Popular Articles*
- How To Install XP and Vista With a USB Flash Drive
- EVGA GeForce GTX 275 FTW Edition Review
- Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R Motherboard Review
- Sapphire HD 4890 Toxic Review
- Diamond Radeon HD 4670 1GB GDDR3 Review
- EVGA GeForce GTX 275 Superclocked Edition: Single, Dual and Tri SLI Review
- Antec P193 Case Review
- Sapphire HD 4670 512MB GDDR4 Review
Affiliate News*
- CoolIT Systems ECO A.L.C. CPU Cooler @ Tweak Town
- Epson WorkForce 610 All-in-One Printer Review @ Hardware Secrets
- Patriot Viper II Sector 5 2000MHz 4GB Memory Kit Review @ Legit Reviews
- Able Planet True Fidelity NC300B Active Noise Canceling Headphones Review @ Tweaknews
- ICY DOCK MB662US-2S External RAID Dual Hard Drive Enclosure Review @ ThinkComputers
- AMD outlines its Gamers Manifesto @ Tech Report
- Arctic Cooling's ArcticSound E361-BM and E351-WM Stereo Headsets @ MEGATech News
- Patriot Gamer-Series DDR3-1600 Memory Kit @ Benchmark Reviews
| Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 and 5850 DirectX 11 Graphics Card Evaluation |
|
| Written by Paul E. Marini Jr. -BackDraft- | |
| Wednesday, 21 October 2009 00:00 | |
|
Page 1 of 16 IntroductionFace it, everything changes, whether on a daily, monthly or annual basis, things change. Many of us are not accustomed to change and don’t take it very well, while others accept change as a possibility of having improvements. For those of us who enjoy computers, a change will be coming soon and that change will be in the form of a new Windows Operating System. With the launch of Windows 7 comes a change from DirectX 10 to Directx11, DirectX is the part of Windows that controls many of the ways we view graphics that are generated via a video card to our screens.
What DirectX 11 brings to the table is the better ability to utilize the compute power of a GPU (Graphics Processing Unit). Unlike a CPU, a GPU can process in parallel, so it takes less time to render, transcode and compute equations than a CPU. This, in turn, will give the end user a better overall computing experience.
ATI is the first video card manufacturer to produce a DirectX 11 capable GPU and have named these the 5000 Series. At this time, there are four discreet Direct X video cards available, the 5750 and 5770, which are mainstream, and the 5850 and 5870, which are gamer (enthusiast) cards. Sapphire Technologies, a manufacturer of ATI Radeon Graphics video cards, has released their first round of 5000 series video cards and they are available to the public.
The Sapphire Radeon HD 5870, HD 5850 and HD 5770 are all DirectX 11 capable and will be the three cards I will be evaluating. The Sapphire HD 5850 and 5870, which are high end mainstream and enthusiast level cards, and the HD 5770, which is a mainstream card, all offer the ability to empower your visual computing experience via DirectCompute.
Share this Review |


