HIS Radeon HD 5870

HIS Radeon HD 5870 review

Can a graphics chip to be too powerful? We've been pondering that puzzle ever since AMD launched the Radeon HD 5870. The key metric here is die size which is a factor of the number and size of transistors in any given chip.For the 5870, AMD more than doubled the transistor count compared with the previous generation. So, despite a shrink from 55nm to 40nm transistors, it's a much larger and more expensive chip. The result was a launch price over £300. That's fully £100 more than the 4870's launch sticker.At the very least, this goes against the PR messaging AMD has been putting out for the last 18 months or so in which it promised to deliver maximum bang for buck in the £200-ish segment with its top single-GPU board. According to the corporate spiel, the uber high end will be covered by dual-GPU boards going forward.In that context, the 5870 feels a little overblown. Yes, it's a fabulous card capable of astonishing feats of rendering performance. But it's a big, old school bruiser in many ways. It's the longest single-GPU graphics we've ever seen. Likewise, at 241 Watts under peak load, it's a bit of a gas guzzler.That said, however big it is you can hardly call it inefficient. Nvidia's new GTX 400 series is barely any faster despite packing around 50 per cent more transistors.