Our review of the ATI FirePro V8750 workstation GPU showed that the card is blazing fast at DCC. We tested the V8750 against the venerable NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX, and the difference in performance was staggering. But the 8800 GTX is almost four years old, and the question kept pouring in: How would the V8750 fare against the fastest single GPU on earth?

It just so happens that Icrontic recently fitted its test bench with such a GPU, the ATI Radeon HD 5870. And with that, it’s time to finally put the question to rest: How does the best workstation card AMD offers compare to the Radeon HD 5870, a desktop card that’s 100% faster on paper? The results may shock you.

The ATI Radeon HD 5870 is the flagship DirectX 11 GPU. Released on September 23, it is the fastest of the four available GPUs compatible with DirectX 11. As with any new flagship GPU release, gamers and enthusiasts have flocked to NewEgg and other retailers to buy it. It’s fast, it’s efficient, and it answers “yes” to the legendary “Can it play Crysis?” question. But will it blend?

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ATI has just recently published a new beta for their Stream SDK, a package designed to assist developers in creating GPGPU apps for ATI graphics adapters. The new package primarily adds OpenCL 1.0 support and, while all of that is well and good, it has also tipped the firm’s hand by revealing evidence of the Radeon HD 5900 series.

A quick peek at the new INF file for the SDK-compatible GPU driver lists the following entries:

“ATI Radeon HD 5900 Series” = ati2mtag_Evergreen, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_689C
“EG CEDAR” = ati2mtag_Evergreen, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_68E8
“EG CYPRESS” = ati2mtag_EvergreenGL, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_6888
“EG JUNIPER” = ati2mtag_EvergreenGL, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_68A8
“EG REDWOOD    ” = ati2mtag_Evergreen, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_68DE

What the 5900 constitutes is anyone’s guess. If history is any indicator, it should be a juiced-up version of the 5870 with higher frequencies as a result of improved yields.

Rounding out the list, we see Cypress (Radeon HD 5870/5850), Juniper (Radeon HD 5770/5750), and Cedar and Redwood which have not yet shown in the market. Those cards are believed to be low-end adapters suitable for the OEM channel.

Last Thursday we caught a glimpse of the Radeon HD 5770, but a few 3DMark runs didn’t really answer any questions. Wonder no more, however, as today is the day when the Radeon 5770 hits the streets.

The first thing that can be noticed is that the 5770’s specifications do not stray far from that of the 4870’s. When translating the paper to testing, the spread still holds true: The 5770 and 4870 trade blows, with the 4870 pulling a touch ahead. The 5770 lags behind when memory bandwidth is at a premium, while it pulls ahead when fill rate is at a premium.

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Earlier in the month we spied the Radeon HD 5750 at a DX11 event in China, but we were left to speculate over specs and speed. Guesstimating be damned, though, as the 5750 is now on the shelves of etailers everywhere. Let’s take a look at how it stacks up.

The first thing that can be noticed is that the 5750’s specifications fall short of the Radeon HD 4870. When translating the paper to testing, the spread still holds true: The 5750 frequently falls short of the 4870, sometimes by over 20 percent.

From the perspective of competition, the GeForce GTs 250 is the 5750’s main opponent. There are no solid victories here, though. The 5750 and the GTs 250 trade blows every time you change the title or the resolution.

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Last week Thursday the world caught its first glimpse of the Radeon HD 5750, but now its big brother, the Radeon HD 5770, is out to play with benchmarks as well.

In all, the card appears to be a touch slower than the Radeon HD 4890, GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 275 in DirectX 10, while it keeps up with the joneses in lesser DirectX levels. This breakdown could be explained by test cards using 512MB GDDR5, but the retail version is expected to improve to 1024MB.

Like the 5750, the Radeon HD 5770 also uses a 128-bit memory bus for a grand total of 76.8GBps, or about 500MBps than its little brother. Other improvements made to the 5770 include 800 stream processors to the 5750’s 720, a 50MHz memory clockspeed hike to 1200MHz, and a core frequency boost from 700MHz to 825MHz.

If the performance doesn’t seem all that marvelous, consider its expected MSRP of $190. That puts the squeeze on the GTX 275, a $200 card that’s significantly more expensive for Green to produce.

Both the HD 5770 and the 5750 are expected to launch in just a few days.

Slowly but surely, AMD is letting its lesser Radeon 5000 cards trickle into the public space. Just three days after the debut of the 5850, we are seeing what may be the first signs that the Radeon HD 5750 is going to retail.

According to the report, the card uses an unknown quantity of 4.6GHz GDDR5 connected to a 128-bit bus for 76.3GBps of bandwidth. The card is also armed with a 700MHz core clock and 1120 stream processors. We’ve put those stats in a table with the 4870, 5850 and 5870 for comparison.

If these numbers are true, then the 5750 is already the victim of an identity crisis. These figures make for a GPU that’s altogether slower than the Radeon HD 4870, a card that is priced similarly to the expected MSRP ($180) of the 5750. This could make the 5750 a tough sell for users looking to upgrade with little concern for DirectX 11 support. There are more of those people than you might imagine.

In the end, we’ll have to wait for an official launch for all the numbers to come out proper, but we’re already concerned that it may not come up roses for the boys in red.

Robert Hallock gave us the full breakdown on the new Radeon HD 5870 and the 5800-series in general, but missing was the traditional entry level part, the HD 5850. The fancy card came out without the HD 5850 in tow, walking the red carpet alone.

So a week later, the HD 5850 finally shows up late to the party. Call it a considerate gesture to let the HD 5870 have its time in the spotlight. Or, call it a pretentious move on ATI’s part. Just remember, it’s not being pretentious when you’ve got the skills to back it up.

The HD 5850 has the skills.

“The Radeon HD 5850 manages to outshine the fastest single-GPU GeForce card overall while costing less, drawing less power, and producing less noise. We wouldn’t be surprised to see Nvidia cut prices in the near future, but in any case, the 5850 is hands-down the second-fastest single-GPU graphics card on the market.” — The Tech Report

The card is a shorter than the HD 5870, quiet enough, and a heck of a performer. For $260 you get performance just a notch lower than the HD 5870, but still with all the benefits of current generation DX11 hardware. The numbers are all there. If you need your daily fix of graphs and numbers, we’re partial to the Tech Report review above, along with the following.

• Hexus
• Guru3D
• PC Perspective

Advanced Micro Devices has begun an initiative to create an open source and cross-platform solution for GPU physics.

Dubbed “Bullet Physics,” AMD has partnered with Pixelux Entertainment to end the clash between proprietary physics solutions like AMD’s Havok and NVIDIA’s PhysX. The new engine is written in OpenCL, a vendor-neutral platform which simplifies the process of coding for today’s processor-like GPUs. The duo is also working to develop Bullet Physics for DirectCompute, or the DirectX 11 standard for GPU offloading.

AMD’s CTO of Graphics Eric Demers said that an open physics engine will end the petty war between incompatible physics engines.

“Proprietary physics solutions divide consumers and ISVs, while stifling true innovation; our competitors even develop code that they themselves admit will not work on hardware other than theirs,” he said. “By working with Pixelux and others to enable open support of physics on OpenCL and DirectX 11 capable devices we are taking the exact opposite approach.”

The move is an obvious slap at rival firm NVIDIA which moved in June to disable PhysX offloading if a GeForce is not the primary renderer. While that change and its motivations are only just now coming to light, AMD seems to have short-circuited the brewing conflict with an engine that will run on GeForces and Radeons alike.

“Pixelux wants ensure that our technology can take advantage of the computing resources that any particular hardware platform offers without locking in our users to any single platform,” said Mitchell Bunnell, CEO of Pixelux. “By working with AMD to run our software in OpenCL we stay true to that goal.”

The maturity of the engine and a list of supporting developers were not immediately available. We have also contacted NVIDIA for a statement regarding their perspective on the new initiative.

For some time now we have believed that the as yet-unreleased Radeon HD 5870 X2 (codename “Hemlock”) was to be a dual-GPU/single-PCB part. These suspicions were confirmed this weekend thanks to an AMD-run DirectX 11 forum which had the GPU on hand.

As can be seen from the images, the 5870 X2 uses a 6+8-pin connector configuration for power. Secondly, we’ve estimated the length of the card at 10.7 inches (271.51mm) based on the length of the PCI Express x16 connector.

Outstanding unconfirmed rumors include:

• A TDP of 376W (2*188W for HD 5870);
• A November launch date and
• A $599 MSRP

While we’ll place our bets on a November launch as well, the Radeon HD 5000 series’ launch has lead us to believe that a ~293W TDP and a $579 MSRP are more likely.

For more information on features the Radeon HD 5870 X2 will offer, Icrontic has published articles which detail the Radeon HD 5870 GPU and DirectX 11.

In case you missed it, Icrontic relayed a report detailing an exchange between an unspecified NVIDIA source and TweakTown’s Shane Baxtor regarding the Radeon HD 5870.

In the piece, Baxtor claims that NVIDIA PR emailed TweakTown to snoop on whether or not they had received review samples for the Radeon 5870 graphics card from rival AMD. Baxtor went on to say that NVIDIA had a few bullet points that they felt the journalist should hit when reviewing the rival company’s card. Baxtor felt he would be best serving his readers by forwarding the inquiries to AMD PR for rebuttal–frankly a maneuver to be commended. AMD subsequently responded, and made for some interesting reading as a result.

It all appears to be the typical game of Silicon Valley ping pong, but then, something curious happens. Yesterday morning, TweakTown posted an update:

“UPDATE - NVIDIA’s PR company for Asia Pacific in Singapore, CIZA Concept, has contacted us and claimed that the source of the questions was from them as “our observations, as industry watchers” and not NVIDIA. We always get these types of questions and they seem to read like they are from NVIDIA, so we are unsure. We were asked to state this in this news post, which has been done here.

We were also contacted by phone about this by NVIDIA and we have offered them the chance to do a follow-up. We are in the process of preparing questions and will have them answered early next week in a new news post.”

The plot thickens! Today NVIDIA’s Senior PR Manager Brian Burke engaged me on Twitter. His response more or less directly contradicted the TechTown piece, stating that DirectX 11 was in fact a good thing for gamers. Intrigued, I asked Mr. Burke for an official statement. I also asked him if he was aware of the source of the original comments.

Did NVIDIA or its Asian PR firm ask TweakTown to consider their points for TweakTown’s Radeon 5870 review? Did Burke actually think AMD’s moving forward with DirectX 11 was somehow punishing gamers? Here is his reply:

We checked with our Asia PR team and they assured us that they did not send out these questions.

Pushing technology forward is one of our core beliefs, which is why we push to innovate even when no standards are available yet. We want people to have the best experience possible with their games.  This is why we focus on adding things like PhysX and 3D Vision to PC games. We also support DX 11 and all industry standards.

DX11 is a very good thing. Anything that makes the PC gaming experience better is great. Our next generation GeForce will support DX11, PhysX and 3D Vision so gamers don’t have to compromise.

In essence, NVIDIA says that they do not know who TweakTown’s source is, and TweakTown more or less admits that they don’t have a clear understanding where the communication came from as well.

As we look deeper to uncover the truth of this finger-pointing, I have contacted TweakTown’s Shane Baxtor who has advised simply to “stay tuned.”

Few events inspire more geek euphoria than the release of new graphics technology. Of course, it helps to be at the forefront. This round, with NVIDIA lagging a bit behind, they felt that there were some tough questions TweakTown journalist Shane Baxtor should be asking in regards to AMD’s new powerhouse, the Radeon 5870.

Readers, we are not making this up; apparently NVIDIA is taking the position that PC gamers are somehow being punished by AMD for moving forward with DirectX 11 technology. NVIDIA cites the delay of DiRT 2, the title being bundled as a free download with every 5870 purchased.

Mr. Baxtor wisely takes an unbiased approach and forwards the questions to an AMD representative for rebuttal; AMD responds, saying the story would be different if NVIDIA were first. Lulz ensue. Get the full scoop at TweakTown.

If the Radeon 5870 is punishment, then AMD can bend me over and spank me. Spank me hard, AMD; I have been a very naughty boy.

Those wily sleuths at TheInq may have uncovered pricing for AMD’s upcoming DX11-ready Evergreen parts.

Radeon HD 5870 X2 (Codename Hemlock): $599 MSRP
Radeon HD 5870 (Codename Cypress): $399 MSRP
Radeon HD 5850 (Codename Juniper): $299 MSRP

Remember that the 5870 X2 will be a dual-GPU/single PCB solution, while the 5870 will be a single GPU/single PCB solution. Lastly, the 5850, like the Radeon HD 4850 that came before it, pares back the 5870’s offering with a lesser clockspeed and (more than likely) fewer stream processors.

Given that ol’ Green’n'Red is priming a shindig by the bay on September 10, we can’t imagine the goods being very far behind.

UPDATE: We have been receiving reports that the leaked MSRPs are in Oz dollars. If that’s true, the USD MSRPs are $505 (5870 X2), $336 (5870) and $252 (5850). Given that parts sold outside of the US are slightly more expensive than a currency exchange would dictate, you might even be able to cut another 10-15% off the USD price.

Conjecture is fun, innit guv?