BattleForge

BattleForge is EA’s card-based online-only RTS. As the first DirectX11 title it’s of particular importance for the latest rendition of DirectX, although in this case we aren’t using any features that would be impacted by it. Even without ambient occlusion, BattleForge manages to be a rather punishing game for GPUs.

BattleForge is another game that punishes the 5700 series. The performance hit coming from the 4870 starts at 25% at 1680, and ends at just 18% at 2560. This also means that the 5770 loses to the GTX 260.

As for the 5750, it loses at 1680 by 7%, but eeks out a very slight win at 1920. Apparently being memory bandwidth starved isn’t so bad when your competitor is too.

Finally, this gives us one of the larger gaps between the 5770 and 5850. $100 buys you 60%-70% more performance.

Far Cry 2 HAWX
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  • Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - link

    I don't like to make a habit of disagreeing with Ryan, but unfortunately only Cypress based cards support double precision. The 57xx series does *not* support double precision.

    Take care,
    Anand
  • MadMan007 - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - link

    So where is the double precision implemented? I didn't bother too look it up by I imagine it's buried deep in the shaders. If so why take it out? Is it just disabled or not present at all? If not present I guess I could see removal for the sake of fewer transistors but otherwise it seems like artificial market segmentation. On the other hand hardcore compute power people where time = $$ won't have a problem getting a 5850 or better, or seeing what NV does.
  • CarrellK - Wednesday, October 14, 2009 - link

    DPFP (Double Precision Floating Point) is physically not in the Juniper GPU - it is not artificial segmentation. We had to choose between giving you a GPU that would be great for consumer HPC and games at a price you could afford, or something that cost notably more.

    There are virtually zero consumer applications that need DPFP.

    CarrellK
  • stmok - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - link

    According to ATI's Stream SDK v1.4 page...

    Desktop cards that support double precision: Radeon HD 3690, 3830, 3850, 3870, 3870 X2, 4770, 4830, 4850, 4850 X2, 4870, 4870 X2, 4890.

    Mobile GPUs that support double precision: Mobiliy Radeon 3850
    3870, 4850, 4850X2, 4870

    None of their IGPs support it.

    Their newer Stream SDK 2.0 series (currently in Beta 4), mentions they now support OpenCL in GPU, and that the Radeon HD 5870, 5850, 5770, and 5750 are supported. No mentioned of which can actually do double precision though...

    Still, considering the 5770 looks similar in spec to the 4870/4850, it may support it. (The major difference seems to be the Memory Bus Width.)

    Come to think of it, what are the requirements to support double precision on a Radeon HD-series GPU?
  • codedivine - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - link

    Thats sad :( .. thanks for the info!
  • Ryan Smith - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - link

    My understanding is that it's available in the entire Evergreen lineup. So I'm going to give you a tentative "yes".
  • codedivine - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - link

    Thanks!
  • endlesszeal - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - link

    As always from anandtech, great review. However, I almost crapped my pants when I saw the price of a "display port to dvi" dongle," $100?? Hope thats not the average not inflated by Apple price. =)
  • Zingam - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - link

    You don't really need that dongle anyway.
  • Ryan Smith - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - link

    Actually, the Apple adapter is still the only active adapter I'm aware of that's widely available. So yes, that $100 is because of the Apple price.

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