AMD officially launches dual-GPU Radeon HD 5970

Robert Hallock 18 Nov, 2009 at 1:47am ET Article published in Tech

Jap caps mean vroom vroom! Seriously.

After speculation and leaked confirmation, AMD has officially unveiled today the Radeon HD 5970.

The Radeon HD 5970 uses two GPUs sourced from the Radeon HD 5870 and stuffs them into a single dual-slot adapter. The official retail model clocks in at 725MHz core, down from 850MHz on the 5870, and 1000MHz VRAM, down from 1200MHz. The clockspeed changes were made to allow the HD 5970 to push a power envelope of 294W load, and a minuscule 49W idle.

Rounding out the list of specs, the 5970 has dual DVI ports, HDMI, an mDP port, triple monitor support, an 8-channel audio codec, and “unlocked” clocks. AMD promises that the OverDrive limitations in the Catalyst drivers don’t apply to the 5970, and that the 5970 is minted with best-of-breed parts that are ready and waiting for your overclocking talents.

The monstrously big 12″ GPU (keep that in mind when looking to buy) has an official MSRP of $599, making it the decisive victor in the price/performance war with CrossFireX Radeon HD 5870 ($798 MSRP).

We cannot yet find any US retailers carrying the adapter, but Google Shopping suggests that ZipZoomFly once had them listed. For our neighbors to the north, NCIX reports the card as being back ordered, while the UK edition of Pricegrabber reveals nothing for the sunny side of the pond.

Hit the jump for a comparison between the specs of the leading Radeons, a snip of the PR, and some shots of the card.

Super official spec breakdown

Boring PR babble

New features and functionality of ATI Stream technology allow users to harness the ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 graphics card to enhance their computing experience, helping to improve the performance of enabled media, entertainment and productivity applications.⁴ ATI Stream technology and the HD 5970 support both Direct Compute 11 and OpenCL industry standards for application acceleration.

Delivering full-fledged performance when needed, the ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 also leads in power efficiency by automatically powering down unused GPU resources when not in use, resulting in idle desktop power consumption as low as 42 watts.⁵

The ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 is supported by a wide range of add-in-board companies, including ASK, Asus, Club 3D, Diamond, Gigabyte, High Tech, MSI, Sapphire, Tul/Power Color, Visiontek and XFX.

Bigger than Xbox

Comments

18 Nov 2009 ~ 3:08am MachineDog Strange that they would change from their normal naming scheme of adding X2 to the end. This way just adds confusion.
18 Nov 2009 ~ 4:21am lordbean I haven't had any trouble with "locked" clocks on my 5850s... didn't take someone long to release a mod that unlocks them.
18 Nov 2009 ~ 7:57am Cliff_Forster

MachineDog wrote:

Strange that they would change from their normal naming scheme of adding X2 to the end. This way just adds confusion.

I thought it was a little unusual as well, I guess because they lowered the clocks of the 5870 they felt that it might be deceptive to call it the 5870 X2.

I contend that graphics cards have always had really strange model naming methodology's.
18 Nov 2009 ~ 8:00am lordbean Not just graphics cards... Intel's CPU naming conventions for the past several years have been extremely confusing. Core 2 model numbers are difficult to get a good grasp on, and now they've called their Lynnfield 1156 chips "Core i7", even though the first Core i7s go in a completely different socket...
18 Nov 2009 ~ 6:56pm Thrax It occurs to me after reading our first look at the 5870 that the wattage figures on Hemlock are pretty impressive: 294W load/49W idle consumption. The Radeon HD 4870 (with a four) consumed just 4 less watts at idle, with 3-4x less GPU horsepower. At load, the 5970 consumes ~84% more power than the 4870, but again at 3-4x the GPU horsepower.

Even with fuzzy math, Hemlock has outrageous performance/watt characteristics.

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