Conclusion
I see two types of buyers considering these cards.
First, there are the value-oriented enthusiasts who try to keep their systems updated once a year or so. They’d love the fastest technology, but know that flagships always carry the largest pricing premiums. These are the folks who kept an eye on our Best Graphics Cards for the Money column, and when Radeon HD 4870s hit $140 bucks, they bought (and got a killer deal, even by today’s standards). If you belong to that group, are looking at “Radeon HD 5700-series” and expecting a big step up in performance, even the 5770 is a disappointment. After all, if you own a 4870 or 4890 already, that card is faster in today’s games.
Of course, there’s an X factor in play: ATI’s value-adds. Eyefinity—the ability to run three concurrent display outputs—is completely unique at the high-end still. It’s particularly exciting at the $159 and $129 price points being represented here. Likewise, the ability to bitstream Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA are capabilities previously available through $200+ sound cards. Now you can get that functionality from a DirectX 11 graphics card. Both extras are compelling enough on their own to sell these cards to the folks able to exploit their benefits today. And it’s personally telling that I’ve put one card in my desktop workstation to drive a trio of monitors, and one into my HTPC, driving a 55” Samsung LED display.
The second group of folks are upgrading from older graphics technology, or perhaps even building a first system. They don’t have a good point of reference, so they’re seeing Radeon HD 5770/5750, Radeon HD 4870, and GeForce GTX 260 on the shelf next to each other for the first time. Available for $145 online, and with consistently better performance than the 5770, ATI’s Radeon HD 4870 remains a good buy. But paying an extra $15 for Eyefinity, bitstreaming, and the promise of DirectX 11 should really be a no-brainer.
What about the Radeon HD 5750 versus GeForce GTS 250 grudge match? Again, Nvidia seems to have the faster GPU, but again, it’d be short-sighted to pass up on ATI’s value-adds at the same price point for a few frames per second. As an aside—and this is going to get me crucified in the comments—but props to Nvidia for designing a GPU that could hang around for more than two years and continue to do battle against modern architectures in modern games and come out ahead.
I think it’s our second-to-last page that’s the most telling here, though. Stepping from a 2.66 GHz Core i5-750 to the same chip running at 3.8 GHz makes almost no difference to the gamers running at 1920x1200. If it means saving a few bucks on a less expensive CPU so that you can step up to a Radeon HD 5850, that’s the move I’d most likely make.
on the test setup page;
"Corsair Dominator 4GB (3 x 2GB)"
shouldn't it be 2 x 2GB?
shouldn't these cards be able to overclock well, considering how energy efficient they are?
Where's my 5830?
The procesor bottle neck test you presented is just horrible!
For reasons readers will never know is why you left out AA in some of the bottle neck tests but added AA in some the previous benchmarks. For example on page 8 testsing farcry2 had test with AAx4 but not on the CPU bottle neck test, which is what you SHOULD be tsting for!
AA/AF uses the CPU where the graphics card can't handle it and for whatever reason you will come up with to answer me, i think you are simply trying to advertise the Core i5-750 CPU as some sort of incredible cpu that doesn't need overclocking. Are you being paid to do this on purpose are are you just really that shit at making decent review?
umm AA/AF is done purely on the graphics card.
So you're saying that someone forking out small money for a mid range gfx card sees the value in supporting three monitors? Sorry but I really can't see that proposition!
And the DX11 support to me seems a red herring too. Bit-Tech gave a more luke-warm reception and I have to say that I agree with them. DX11 is hardly a sell if the card can only just keep up with the upper-mid range in DX10? Its not like DX11 is going to increase FPS.....
Bitstreaming? Don't know enough to comment!
Thanks Chris.
Another good article.
Although Intel won't want to hear your last sentence I am sure AMD wins either way.
I think that was eskimo's point .. .wasn't it? Be happy with the Q3 earnings report.
We have long know that money spent on better graphics (or a second graphics card in SLI / CF) once you have a quad core runnng at around 3Ghz (Intel i7 or AMD Phenom II) gives much better value return for gaming than anything else.
wheres the overclocking?
Its not like DX11 is going to increase FPS.....Bitstreaming? Don't know enough to comment!
There's already battleforge out there that renders using dx11 subroutines, etc thats showing increase in fps over the dx10 version. So technically, its a game that's taking advantage of a dx11 feature to get higher fps.
http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/15721/1/
@ Anonymous 13/10/2009 16:37
Perhaps some of the people "forking out small money for a mid range gfx card" are in the market purely for a 3-monitor setup that previously they'd have to use multiple cards for? I don't know.
I would buy a 5770 for an HTPC (the idle power rating / core clock look pretty good to me) but not for anything else.
shouldn't these cards be able to overclock well, considering how energy efficient they are?
Yup. They should.
Worth noting ATI cards seem to have a lot of problems with decoding video streams - in particular there is an open problem with Win7 MCE and BBC HD over satellite.
@ anon
im pretty sure one of the big selling points of dx11 is how much more efficent it is, and how it can offer incresed performance with a higher level of visual fidelity.
so having a dx11 card will most likely prove to allow for higher framerates than a game run with a higher spec dx 10 only card.
I bought this card. My x1950 bit the dust in my last move, and I need a replacement under $200. My mobo only supports a single card, and this is probably the only upgrade I'll do for 2 years or more. At that point, my CPU will likely be a bottleneck (core 2 duo 2.1ghz, overclockable to 2.8 or so).
My thoughts: Of single card setups under $200, this one seems like the best long term value. Especially overclocked, it's as powerful as anything else at this price point, and it has DX11 support. It killed me that I bought my x1950, only to have DX10 come out and instantly obsolete my card... the 5770 won't have that problem. I recognize that I'm giving up a few fps in the short term, but in the long term... this card will be competitive for a longer time in its field.
i have a 5750 and i have oc it to gpu clock 750 and memory clock to 1250 when the card is at 97 % activity the card gets up to 64C! is that dangerous and can destroy my card?
The cards are entirely overclockable dependant on your current CPU/PSU set-up. I would advise buying an aftermarket cooling system also as the card can get incredibly hot when you unleash its potential! I myself have a 5770 and agree that it is a powerful card when combo with a good processor (e.g i5 or higher) excells in performance. And as for the price tag, its also very nice to look at for around £100 for the card (Even lower for the 5750) it is a very wise investment to make for any gaming enthusiast that doesn't want to rape their wallet.