Radeon HD Series 5000 features

So then let's first have a chat about the generic 5870 specifications and features. Let's have a peek at some of the key features for this product:

• 1GB GDDR5 memory
• ATI Eyefinity technology with support for up to six displays
• ATI Stream technology
• Designed for DirectCompute 5.0 and OpenCL
• Accelerated Video Transcoding (AVT)
• Compliant with DirectX 11 and earlier revisions
• Supports OpenGL 3.1
• ATI CrossFireX™ multi-GPU support for highly scalable performance
• ATI Avivo™ HD video and display technology
• Dynamic power management with ATI PowerPlay technology
• DL-DVI, DL-DVI, DisplayPort, HDMI
• PCI Express® 2.0 support

First let's focus on the sheer technical specifications. Transistor count for example. The number of transistors always works as an indicator of how powerful a product will be. For example, the Radeon HD 4870 which we all know and love for its performance had 956 million transistors embedded onto that die. The new Radeon HD 5800 GPUs have 2.15 billion transistors. Correct, that is 2150 million transistors tucked away in a small chip. The fabrication node was 40nm for this product, resulting in a die size of 334 mm², which for AMD is monolithic, yet thanks to the 40nm fabrication process only a third bigger than the previous 4890 GPU.

Now you'd think with so many transistors high clock frequencies would be an issue. Incorrect, the high-end Radeon HD 5870 will be clocked at a cool 850 MHz. Shader processors then, we went from 800 Shader processors on the Radeon HD 4850/4870/4890 to 1600 shader processors (also called stream processors) on the Radeon HD 5870. That's doubled up. The ROPs went up from 16 to 32 as well and sure... texture units from 40 to 80 as well.

The Radeon HD 5850 will have some units cut away though. 1440 Shader cores, still we find 32 ROPS and 72 texture units. This product will for example be a good heap faster than say, a GeForce GTX 285.

But now ... the R5870 Lightning ...