By Oo Gin Lee

CHIPMAKER AMD, with the launch of its new ATI Radeon 5870 graphics card, has taken the pole position for having the fastest single-chip graphics card.

Benchmarks from test sites like Tom's Hardware (tomshardware.com) and Techspot (techspot.com) put the card's performance clearly ahead of the previous single-chip leader - GeForce GTX 285 - from rival Nvidia.

I tested the 1GB 5870 reference card provided by AMD for about three weeks and was very pleased with it.

My test machine was a quad-core AMD Phenom 2 X4 940 (3GHz) processor with 4GB RAM running on the new Windows 7 operating system.

The card took everything that I threw at it with aplomb and could run the very demanding shooter, Far Cry 2. This was at all settings, including 8x anti-aliasing maxed out on my 24-inch monitor at 1,920 x 1,200 resolution.

At those settings, I could experience all the beautiful aesthetics of the game, such as the morning sun shining on blades of grass and realistic explosions.

Going for the ultimate eye candy compromises frame rates and usually causes lag.

The good news is that even at those settings, the game ran smoothly throughout my one-hour test with no lag at all.

Using the benchmark built into the game, I managed to get an average of 53 frames per second (fps) and a minimum of 38 fps - more than sufficient considering that the human eye cannot tell the difference on anything faster than 30 fps.

On 3D Mark Vantage, the current champion scored 13,094 compared to to the Radeon 4890's (AMD's previous speed demon) 9,917. On 3D Mark 06, the scores were 16,952 against 15,224.

Most importantly, the card was very silent even when I was pushing it with my games, although the vents at the back of my PC felt a little hot after several hours of play.

Another big feature of the 5870 is that it comes with three display ports.

So you can connect it to three monitors and expand your gaming experience by creating a huge screen comprising three smaller displays.

This is especially useful for racing games or flight simulations. You can now check the left and right views, as well as the front view, all at the same time instead of having to press buttons to toggle the views.

If that is exciting, imagine when AMD releases its Eyefinity edition later this year. It will let you link up to six displays on a single card.

The 5870 is the first graphics card that supports DX11, the latest games engine from Microsoft that launched with the debut of Windows 7.

There is a shortage of DX11 games currently. Battleforge is the only one right now that takes advantage of the more realistic graphics from DX11.

More DX11 games like Stalker, Aliens Versus Predator and Dirt 2 will hit the streets over the next few months.

The only bad thing about this card: It will set you back almost $600.

Final say

With its intense visuals and performance, this graphics card is a gamer's single-chip dream - if you do not mind paying the high price.

This story was first published in The Straits Times Digital Life.

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