Now that the ATI Radeon HD 5870 has been released to mixed reviews, focus is now turning to it’s little brother, the 5850. Whilst it only has 1,440 stream processors and a GPU running 125Mhz slower than it’s bigger brother, it is built with the same 256bit memory interface to 1Gb GDDR5 memory. Memory speed is slightly slower but the ROPs are the same as the 5870. As a result of this, power usage is lower at only 151watts maximum.

ATI Radeon HD 5870 specifications:

• Stream Processors: 1,600
• GPU frequency: 850MHz
• ROPs: 32
• Memory: 1GB GDDR5
• Memory frequency: 1.2GHz (4.8Ghz effective)
• Memory interface: 256 bit
• Memory bandwidth: 128GB/s
• Outputs: 2x DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort
• Dimensions: 9.5inch x 5inch
• Power Input: 2x 6pin PCIexpress
• Maximum power usage: 188watts
• Idle power usage: 27watts

ATI Radeon HD 5850 specifications:

• Stream Processors: 1,440
• GPU frequency: 725MHz
• ROPs: 32
• Memory: 1GB GDDR5
• Memory frequency: 1.0GHz (4Ghz effective)
• Memory interface: 256 bit
• Memory bandwidth: 128GB/s
• Outputs: 2x DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort
• Dimensions: 11inch x 5inch
• Power Input: 2x 6pin PCIexpress
• Maximum power usage: 151watts
• Idle power usage: 27watts

The 5850 is expected to be released this October for between £200 and £220. As the specifications are only a little less than the 5870, and coupled with a lower price, could this be the more popular card in the range?

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Big news this morning as the NDA has been lifted on the new cards meaning they can now go on general sale. Scan have pre-orders for the 5850 here and the 5870 here with it’s prices for the 1Gb 5850 starting from £229.29 for the XFX model, and £312.72 for the 1Gb 5870 MSI model. So far the only card in stock is the Sapphire card at £344.41.

It’s worth remembering that, at the moment, all cards are reference with absolutely no difference between manufacturers apart from the odd sticker or two. We will have to wait to see what differences the manafacturers can bring in the future.

And finally, our favourite tech website, Bit-Tech has a review of the 1Gb 5870 card here.

Edit: Overclockers have the 5850 cards for pre-order at £198.98 and 5870 cards for £299.99 and ebuyer have 5870 cards for pre-order at around £300, which are better deals than Scan. It’s a real shame to see a respected retailer overcharging customers so much.

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There has been a lot of excitement in the community regarding the new ATI 5 series video cards. One of the most talked about features has to be Eyefinity, a revolutionary system created by AMD which will be able to drive up to six high definition monitors from a single card, giving a wider field of view. Presently, video cards are generally only able to run two monitors each. ATI’s Eyefinity system creates a single, high-resolution image, which is split over multiple monitors using what ATI call ‘SLS’, or Single Large Surface. Using the SLS tool, users can configure a group of monitors to essentially work as one large single display.

Once the new video cards are launched, initially Eyefinity will only support a single card. However, ATI are working on adding Crossfire support in the near future, potentially allowing 24 screens to be powered from a single machine. We’ll look forward to reporting more on Eyefinity and the new ATI video cards once they are released this week.

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ATI will finally release the new generation of Radeon video cards this Wednesday, starting with the 5870 card. This will be a full DirectX 11 card with 1Gb of memory, with 2Gb versions coming later this year. No exact specifications have been released yet but early indications show that this card outperforms the NVIDIA GTX285 significantly.

A member of the Overclockers UK forum released information stating that Overclockers will have “60 1Gb 5870 cards in stock this Wednesday for around £280 including VAT”.  The card will ship with a coupon for Dirt2 when released and a full copy of Battlestations Pacific.

Edit: We’ve been hearing numourous uncomfirmed rumours that the 5850 will retail for around £235 inc VAT.

Edit: Some pictures of the Sapphire cards have been released:

Update: Gigabyte presentation on the 5850 and the 5870 have been leaked.

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