ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB Benchmarks - Catalyst Driver Comparison
This is another article in our Benchmarking Series. I received my 5870 back in November, and worked through setting up my Eyefinity rig. I put the card through its paces in a set of benchmarks (some updated benchmarks in Win7) and a review of both the HD 5870 and Eyefinity.
Since that time, we've developed a closer relationship with ATI and are now on their PR rotation and receive review samples of their cards. Over the last couple of months ATI has released a number of new cards (5600, 5500, 5400, 5830, etc.), and put out monthly updates to the Catalyst drivers. The team at ATI sent me samples of the "mainstream" cards (56, 55 & 54) as they released, and filled in the gaps of already released products. With this I set about putting all the card through a series of benchmarks at key resolutions from 1680x1050 through 5760x1200.
Along the way I noticed that the HD 5830 and HD 5850 were beating some of the scores I had with my original HD 5870 benchmarks. Knowing that driver updates both add features and improve performance, I went ahead and re-tested the 5870 with the 10.3 Preview Driver. I found a number of instances where the newer drivers offer significantly better performance. My rig currently stands at:
- ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB Catalyst 9.10
- EVGA X58 Tri-SLI Motherboard
- Intel i7 920 at 4x2.67GHz
- 12GB G.Skill DDR3 RAM
- 2x Samsung 320GB T-Series HDD (one for the OS and games; one for swap file and FRAPS)
- LG Super Multi Blu (HD-DVD/Blu-Ray Player)
- Onboard audio
- Corsair HX1000
- Antec Skeleton
- Logitch K340 Keyboard & Performance MX Mouse
- 3x Dell U2410
The Benchmarks
All benchmarking is done with both CPU and GPU at stock clock speeds. Overclocking can get you better performance, and many parts like the i7-920 are great in this arena. However, not everyone is comfortable with overclocking, and I prefer to test hardware as it was manufactured and sold. Games are tested at max settings with 4xAA and 16xAF unless otherwise noted. Also, the built-in benchmark or demo is used unless otherwise noted.
Some titles such as Half-Life 2, and Grand Theft Auto IV saw no change in performance in the different driver revisions. Titles such as Battle Forge and Far Cry 2 (DX10) showed a consistent improvement of about 2fps across the resolutions. However, we see dramatic improvements in Batman: AA, Dirt 2, HAWX and the Night portion of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R Call of Pripyat demo.
