ShaneBaxtor.com

I try to be careful when I organise my video card samples, it’s hopeless getting in a bunch of cards that carry with it the same clocks and all that changes is the cooler. For the most part why should I waste my time benching a card that is going to give the same results, waste your time with results that are going to be similar and TweakTowns money with a review that’s not going to bring traffic.

Now there are some exceptions to this rule, if that model is part of a higher profile series like IceQ and iCooler from HIS or Vapor-X from Sapphire; due to the nature of these cards they get happily tested across all games even though they may carry with it the same or similar results in FPS related tests. People will Google these particular variations of models though and they shouldn’t have to look at a standalone review on a reference card just to know the performance.

On the other hand if Sapphire and HIS send two cards in at launch, slightly different coolers but both don’t slot into one of the aforementioned categories the excitement level isn’t high for card number two. So we do two reviews with these cards, the first is a standard single card review with card one. Who is card one? Well it’s generally the person who arrives first, in the case they both arrive at the same time it’s the person that told me they were sending it first.

For card number two though since it’s reference clocks and follows the reference PCB design to mix it up a bit I’ll make that second article a CrossFire or SLI one. This does a few things, one it makes the review different from the first, second we still get cooling numbers and noise levels off the card and finally it’s something a bit more interesting for you to read.

Recently though I had a company complain to me that the review looked like it was a CrossFire one and not on their card, to be honest I must’ve missed the part where I wrote about their package, card, cooler, included their names in all the graphs, wrote about the temperature and heat difference and wrapped it all up in a conclusion which covered both the technology and the card.

This company will now have a few options, the first is, unless they can be the first company to send a card before NDA they won’t get a standalone review, secondly they can just not send a card that has reference clocks if they’re not interested in being tested in a different fashion, instead they can just wait till OC models come out. Thirdly they can step back a second and realize I know what I’m doing after seven years when making sure that I give each company as much exposure as possible.

If the company doesn’t want to be included in a CF article many other companies will, after I have two reference cards I ultimately stop trying to organise any more until OC ones are available. Sure they can send an OC model which will get a standalone review but that company now misses out on a review on TweakTown, instead of getting two they now only have one. Since I make sure I don’t organise crap that also means the company will more then likely miss out on an award, that’s fine for me someone else can pick it up instead.

I’ve been doing TweakTown for over 7 years and this writing gig for even longer. These companies need to know that how I represent their product in a review is the best way for them. CrossFire and SLI articles are a way to mix it up a bit, it means I learn more about the performance and you do as well. It means that if someone on a forum goes, I’m thinking about having CF or SLI *insert mid range model* that forum goers can link to the article and say this is what you can expect.

After reading this I hope the company realizes that I do what I feel is the best for them. If they don’t though there’s someone else who is always happy to take the spot and get the exposure. As for other readers of my blog, this just gives you a bit of an idea of what we deal with behind the scenes, it’s one thing whinging because they don’t like the score, but to get an award, a high score and then complain that they don’t like how it’s tested; come on!

In some typical snooping around I’ve managed to get a date on what should be the HD 5830s launch, at the moment I’m currently hearing the 18th of February, there’s no reason why it should take any longer to come out as the issue with the HD 5830 regarding the ASIC was jumped on quickly and didn’t seem to be all that serious.

With that said it’s possible this date could get moved around slightly with it falling in the middle of Chinese New Year, unless companies have samples to ship out by the 12th it’s possible that the date could get pushed back to the 26th or even later due to Chinese New Year falling between the 14th and 21st of February.

The biggest thing for ATI is that the card launches before the new GTX 400 series, if they don’t the green light from the release of the new models is going to be too bright for the HD 5830 to combat and the model will fall in between the middle of GTX 400 series content on websites all over.

As always if anything chances we’ll let you know, if the Feb 18th is true that means that NDA paper work should be showing up soon, once we have that we’ll have a locked in date for the model like we did with the HD 5400 and HD 5500 models.

Let me start by making a few things clear, the first is that I use Eyefinity technology in my day to day usage, the image you can see above is my desk and that’s three Dell U2410s hooked up to a HD 5970. Second I know that I really gave surround gaming a beating the other day, but the reasons in that post though are why NVIDIA is going to lose the battle.

Today though I’m going to tell you why ATI and the Eyefinity branding is going to lose the war when compared to NVIDIA. Multi Screen technology is the future for computing in many ways, the biggest problem at the moment though is that both companies are spending too much time focusing on the gaming aspects of the technology and not the productivity aspect.

NVIDIA concentrating on the gaming side I can understand, the bottom line is that the way they are implementing Multi Screen Technology is flawed, and the reason it’s flawed is because it was added at the last minute. When NVIDIA discovered the technology in ATIs new HD 5000 series Video Cards it became clear that this is going to be the future, for that reason NVIDIA found a way to offer the same kind of technology, because Fermi was so far along though going back to the drawing board wasn’t going to be an option which meant we were going to see limitations.

Now the information we have from NVIDIA about the Surround Gaming technology is a bit limited at the moment, it does give us most the information we need though and even if a few surprises do pop up it doesn’t look like the technology can beat out Eyefinity.

Eyefinity is fantastic, I use it daily and love every second of it, I moved to my 3x 24″ setup from a single 30″, at one point thought I was using a dual 30″ setup, on a whole that setup just felt kind of stupid, it was massive and when I wanted to game a giant bezel down the middle did nothing for me, so I ended up back at a single 30″ which I thought gave me the desktop real estate I needed.

Towards the end of December thought I got WOWed by Eyefinity, and not in person, of course ATI didn’t let me know of any events where I could see the technology in person, albeit I give them some of the most quotable lines in my reviews which have shown up in their meetings and the fact that I review probably more video cards in a given year than anyone else. We won’t worry about that though. I got WOWed by screen shots and YouTube videos of people playing HAWX, World of Warcraft, Call of Duty and more.

Thinking back now I don’t know why I let these videos persuade me because I barely have time for games, the bottom line is these videos and screenshots did persuade me. Since I have more Video Cards then I can poke a stick at getting into Eyefinity was only going to involve the cost of monitors (I don’t really review monitors and asking a company for three of anything is generally hard). When I finally set it up thought, fired up Sims 3 which seems to be the only game I have installed and realized that it looked completely crap at 5760 x 1200 I thought I had made a mistake with the purchase of these monitors.

The holidays came to an end and it was time to get back into work, feeling a bit bummed that I didn’t take full advantage of Eyefinity I was a bit concerned that $2,000AUD had been dropped for no reason. The launch of the HD 5670 changed this though, and in a big way since it was time to get back to work.

I consider myself a bit of a multi tasking master, I run two VNC windows on my machine, one to my server which has my MSN and all those useless programs that you don’t want clogging up your main PC and my laptop which runs my email so when I go away I don’t have to transfer files or that, I shut my laptop down and away I go. I have all past emails on my hand and when I get home I open it up, let it log onto the network and away I go again.

Not only do I have those two windows open all the time but when I’m benchmarking I have an excel spreadsheet for all my TweakTown graphs that takes up a whole monitor, along with that I will have a review or blog post open in word, folders to my main documents open, websites to double check pricing and specifications of models and images of the product I’m reviewing.

The nature of the three monitor setup opened me up to a new world of desktop real estate that I didn’t think existed. With Eyefinity this was done with one card and with ease. Productivity is at a new level, I’m more excited about all the windows I have open on my screen then I ever was about the gaming side of things.

The sad thing is thought that I had to discover this myself, sure ATI put how Eyefinity can expand productivity in between gaming and entertainment but every image you look at is about gaming, it’s Dragon Age on three screens and HAWX on six screens, it’s how this game works at 5760 x 1200 and that one at 7680 x 1600. Talking to editors after Eyefinity events they said, WOW it looks great, but it’s so gimmicky.

It’s true, and when you combine the fact that it’s expensive to get into an EyeFinity gaming setup it’s clear that the market is going to be a niche. You’re not catering to a market that is just gamers, you’re catering for a market that is for gamers who have serious cash to blow.

The focus of Eyefinity needs to change, it needs to be pushed as a tool. It needs to be pushed as something that is going to increase productivity, make multi tasking easier. ATI / AMD need to tell people who multi task that Eyefinity is the end to Alt Tabbing. NVIDIA can’t do this at the moment, they can’t push a technology that is aimed at people who have productivity in mind with a solution that requires two cards, or is resolution limited (We can’t confirm we’re limited to 1920 x 1080, but it’s the feeling we get from the white paper).

I spoke to someone today and they told me, ATI are going to hold an event pushing the productivity with the HD 5870 2GB card. This is the worst thing they could do, you don’t want to show people that you can do Eyefinity with a $500 card and then say it can also be done with a $99 one. People are going to think that clearly there’s going to be something wrong with the $99 solution. ATI / AMD, Manufactures, Wholesalers and Retail Stores need to show people who want productivity a setup of Eyefinity with a $99 card, on a box that costs less than $1000.

Gaming got my attention because I have the luxury of putting a HD 5970 into my own machine for less than it would cost most people to buy a HD 5670. The lack of time I have for games though let me discover what Eyefinity was really about, or at least should be about. A CEO, CFO, Stock Broker, Marketing Manager, Office Manager, e-Tailors and more aren’t going to see gaming though and go that would be great for my office.

I like ATI, I probably like ATI more than NVIDIA, there seems to be a certain attitude that people who work for NVIDIA have, they seem to think that we should bow to them because they are NVIDIA. I don’t hate that though, I understand it, I’m proud that I work for TweakTown, one of the largest Tech Websites in the world, if you tell me you work for JohnsAwsomeHardware.com I would probably have the same attitude.

NVIDIA can have this attitude though because they’re smart, they’re only pushing the gaming side of things at the moment because that’s all they can really offer you, if they promote productivity ATI / AMD would win because of a single card solution, the fact that a wide variety of prices are covered thanks to a huge model line up and more.

I guarantee you when NVIDIA release then generation of Video Cards after Fermi Multi Monitor Technology will be pushed, and it will be pushed to every user, from that person who sells on eBay and has photos, emails, websites and more open at a single time to CEOs of mega corporations where multi tasking is part of their everyday life.

Eyefinity will already have this stigma that it’s for Gaming, NVIDIA won’t have this, at the moment it’s called Surround Gaming, it won’t be called that in the future. When they can offer everyone a single card solution Multi Screen Technology or MST will become a name for the technology, something that doesn’t sound like a technology that only caters to one segment.

Eyefinity is a good name, it doesn’t sound like something that gamers will only use, ATI / AMD though need to change the way the technology is perceived though. Be that via creating an arm off Eyefinity that is something like Eyefinity Production+ or just push more than gaming under the Eyefinity name.

Sure, go to E3, setup Eyefinity with the hottest games, but make yourself present at tradeshows in which companies who could use this technology are, setup in front of the New York Stock Exchange and let brokers know this is the future of buying and selling shares, because you know what? NVIDIA will make sure they don’t miss out on this market.

Eyefinity do better what Matrox has done for years, now when we talk about Eyefinity we say things like “Yeah, Matrox use to do something similar but it wasn’t as good as Eyefinity.” What ATI / AMD need to do is make sure that in twelve months time we’re not saying “Yeah ATI had a similar technology but I love how NVIDIA offer the technology for my office.”

Today I understand that Eyefinity is a fantastic tool for productivity, I only truly understood this after taking the leap on the technology for gaming, something that most people won’t do.

I don’t want people who want to increase the way there business works wait twelve months for NVIDIA to release the same technology and market it better. I’m going to become a one man marketing team for Multi Screen Technology. I have two goals:

One is to make sure that people understand that Eyefinity isn’t just for gaming, this is a technology for anyone who is on a computer hours upon hours a day for work, people who have to Alt+Tab between screens, people who bought 30″ monitors because they needed more desktop real estate.

Second I want ATI to improve the technology, and I want NVIDIA to hit the market hard with it. This setup is going to be more useful then 3D Vision will ever be for NVIDIA.

We need to see more companies offer DisplayPort monitors, more companies offer three and six arm 24″ and 30″ monitor arms, we need manufactures, wholesales and salesman understand the technology so when they get asked a question they can give an answer.

This is a big post, but I have a plan, a goal, an agenda! Over the next few weeks there’s a few things I want to do to help bring this technology to an audience outside of gamers. So keep posted because while ATI / AMD will win this first battle in Multi Screen Technology NVIDIA will win the war because they’re hungry for success.

While we wait for NVIDIA to release the exciting end of its new product line up; read not GT 220 and GT 240 end. ATI are finishing off the other end with the launch of some new models in February which include the HD 5570 and HD 5450.

I mentioned in December that the HD 5400, HD 5500 and HD 5600 where all due out January 7th, as that date got closer though it was clear this wasn’t going to happen, instead the HD 5600 launched not long after the original date while the HD 5400 and HD 5500 series which where suppose to launch at CES got pushed back to an unknown date.

The good news though is that today I’ve received NDA dates for the new series, the HD 5450 is ready to ship as of today, reviews will be going live on February 4th. The HD 5570 will ship a day or two later and it’s launch date has been set for February 9th.

As for the HD 5830 a January 5th date is extremely unlikely now as I mentioned last week since no company has samples ready. When we do get more information on the model though I’ll be sure to let you know.

For now though some more budget HD 5000 series cards are going to have to do, keep an eye out in this week’s *Knock Knock* Delivery post to see if our samples have arrived. If anything changes I’ll be sure to let you know and don’t forget when the launch is lifted you’ll be able to see my reviews over at TweakTown.com.

Image Note: Above image is leaked HD 5400 image from the middle of January. Can’t confirm nor deny this is what it looks like.

It doesn’t matter what you call it, be it GF 100, Fermi or 300 series the new line up of NVIDIA cards are coming, albeit a bit later then we had hoped. What NVIDIA has done though over the past week is added some information on their website about the upcoming series. To have a look at what exactly is going on you can see the page here.

What we’re seeing are two bits of information, you can check out the white papers that are linked towards the bottom which will give you information that you’ll probably not understand or not be interested in. After reading it you’ll end up with still no idea what kind of performance you can expect from the series.

The other piece of information is normal marketing talk to make the new series sound exciting. To be honest if you’re into computers you don’t need this as you’re probably already getting excited about what NVIDIA is going to offer.

The reason behind this post today though is to quickly talk about NVIDIAs new surround gaming feature and the issues I think it’s going to have when compared to the competing technology from ATI, EyeFinity.

I’m only going to give you a quick run down here for two reasons, one I don’t have the card, and two information on the whole thing is still limited. What I will say though is based on the information we have, of course by the time the card launches this could change.

The biggest pro behind the way NVIDIA have implemented the setup is that it seems you don’t need to have a DisplayPort monitor. With few companies really offering the connectivity, read only Dell really! this is pretty cool. It means you should be able to get into the technology for less from the monitor side of things as the chances are you already have a monitor that doesn’t have DisplayPort. Instead of having to buy three new monitors with DisplayPort so they all look the same you can buy just two more of the monitors you have.

The other pro is that the setup will support 3D Vision, only recently I wrote a big piece about 3D Vision and how I felt about it on TweakTown. To put it in just a few words; “I loved it!” For more information about the technology though I would highly recommend you check out the article I did at TweakTown here.

For the most part though this is where the pros stop, the lack of DisplayPort and the fact the NVIDIA cards will only offer two DVI ports means that you will require a SLI setup to make use of the technology. From my understanding it also seems that the technology will only support up to 1920 x 1080 @ 120Hz displays. This is the feeling I get from reading the white paper but really there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to run three 2560 x 1600 @ 60Hz displays off two cards.

I’m not sure if NVIDIA are choosing to just push the 1920 x 1080 @ 120Hz display support because these ones will support 3D Vision or because this is the limitation of the technology. I have a real hatred for 1920 x 1080 16:9 computer monitors after using 16:10 ones for a long time. For most people though this won’t be a deal breaker, the chances are from a cost perspective 1680 x 1050 @ 60Hz and 120Hz are going to be the most popular option.

One of the biggest cons for 3D Vision is the fact that when you’re using the technology the video card is essentially working twice as hard at that resolution. What this means is that a 1920 x 1080 screen with 3D Vision on will be more intensive then a 2560 x 1600 display without 3D Vision. Now if you’re running three monitors with 3D Vision at 1920 x 1080 the amount of power needed to run that setup would be more than a setup of three 2560 x 1600 monitors without 3D Vision.

We don’t know performance numbers for the next generation series from NVIDIA but you’re going to need some serious juice to push this kind of setup.

To quickly just recap the pros for NVIDIAs surround gaming experience the lack of DisplayPort monitors needed means that you can buy two more of your current monitors and have a really nice clean looking setup, the other big pro is that you’ll be able to use 3D Vision technology with the setup, from an immersion perspective this is just going to be insane.

The con list includes the fact you’re going to need an SLI setup to run surround gaming, be that with 3D Vision or not. This in turn will mean SLI compatible motherboard and bigger power supply which is going to hit the bank account. Now there’s also the fact that if you go for a 1920 x 1080 @ 120Hz Tri-Screen setup to use 3D Vision the amount of raw graphics power needed is going to be insane and exceed that of three 2560 x 1600 @ 60Hz displays, getting playable framerates isn’t going to be cheap.

One last con would be the fact that we’ve got this feeling that the maximum resolution for the technology is 1920 x 1080 @ 120Hz. What this means is that 1920 x 1080 @ 60Hz, 1680 x 1060 @ 120Hz / 60Hz and lower should be supported but not 1920 x 1200 @ 60Hz and above. I write this separate to the last paragraph because I think as we get more information on the technology this won’t hold true but at the moment it doesn’t change the fact that this is how it feels reading the white paper.

For so many people this isn’t going to be an issue as multi monitor display setups are still a rarity; it’s clear the reason NVIDIA has done it though is due to the simple fact ATI offer EyeFinity, unfortunately the solution from NVIDIA feels like a bit of a bandaid one, it’s simply done because the competition offers it, and since NVIDIA didn’t expect it and it was too late to go back to the Fermi drawing board the technology is how it is because it was added last minute.

The reason I’m speaking about it so much thought is that I personally use a 3x 1920 x 1200 setup via EyeFinity. Buying new monitors wasn’t an issue for me as I was moving from a single 30″ and I didn’t want to buy two more 30″ monitors due to the huge amount of desk space I would need.

At the end of it all though for most people the most important feature Fermi will offer is performance, if they’re able to beat ATI, offer stock and offer us a reasonable price it will be a huge win. For this reason I can’t wait to attach a Fermi or three to my 2560 x 1600 testbed monitor and let it tear up some of the latest games available.

Word getting around as of late is that the HD 5830 is due to be released February 5th.  Originally the NDA date was the week of the 25th of January. What that means is that the NDA was going to come off the card between the 25th of January and the 31st. This seems to have been officially pushed back due to an issue with ASIC.

At the moment we’ve been told that a new one has been resent and the launch has been postponed to a new day. As for that new date we’re not sure yet. At the moment it seems unlikely that an exact day has been given like February 5th which is a Friday. The next day we’ll hear for the launch of the card will be a week of one, be that the 1st of February, the 8th or later.

Once we have the week of date as we draw closer to the launch date we’ll receive an exact day. This isn’t the first time ATI have done this, the same happened with the HD 5670, I received my sample the second week of January, with a launch date of the week of the 11th of January. On the 8th that date was updated to the actual release date being the 14th.

It make sense that ATI will begin to move their launch strategy to this as it takes a lot of pressure off the company. Instead of working to a day they now only have to work towards a week, it also allows the company to get a last minute driver update out in the event reviewers are seeing a major issue.

Let me paint a picture, you’ve read my HD 5970 overclocking guide here at TweakTown and you can’t help but feel excited about the potential power that you’re able to achieve from it. So you  start going around and hunting one down, wondering which is the best to buy. So you go over to Newegg and find this. The XFX HD 5970 Black Edition, not only does it sound fancy but the price tag of $709.99 and the specification saying Core Clock 725 MHz (up to +30% with OverVolt Tool) and Memory Clock 4GHz (up to +20% with OverVolt Tool) make the whole product sound very exciting.

So everything looking good, the card arrives (probably after a month due to stock issues) you throw it in your system and figure since you’ve just thrown together a nice X58 testbed with 6GB of memory it’s time to install Windows 7 64-Bit and get into some serious gaming action over the holidays. So everything installed, drivers done, thrown on some games, ran a 3DMark to make sure everything’s where it should be and you say “Ok, I don’t need any more power, so let’s fire up the Special XFX Overvolt tool and overclock this sucka.” Because while you don’t need more power you want it.

Opening up the XFX Overvolt program you find yourself denied! Hmm this is weird you think, so you get in contact with XFX and the conversation goes a little like this. (This conversation involves Australian Dollars)

 [ 11/27/2009 7:11:49 AM] Registered my card, downloaded the overvolt tool, installed, .exe will only run under administrator, but it says “Sorry this tool does not support your video card” WTF $1200 video card and your software doesnt work?

[JEDY 11/27/2009 11:42:03 AM] Hi, thanks for your message,it is strange. could you tell us what bios version your card? thanks Jedy

[ 11/27/2009 11:46:25 AM] How can I tell that, would GPU-Z show that info? I have 2 more cards here from the same batch but they are for my customers, I hope they don`t have the same grief that I have had.

[JEDY 11/27/2009 11:52:53 AM] Hi,Thanks for the update.you can find the bios information from CCC. thanks Jedy

[ 11/30/2009 8:50:33 AM] Sorry for not replying over the weekend, we had other machines on the test bench, Bios Version 012.013.000.002 Bios Part Number 113-HD58-970-102 Bios Date 2009/11/11

[ 12/2/2009 7:29:12 AM] Its been a few days since I replied, any update on this?

[JEDY 12/3/2009 9:17:09 AM] Hi,Thanks for the update. this software can`t run under 64bit OS. thanks Jedy

[ 12/3/2009 10:11:32 AM] Why didnt you tell me this back in November, as if any power user would use 32bit OS these days. is the program from ATI written in 16bit, thats very old-school. Au$1200 Epic fail…

Epic Fail…..I don’t think I could put it better myself.

So if you’re hunting down a HD 5970 and you want to do some real overclocking with the assistance of the Overvolt tool, the HD 5970 from XFX might be worth avoiding for the moment. Not only is it overly expensive at  $709.99 but technically you could go as far to say it’s falsely advertised. Considering XFX consider themselves a bit of a performance company it’s disappointing, or as our friend so delicately put it, an Epic Fail.

It’s something worth noting as the last thing you want to do is get home and find that the software you need to really get full advantage of the model isn’t going to work on your computer. Apart from the ATI branded HD 5970 I’ve tested a Sapphire one and Gigabyte one, both worked with the readily available ATI branded Overvolt program.

If you’ve paid any interest to the release of ATIs new DirectX 11 cards or DirectX 11 in general you would’ve heard about Dirt II getting a DX11 face lift for the PC. With the demo just showing up in the past 24 hours and incorporating two tracks and a built in performance benchmark HD 5000 series users really have something to get excited about.

If you’re not a HD 5000 series user though there’s no need to be disappointed, anyone interested in a new rally game to play is going to want to get in on the action you just won’t be able to enjoy it in all its DX 11 glory.

We’ve got even better news though for those HD 5000 users, if you’re wondering how the games going to run on your new DX11 enabled graphics card you can check out our Dirt II DX11 Performance Analysis where I’ve tested the game at the two highest presets at resolutions starting at 1680 x 105 and ending at that glorious 2560 x 1600 one.

Looking at the numbers you’ll probably find yourself with a smile on the dial so let’s not delay any longer, you can check out our performance analysis here and if you want to grab a copy of the 1.31GB demo you can nab that here.

With ATI set to launch the new Radeon HD 5500 and 5600 series at CES which starts on the 7th of January and the HD 5400 series later that month, the company is about to flood the market with a huge amount of low-end cards.

Word has come through that in the HD 5600 series alone ATIs partners will have the option to use as many of the six variances they want. Why we don’t know 100% what the different variances include we’ve been told it’s a combination of connectivity and memory. It’s probably fairly safe to assume that we’ll end up with an Eyefinity version along with 512MB and 1GB versions. Within the series we’ll no doubt see two model names which should consist of the HD 5650 and HD 5670 simply by going off past trends.

As for the HD 5500 and HD 5400, we have been told that ATI will offer between two and three variances which means a total of six variances in those bottom two series and another six variances in the HD 5600 series bringing us to a grant total of 12 new video cards.

While I had planned to get stuck back into reviewing early January it has becoming extremely clear that the option to be a bit slack is quickly fading away.