 5970. The production run of the cards is to be numbered in the hundreds, with a retail price of around $800.
But there is some other news in the post from LegitReviews as well. This time it concerns XFX and its support, or lack thereof, of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 480.
This afternoon we received confirmation that XFX, a division of PINE Technologies, will not be releasing any GeForce GTX 400 series graphics cards to the market when the cards become public next month. XFX was not listed as a launch partner for Fermi and did not issue a press release about the upcoming cards, which might come as a shock to many of our readers as they are one of the largest NVIDIA add-in board (AIB) partners in the world! XFX said that the decision not to carry this series of GF100 graphics card was their decision and that they will still be carrying NVIDIA products.
via : LegitReviews
Anandtech has a nine page review of the AMD Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity6 posted. This card sports 6 mini-DisplayPorts, and comes with two mini-DisplayPorts to DisplayPorts adapters. In addition, it has 2 passive mini-DisplayPorts to single-link DVI adapters and one passive mini-DisplayPorts to HDMI adapter. The GPU core runs at 850MHz core and the memory runs at a 1.2GHz clock, just like the regular Radeon HD 5870. Other than the 6 mini-DisplayPorts, the only difference then is that it has 2 GB of memory. What does Anandtech think of the new card?
As a general gaming card however, there are definite issues. In existing titles, with 3 or fewer screens, we just didn’t see a tremendous performance advantage to the 5870 E6. The larger frame buffer did help raise minimum frame rates, but not enough to positively impact the average frame rates in our tests. Even in triple display setups we didn’t see any reason to get the E6 card.
AMD has updated their blog with a behind the scenes post on one of the key assets of having a couple GPU & CPU development company: their dedicated game development team that can assist developers in building code specifically designed and optimized for AMD CPU’s, ATI’s DirectX11-compliant GPU’s, and the ATI CrossFire multi-GPU technology.
As we outlined in our Gamers’ Manifesto, AMD provides its gaming partners with developer tools, lab testing, technical engagement, marketing support and more. One of the biggest, most appreciated assets that we provide is the test lab. We get game builds from our developer partners and the test lab plays through them to get the real end-user experience. This helps to find and feedback bugs to the developer, test and ensure a solid ATI Eyefinity experience, and generate single card and ATI CrossFireX™ technology performance info that’s fed back to our engineers to help with driver development. Through this process we catch most bugs long before gamers would ever know they existed.
via Behind the scenes with the AMD Gaming Evolved team | AMD at Play.
Guru3d has posted a video showing an Eyefinity6 setup in action. The take-away from this video, just like the last one we posted about, is that in a 3×2 configuration, the bezels get in the way. This is especially true in first person shooter games.
AMD is reclaiming a bit of the OpenGL crowd with their latest beta drivers that bring OpenGL3.3 and OpenGL4.0 support to their newer hardware. If you have a Radeon HD5400, HD5500, HD5600, or HD5700 then you can load up the new driver and begin playing with everything OpenGL4.0 has to offer (except double-precision support, which is coming later).
The fact that we are able to announce our support for OpenGL 3.3 and OpenGL 4.0 at launch is an incredible feat on the part of our OpenGL software team, and speaks volumes to the commitment and continued support that the entire team brings to the many developers utilizing OpenGL. In fact, with the launch of these updates, industry pundits have commented that OpenGL is in for a renaissance of sorts. As a company that believes in and encourages open and industry standards, maintaining OpenGL as a strong and viable graphics API is important to AMD.
via Ready, Willing and Able – AMD Supports OpenGL 3.3 and OpenGL 4.0 | AMD Developer Central Blogs.
Previously [H]ard|OCP posted a video reviewing how easy it is to game with ATI’s eyefinity feature, assuming that you have the right hardware and LCD screens to do it. Now, [H]ard|OCP has posted a video review of the gaming performance of the ATI Radeon 5870 2GB graphics card. This card is running a 3×2 tiled display using Eyefinity. While it is a cool idea, the real question is how does it really play? From the introduction to the video:
Just to be clear, this is not our review of the ATI Radeon 5870 2GB Eyefinity 6 video card that will soon be available. This is however a look at what sort of gaming experience you should expect if you were using one to push six displays.
We take the Eyefinity 6 single-GPU card for a spin in some of the latest video games out, including: Metro 2033, Supreme Commander 2, Aliens vs. Predator, Bad Company 2, Batman, and Borderlands. 5760×2160 resolution is impressive, no matter how you look at it, but does it create a good gaming experience?
The take-away from the video is that in a 3×2 configuration, the bezels get in the way. This is especially true in first person shooter games. Click through the link to see the video.
via ATI Radeon 5870 2GB 3X2 Eyefinity Gaming Experience | [H]ard|OCP.
Guru3d has been playing around with the new, and still unreleased, Eyefinity6 cards from AMD. Eyefinity6 graphics cards are slated to be released on March 29.
Currently we are testing ATI’s Radeon 5870 Eyefinity6 – in CrossfireX actually. Early next week we’ll have a nice article ready for you where we’ll show you how to build such a setup, what is needed. And then obviously we’ll have a chat about performance but most of all we like to show you little video showcases with a lot of games.
At last week’s MIX10 event, several people talked about NVidia driving IE9 with GPU acceleration, but ATI was there as well. A new blog post from AMD reaffirms their own commitment to GPGPU, in particular the new IE9 features. These two bullets in particular:
# GPU acceleration enables improved screen response, higher quality text as well as high-quality screen zooming. These features are enabled by the latest ATI Radeon™ HD graphics cards that support DirectX® 10 and DirectX® 11. This can help the browser experience be more intuitive, fluid and dynamic.
# Introduced with Windows® 7, Direct2D is a hardware-accelerated, immediate-mode 2-D graphics API that provides high performance and high-quality rendering for 2-D geometry, bitmaps and text. With IE9’s support of Direct2D and open HTML5 standards enabling richer multimedia tasks, AMD’s CPU and GPU technology can offer outstanding support for these rich graphical experiences.
Most of this is just PR fluff, as NVidia cards run Direct2D just as well. The one big win is that NVidia still doesn’t have a DX11 card on the market (Fermi will change that next week, if it’s actually available for purchase). The one haunting bullet is this:
IE9 is expected to offer greatly increased JavaScript performance over prior versions of IE. A new JIT will generate code based on the system’s processor, which we expect to provide an improved experience on AMD CPUs.
Could AMD have worked with Microsoft to ‘optimize’ the new JIT engine to work better with an AMD CPU + ATI GPU pairing? I suppose it’s possible. Most likely it’s still just PR fluff, but it does raise the question.
via Visualizing a More Vivid Internet at MIX10 | The Virtualization Blog.
[H]ard|OCP has posted a review of the performance of the Catalyst 10.3a drivers. Basically they show that there was some performance gains in all the games. Personally, I think that the driver release is an attempt to spoil the Nvidia GeForce GTX 480 and 470 launch. The rumor is that these two Nvidia cards perform only 5% to 10% better than similar ATI cards. If that is so, then the following statement from the article is particularly poignant.
We generally saw performance improvements in every game we tested; there is no question about that. AMD should be commended for staying vigilant on improving performance in games. We know these guys work hard at it. However, it does have to be said that most of these improvements don’t add up to changing the gameplay experience. Anything under a 10% performance improvement can pretty much be written off in gamer’s eyes. To gamers, these small increases in performance are meaningless if they don’t let you enable an extra in-game option or raise graphics settings.
via Catalyst Performance – AMD’s ATI Catalyst 10.3a Driver Performance | [H]ard|OCP.
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