September 23rd, 2009
AMD debuts Radeon HD 5800 series GPUs with DirectX 11 support
Today sees AMD lift the lid on the first of it’s next generation Radeon HD 5800 series GPUs featuring DirectX 11 support.
All the big vendors (Sapphire, XFX, ASUS, PowerColor …) will be launching cards 5800-series based cards shortly. For example, Sapphire is launching two new cards: Radeon HD 5870 and Radeon HD 5850.
Both cards feature dual-DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort outputs, and both cards are compatible with ATI’s Eyefinity technology. Pricing at the moment is a little vague, but Newegg has a Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 listed as pre-order for $379.99.
Both cards feature a 150GB/s memory interface supporting GDDR5 memory. The HD 5870 offers 1600 stream processors, 80 texture units and 2.7 Teraflops (single precision) or 544Gflops (double precision) of computing power (roughly twice the computing power of previous generation cards), while the HD 5850 offers 1440 stream processors and 72 texture units.
In the HD 5800 series the UVD (Unified Video Decoder) has been enhanced to be able simultaneously to decode two 1080p HD video streams and to be able to display HD video in high quality with Windows Aero mode enabled. HDMI capability has also been upgraded to HDMI 1.3a with Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio.
If you’re a hardcore hardware enthusiast, it’s time to spend more moneyI’m afraid!
Adrian is a technology journalist and author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology. He also runs a popular blog called The PC Doctor. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations
Want to get in touch? Got a tip? Feel free to drop me a note! I ALWAYS respect anonymity. I'm also on Twitter (@the_pc_doc)
Right to Reply: Should any industry representatives wish to comment on any posts on Hardware 2.0, I will be happy to publish their reply verbatim on this blog.
Subscribe to Hardware 2.0 via Email alerts or RSS.
