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XFX Radeon HD 5970 Black Edition Limited 4GB in CrossFire X Review

HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evalute motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.

There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on Bluray. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content so will we.

This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.

Read our initial analysis over here.

XFX HD 5970 Black Edition Limited 4GB
Dial
4
Dial with static pattern 5
Gray Bars 5
Violin 5
Stadium 2:2 5
Stadium 3:2 5
Horizontal Text Scroll 5
Vertical Text Scroll 5
Transition to 3:2 Lock 5
Transition to 2:2 Lock 0
2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video
5
2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video
5
3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed
5
5:5 FPS Animation
5
6:4 12 FPS Animation
5
8:7 8 FPS Animation
5
Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP)
5
Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE)
5
Random Noise: Sailboat
5
Random Noise: Flower
5
Random Noise: Sunrise
5
Random Noise: Harbour Night
5
Scrolling Text
5
Roller Coaster
5
Ferris Wheel
5
Bridge Traffic
5
Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text
5
Roller Coaster
5
Ferris Wheel
5
Bridge Traffic
5
Luminance Frequency Bands
5
Chrominance Frequency Bands
5
Vanishing Text 5
Resolution Enhancement
15
Theme Park
5
Driftwood 5
Ferris Wheel
5
Skin Tones
7
Total 196

It is worth pointing out again that HQV Benchmark 2.0 is not an exact science, the testing is subjective. While many people will be using a panel or television with heavy processing, we have attempted to negate this by using one of the most expensive panels on the market with a very wide gamut and colour depth. This ensures that the output from the hardware, via the driver to the panel is clean and pure. We also studied reference documentation from the creators of the benchmark to educate ourselves on all the tests beforehand. Knowing exactly what you are looking for is tantamount to ensuring you can accurately measure the results.

196 points is an excellent score and this is up 3 points since we last tested Catalyst drivers with other high end hardware. We will hopefully be updating our findings with a variety of hardware and the latest AMD and Nvidia drivers at the end of the year.

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23 comments

  1. good god. that is hilarious. Crysis playable at 5760×1080 at enthusiast :p

  2. lol. Not much more to say to this review. those frame rates are the highest ive seen ever.

  3. Crysis is impressive. it still runs like shit for me at 1920 🙂

  4. Well tickle my tonsels. thats a credit card bill and a half for that system. how much, 5k for the rig ?

  5. The ducati analogy is interesting. I laughed initially but you have a point and I get where you are coming from.

    Sorry at the end of the day however, I couldn’t even begin to contemplate spending almost 2k on a Crossfire setup.

  6. CPU £700, PSU £250, Memory £150, Graphics £1800, Case £250, Hard Drive £300. Cooler £100.

    Lovely. liked the videos too, that memory is wicked, is that crucial ballistix tracer ?

  7. Its £100 less than the ARES, so at least thats something.

  8. Great cards and they look beautiful, much nicer than ARES imo. Isnt AMD’s new range coming out in a few months? surely makes these pretty much redundant now.

  9. Gaming on these for a month would give a nice electricity bill. AX850 was getting warm? thats a serious output level.

  10. Melted Tech Cheese

    How many of these are XFX making? 500 ?

  11. The cost is so high probably to cover, or help cover the R&D by XFX. I can’t see them selling too many of these, id love to get sales figures, out of curiousity.

  12. i love these cards, but I couldn’t afford anything close to this. I saw a great review of this on hardware heaven too a few weeks ago.

  13. @ Robert – yeah it would heat up the house, so you might save money long term. not sure of the overall output, I just measured the cards.

    @ Brad – yes , ballistix tracer – great memory and very underrated, ive had those to 2ghz.

    @ Sam – I dont think any of us would spend 1800 on a system like this, well Id love to, but im just like you guys, a pauper 😉

    @ Joe – I haven’t read it, but I am sure it is good, Stuart is one of the best reviewers on the net.

    @ Melted Cheese Tech – I honestly have no idea of the amount of cards produced in this range, I wouldn’t say very many. ill find out if I can.

    @ Trevor – I don’t think your scenario just relates to Graphics cards, but yes a new range of cards, not long away.

  14. Ok I just called XFX, they only made 1000 of these, worldwide. quite a limited run.

  15. Very nice, apart from the noise ratings. crazy performance.

  16. … hmmm…

    If I win euro millions, I might consider setup like this… 😀

  17. the toys of the rich and famous. if only 🙂

  18. Those are really sexy looking cards – love the colours. they seem rather loud, but its part of the trade off for ultimate performance.

  19. very nice, wouldnt make me much of a better gamer however, I suck 🙂

  20. Frankie Half Life 2 lover

    I have been saving up for one of these since it was announced, almost have the money now, but it will probably all be gone by the time I get it together 🙁

  21. Very nice performance to say the least. It seems totally overkill for what most people need, but hell if you have three monitors and a core i7 970 or 980x, SSD, 1200W psu, why the hell not ? 🙂

  22. On the benchmark reviews on haven the person says that a nvidia 460 overclocked gets 30 fps average? i scored 68 fps with sli’ed 260 1 year old videocards. DX11 in this benchmark test is backwards compatible so that is with a dx 11 render… So I question the validity of that statement — “For comparison, an overclocked GTX460 scores an average of 37.1 fps. Scaling in Crossfire X is very good with the average frame rate jumping from 62.6 to 114.3 when another card is added. On a side note, we expect to see Tesselation improving with the new range of ATI cards.”

  23. With that said, my minimum fps was 10 fps higher then the minimum fps logged on those bench tests. So your buying overhead fps ;(.