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AMD's ATI Radeon Eyefinity Performance Review

We’ve covered AMD’s ATI Radeon Eyefinity in terms of the experience provided, and now we will evaluate how Eyefinity actually performs across the entire line of ATI Radeon HD 5000 series video cards. From the Radeon HD 5970 down to the Radeon HD 5750, we review the performance of Eyefinity in some new games and some old.

DiRT 2

DiRT 2, the first DX11 game title released is here. Check out our thorough Gameplay Performance and Image Quality evaluation for information about this new game. We are using the full version today, and with all of these video cards below DX11 is in full swing. We will be evaluating this game at 5760x1200 and adjusting in-game options as needed to find the highest-playable settings. Our run-through is detailed on page three of our Gameplay Performance and Image Quality evaluation. In order to benefit from DX11’s Tessellation you have to run with the "Ultra" settings, so look below to see which video card allows this at Eyefinity resolutions in this brand new game.

We found that DiRT 2 does demand a lot of performance when using the highest "Ultra" settings. This fact is magnified when running this game at a high resolution like 5760x1200. The only video card able to run DiRT 2 with the highest in-game settings at 5760x1200 was the dual-GPU Radeon HD 5970. It takes the power of two GPUs to be able to run with the highest settings at this Eyefinity resolution across three displays. The 5970 also had enough performance to allow us to also enable 2X AA at this resolution. The Eyefinity experience was incredible at these settings! Not only are you able to experience the game as the developer fully intended, but you also get antialiasing to smooth out the jaggies.

The Radeon HD 5870 performed admirably at 5760x1200, but we had to drop a couple of image quality options. Firstly, there was no way antialiasing was going to be playable at this resolution on this video card. Secondly, we had to lower Post Processing to "Medium." It seems that the Post Processing option eats up a lot of shader resources when it is on the "High" setting. There is a distinct visual difference as the highest setting uses the newer and higher precision DX11 HDR rendering when it is on "High." However, all of the other DX11 Tessellation settings are at "Ultra." Therefore, even with the single Radeon HD 5870 you can experience DiRT 2 with DX11 Tessellation at 5760x1200 resolution.

The Radeon HD 5850 is where performance starts to really drop off in this game. We had to lower every setting to "High" except for Post Processing which was at "Medium." Setting everything to "High" basically knocks out the Tessellation in the game. We are no longer able to experience the game with all the new DX11 bells and whistles which you may or may not care about.

With the Radeon HD 5770 performance is so slow we have to reduce most setting to "Medium" and even a handful of settings down to "Low." With these settings turned way down the game definitely loses its visual advantage compared to the higher priced cards at this resolution. Still, it is commendable to see the Radeon HD 5770 able to accelerate this new game at all at these settings, and provide fast enough framerates to at least play it if you so choose.