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AMD Radeon HD 5870 Adds DX11, Multi-Monitor Gaming
Vigile writes "Few people will doubt that PC gaming is in need of a significant shot in the arm with the consistent encroachment of consoles and their dominating hold on developers. Today AMD is releasing the Radeon HD 5870 graphics card based on the Evergreen-series of GPUs first demonstrated in June. Besides offering best-in-class performance for a single-GPU graphics board, the new card is easily the most power efficient in terms of idle power consumption and performance per watt. Not only that, but AMD has introduced new features that could help keep PC gaming in the spotlight, including the first DirectX 11 implementation and a very impressive multi-monitor gaming technology, Eyefinity, which we discussed earlier this month. The review at PC Perspective includes the full gamut of gaming benchmarks in both single- and dual-GPU configurations as well as videos of Eyefinity running on three 30" displays."
The review/source contains no information that's even remotely useful to those of us who look for video cards that are quiet, do not reach absurd temperatures (anything above 60C under load is considered absurd; do people realise just how hot 60C is?), and do not have excessive power requirements.
All I've seen after reading the review is a bunch of snapshots stolen from a PowerPoint presentation with said "technological improvements", and some graphs indicating the card draws less watts than competing cards.
Given the size of the HSF (it's full-length -- look at that sucker!), I'm inclined to believe it runs hot. Given the size of the HSF, I'm also inclined to believe the card sounds like a mack truck barrelling down the highway when under load. Finally, given that the card has two -- count 'em, two -- PCIe 6-pin power connectors, this indicates the card requires at least 24V (e.g. two dedicated 12V rails), and God only knows what its amperage requirements are. Then take a look at it's price.
I feel like the only one on this planet who cares about the amount of heat hardware emits, the amount of power it draws, and the amount of noise it makes. Instead, it appears that the "i gota haf 50829fps in WoW!!!!1!! fag!!!11" gamers have taken over technological evolution and turned it into what Intel during the days of the original Pentium 4. Are there others here who have the same reservations about this kind of hardware as I do?