Before we can judge the merits of today’s Radeon 5770 and 5750 cards, we first have to take a look at ATI’s holiday lineup for the end of this year. This is the latest info we just obtained hot off the presses from ATI’s sales team:
As you can see, a number of existing ATI Radeon products have now reached end of life (EOL) status. That means ATI’s no longer producing them, so once existing inventory is sold out, they’re gone for good. The Radeon 4850, which isn’t depicted here, sells for about $90 and up and is no longer in production. The same applies for the Radeon 4770 and 4870.
In the case of the Radeon 4850 and 4770, ATI’s 5750 512MB has been designated to replace them, while the 4870 SKUs are being phased out in favor of the 5750 1GB and 5770.
Clearly based on the benchmark results we presented today, the Radeon 5750 has no problems displacing both the 4850 and 4770, and to a lesser extent, NVIDIA’s GeForce GTS 250. Thanks to its 720-shader architecture, high clock speeds, and GDDR5 memory, the Radeon 5750 outruns the ATI cards in most situations, and while the GeForce GTS 250 generally outruns the 5750, when you also factor the 5750’s lower power consumption and feature set (DirectX 11, Eyefinity, HDMI 1.3 etc), it becomes more of a no-brainer: if you’ve got about $110 in your pocket and you’re looking for the best card money can buy, look no further than ATI’s Radeon 5750 512MB.
The 1GB Radeon 5750 board is nice as well, but it won’t offer you any performance improvements with today’s games at 1280x1024 or 1600x1200, which are still common gaming resolutions among users in this price bracket. As a result, its price/performance ratio isn’t as high as the 512MB board for most gamers.
Due to its higher pricing, the Radeon 5770 is in a tougher situation. It isn’t the no-brainer upgrade that the 5750 512MB is. This is because it’s priced to compete with the Radeon 4870 1GB – which is actually a little cheaper – yet it performs slower overall. Ditto for its other competitor, the GeForce GTX 260.
Depending on how often you upgrade your graphics card, the 5770 is either a good buy, or a pass in favor of the GeForce GTX 260 or Radeon 4870.
If you plan to upgrade again in 6-12 months, you’ll probably want to go with a Radeon 4870 1GB or GeForce GTX 260. Thanks to their superior memory bandwidth, these cards perform better than the 5770 in today’s games, which are largely based on DX9 or DX10.
As you saw in our BattleForge benchmarks though, the tables turn in DX11 apps. Here the 5770 is able to leverage DirectX 11 to gain a performance edge over the Radeon 4870, even though the 5770 is giving up significant amount of memory bandwidth to the 4870. Future DX11 titles like Aliens vs Predator and DiRT 2 will be using DX11 even more extensively than BattleForge, so it may be able to pull away even further from the 4870. Therefore if you plan to hold on to your card a little longer, say 2 or 3 years, you’ll definitely be better off in the long run going with Radeon 5770.
When the Juniper GPU was being developed, we doubt ATI’s engineers on the project foresaw that they’d be going up against the 4870 on launch day: ATI’s price cuts over the last 9 months have been unprecedented. Fortunately by arming the card with such high clock speeds, they’ve made it an interesting race with high-end cards from yesteryear like the GTX 260 and 4870. Once DX11 is more prevalent, the 5770 will pull even further away.
Basically the 5770 is a solid card and we think ATI’s done a good job with it given the circumstances. Sure, we’d like to see it at an even $150, but once board partners get rolling with their second generation cards we’re sure it will hit that price point pretty quickly, with factory OC’ed boards pushing it even closer to the 4870.
ATI’s pulled off a pretty impressive feat so far. In less than 30 days, we’ve got DX11 cards spanning price points from $109 to nearly $400. It took months for them to accomplish this last generation. Obviously they’ve left themselves room for a ~$200 Radeon 5830, but we don’t expect that card to appear before the 4890 hits EOL status, which should occur later this quarter or in Q1 of next year. And we’ll see Hemlock hopefully next month establish new levels of performance for the hardcore gaming crowd.
A lot of gamers shopping for a new card for Modern Warfare 2 this Christmas will likely be flocking to ATI’s latest DX11 cards, just as the 8800 GT was the must have upgrade for a lot of gamers for Crysis a few years back. NVIDIA needs to hurry up and offer something, anything, to counter this. Otherwise we anticipate ATI will gain a lot of share in the discrete graphics segment this quarter.
Batman: Arkham City PC Review Batman: Arkham City is the sequel to 2009’s smash-hit action game Batman: Arkham Asylum. As the name suggests, you will be reprising your role as the Caped Crusader and going against an even larger 'prison' filled with Gotham's criminals and villains. A textbook example on how to do a proper sequel, Arkham City takes what worked in the original, excised or improved upon what didn’t, and elevated everything to an even greater scope. The PC version suffered from a few months of delay, but in that time, Rocksteady worked closely to NVIDIA to implement some familiar technologies from the last game, such as PhysX and 3D Vision, along with new DirectX 11 optimizations. But how well was the whole package executed? Read on to find out!
Saints Row: The Third PC Review Saints Row is one of most unique series of games to build upon the open-world action template forged by Grand Theft Auto, and has met with plenty of critical and commercial success since it began on consoles back in 2006. This latest iteration, titled Saints Row: The Third promises the most outlandish fun and freedom of customization of them all, and in a much more PC-friendly package than its predecessor. Does it live up to those expectations and, more importantly, is it worth the price of admission? Find out in Will's latest review!
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim PC Review The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is Bethesda Softworks’ latest offering in their series of epic fantasy RPGs, as well as one of the most highly-anticipated PC titles of 2011. As the Dovahkiin, or Dragonborn, prepare to take the fight to the mythical beasts that have returned to the realm after centuries of slumber, all the while exploring a huge and highly-detailed open world.
The PC version of the game promises enhanced graphical fidelity, standard RPG trimmings such as hotkeys and quick-save, as well as unbridled mod support, something we’ll all be thankful for once they release that SDK. Skyrim has already sold millions of copies and set records for play-time on Steam... Find out why in today's review, which happens to be one of the biggest and most in-depth articles on the subject out there!
L.A. Noire Complete Edition PC Review L.A. Noire, as the name clearly states, is a video game built on the tropes of one of the greatest periods of American cinema: film noir. Developed by the now defunct Australian developer Team Bondi and published by Rockstar Games, this title has been out on consoles for a full six months before finally making its way to the PC. This “Complete Edition” of the game features improved graphics, keyboard/mouse controls, and every bit of previously-released DLC for free. But was it truly worth the wait? Read on and find out!
Intel Core i7-3960X Sandy Bridge-E Performance Review
Today marks the launch date for Intel’s Sandy Bridge-E line of processors, a new family of high-end Core i7 products based on the LGA 2011 platform. This new socket is poised to replace the existing LGA 1366 specification used by the more powerful Nehalem and Westmere parts from the past couple years, specifically Bloomfield and Gulftown, the Core i7-9xx+ line of CPUs.
With 6 cores, 15MB of cache, and support for quad-channel DDR3-1600 memory, the Core i7-3960X sounds like quite a catch. Want to know more about it and how it performs? Read on!
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Xbox 360 Review
The self-appointed "most anticipated game in history" launched worldwide this past Tuesday. Why, it's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, of course (of course), what else? Unsurprisingly, the military FPS debate between this and Battlefield 3 rages on, but now that both have been released, surely we can take a look and objectively evaluate them both? Luke's taken the Xbox version of MW3 for a spin this week, so to find out what he thinks of it in today's review!
Stronghold 3 Review
The latest sequel in the long-running real-time strategy franchise from FireFly Studios, Stronghold 3 is all about building your dream castle and defending it against sieging enemies. Almost exactly one decade after the first game was released, this new title promises a return to the classic and well-received gameplay that has been strayed so far from in more recent iterations. Does it live up to those expectations? Will (AKA Synchronous Failure) tells us all about it in his first official FiringSquad review, so read on!
Battlefield 3 PC Review - Single-player Impressions
One of the most highly-anticipated PC games of the year is upon us; Battlefield 3 is now available in North America! EA/DICE have finally delivered a sequel to the core Battlefield franchise, a proper follow-up to BF2. Having played through the game's single-player campaign already, ahead of the multiplayer festivities kicking off around midnight, I figured I'd share my impressions ASAP. Is it really a worthy addition to the core Battlefield series, or just another bullet point on the back of the box? Read on and find out!
Wrecked: Revenge Revisited Supersonic Software Interview
Following up on our hands-on preview from earlier this month, here's an interview with Supersonic Software, creators of Wrecked: Revenge Revisited. The game's coming out on XBLA and PSN in a matter of weeks, but for now, Luke chats with the developer about its predecessors Mashed and Micro Machines, how difficult it can be to get an indie game published, the closure of Codemasters' Guildford branch, and more!
Orcs Must Die! PC Review Orcs Must Die! is the first release from an independent developer named Robot Entertainment. Fans of classic real-time strategy games may have heard that name before, as the outfit is comprised of many veterans from Ensemble Studios, creators of the Age of Empires series.
Equal parts action and strategy, this is a tower defense game that not only puts you in command, but on the front lines of combat, as well. Slaughter thousands of orcs, ogres and other vile creatures of fantasy that invade your fortresses through 24 levels of the story-based campaign. With high levels of replayability thanks to its scoring and leaderboard functionality, multiple difficulty levels, and various styles of play, it sounds a steal at only $15. Does it deliver on all that’s promised, though? Read on and find out!
Power Consumption and Overclocking
Digg
Del.icio.us
Reddit
SU
furl
