Hasta La Gadget!

ATI’s Radeon HD 5870 first saw the (official) light of day in late September of last year, but the GPU has managed to age well. In the months since that original debut, we’ve seen an Eyefinity 6 Edition hit the market for multi-monitor maniacs, and quite a few factory overclocked options have also made their way out. The benchmarking gurus over at Hot Hardware scrounged up three of the latest and greatest, all priced just below the $500 mark, which have core clock speeds that are 100MHz higher than standard and memory clock speeds that are up 50MHz above the norm. Cards from MSI, HIS and Gigabyte were represented, and while each of ’em put up a better-than-average fight, the latter card came out on top in nearly every single test. Gigabyte’s Super Overclock technology tended to outperform the other OC’ing solutions, but the whole lot managed to show up the non-overclocked alternatives by a good bit. Still, you’ll be forced to pay a 25 percent premium for an 11 to 16 percent boost in performance, so these are still probably best for enthusiasts who can’t stand to leave a single frame behind. Peep that source if you’re in need of more coaching before pulling the trigger either way.

Overclocked ATI Radeon HD 5870 shootout: HIS, MSI and Gigabyte trade blows originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 09 May 2010 10:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Well, would you look at this? Dell‘s not-at-all-boisterous launch of numerous R-rated Inspirons left us with far more questions than answers (you know what we mean, J.J. Abrams?), but now things are starting to come together somewhat. We’re guessing some of the mystique surrounding the M501R has to do with the power plant within, because so far as we can tell, AMD has never shipped a Phenom II X4 within a laptop. Sure enough, this here machine can be ordered up with a quad-core X4, and while prices and the like aren’t yet available (the order process seems to be borked for now), we do know that this particular model will ship with a 720p 15.6-inch display, Windows 7, an optional 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 550v (another new one to us), WiFi, up to 8GB of DDR3 RAM, four color options and a total weight of 5.83 pounds. C’mon Dell / AMD — why not just spill the beans already? Our trigger finger can only itch for so long.

Dell Inspiron M501R seen packing quad-core AMD Phenom II X4 CPU, ATI 550v GPU originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 May 2010 17:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tossing a pair of GPUs into a single, beastly laptop ain’t nothing new — in fact, Alienware’s own M17x has been offered in such a way since last year — but having said machine arrive at your doorstep with a pair of ATI’s world-beating Mobility Radeon HD 5870s has been downright impossible until now. The earliest of adopters are now reporting (with ear-to-ear grins, to boot) that their dual 1GB HD 5870-equipped M17x machines are finally shipping, and we suspect it’ll only be a matter of time before those CrossFire assisted benchmarks surface to make our existing lappies look patently pathetic. So, hit that inbox once more and tell us if you’ve seen a shipping notification of your own — and if you’ve already got your unit in hand, why not expound with a few opinions on how things are running?

[Thanks, Max]

Alienware M17x now shipping with dual 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 GPUs originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Apr 2010 12:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve been fortunate enough to spend a bit of time with an Eyefinity setup before, but up until now, it’s been somewhat of a hassle to get a fully functional six-screen setup into a consumer’s home. Today, AMD is taking the legwork out of the equation with the introduction of the Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition, a standalone GPU with 2GB of GDDR5 memory and innate support for pushing a half-dozen panels at once. Outside of that, it’s essentially the same card that we saw last September, and based on the cadre of reviews that we rounded up, the doubled memory bank doesn’t do much to boost frame rates. What it does do, however, is enable six-screen gaming. Unfortunately (though understandably), this type of gaming scenario is only meant for a select segment of users, and many critics found the novelty wearing off exceptionally quick. In fact, it wasn’t long before NeoSeeker became fed up with the bezels ruining the experience, and just about everyone agreed that you needed to sit a good half-mile away to really enjoy it. Either way, we’d encourage you to hit up Hot Hardware‘s collection of videos before biting the bullet, buying up an extra five LCDs and then regretting it for the rest of your Earthly life.

Read – Hot Hardware
Read – AnandTech
Read – NeoSeeker
Read – Rage3D
Read – PC Perspective
Read – TweakTown
Read – FiringSquad
Read – Tom’s Hardware
Read – ExtremeTech
Read – Hexus

ATI Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition review roundup: novel, but not for everyone originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 31 Mar 2010 10:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You can’t go more than a few days without MSI dropping another new laptop, and today’s is the GE700. It’s not only 100 more than the GE600 from a few weeks ago, but a little bit bigger, sporting a 17.3-inch LCD with an unspecified resolution, up to a nine cell battery, and room for dual hard disks of up to 500GB apiece. Graphics are again handled by an ATI Radeon HD5730, processing again done by an Intel Core i5 chip, and there’s a 720p webcam for live-streaming your every blemish. No word on price for this 3.2kg (7lb) machine, but MSI doesn’t tend to waste much time in getting these things to retail.

MSI announces GE700 gaming laptop for those who like to be entertained originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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