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AMD Radeon HD 5970 Dual-GPU Card Sweeps Benchmarks
MojoKid writes "AMD launched yet another high-end graphics card based on their Radeon HD 5800 series technology, and this time it's a dual-GPU variant. Considering the fact that AMD's Radeon HD 5870 is currently the fastest single-GPU powered graphics card currently on the market, the new dual-GPU powered Radeon HD 5970 should offer performance that completely outclasses any other single graphics card on the market right now. The card has 3200 stream processors under the hood, though its graphics engines are built on 40nm manufacturing technology, so power consumption isn't actually too insane. The card does exceptionally well in the usual benchmarks, as expected." HotHardware has begun providing single-page views — a user-friendly decision. PCPer.com also has coverage. And pcpro.co.uk wonders whether, at 13" (33 cm) in length, the new card will even fit in most PC cases.
The problem for me is, what the heck games would I play on it?
It's overkill (hell, any 3 year old video board I could buy at Goodwill Computer is overkill) for any MMORPG. Any in any other field, the game companies have all pretty much abandoned the PC anyways, what you get these days is nothing but ports of something originally designed for a console.
We don't need "more powerful" video boards. We need well written, well designed, must-play, PC-only titles that show off what the PC, and only the PC, can offer. And that ain't happening. When MS Game Studios went "all Xbox, all the time", shit all over great franchises like Mechwarrior and Crimson Skies, and left a generation of gamers thinking Halo was 'tha be5t th1ng EVAR', the PC was doomed. It's only gotten worse with Activision, EA, and the rest following suit.
The PC didn't die as a gaming platform, but it's barely hanging on life support these days and the only thing keeping it going is the MMORPG market. Sad.