ATI 5000 series comes to India

A year after the launch of the well received 4000 series, AMD yesterday launched ATI’s 5000 series of graphics cards in India. The first cards among this line-up were the HD 5870 and HD 5850. The HD 5870 comes with an 850MHz GPU core, 1GB of DDR5 memory and 1,600 Stream Processors. The HD 5850 has a 725MHz core, 1GB of DDR5 and 1,440 Stream Processors. At the press conference held in Mumbai, ATI also held the worldwide launch for their 5700 series cards, codenamed ‘Juniper’, the first of which is the HD 5770. This card has an 850MHz core, 512MB/1GB of DDR5 memory and 800 Stream Processors. The HD 5750 which belongs to the same line-up has a core clock speed of 700MHz, 512MB/1GB DDR5 memory and 720 Stream Processors. The entire 5000 series is DirectX 11 compatible and also supports Eyefinity, ATI’s new technology that allows a single graphics card to power up to six full HD monitors.

ATI representatives also revealed that a number of upcoming games will properly support Eyefinity and will also make use of DirectX 11. These include Codemaster’s Dirt 2, GSC Gameworld’s S.T.A.L.K.E.R.- Call of Pripyat and EA Phenomic’s Battle Forge. ATI also claimed that up to 80% of currently available games that they tested worked fine on the resolutions that Eyefinity requires. Further, ATI officials claimed that they were in talks with monitor manufacturers including Samsung and Dell for manufacturing monitors with thin bezels, so that gamers get a more immersive experience from a multiple monitor setup.

So, what else lies in the future from ATI’s 5000 series? Well, ATI has said that expecting an HD 5870x2, codenamed ‘Hemlock,’by the end of the year, would not be unreasonable. If we were to believe ATI’s claims, and provided Nvidia does not pull something out of its bag, then when it’s launched, the HD 5870x2 might effectively be the fastest card bar none in the world. Let’s wait and see. Also waiting on the wings- the ‘Cedar’ and the ‘Redwood’ series, ATI’s entry level cards which we are guessing will include any of these- the HD 5670, the HD 5550 or the HD 5350. ATI weren’t willing to speculate on the release dates for these cards, but we think early 2010 is a safe bet.

Here’s to another year of good graphics hardware for PCs.