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Operating temperatures
We used the program OCCT to measure 'load' temperatures.
Great numbers here -- not much of a surprise for us, we have to admit, as we've seen the Vapor-X in action before. The cooler is effective at keeping the GPU relatively cool even under heavy strains. It's a nice little piece of engineering.
Sapphire's Vapor-X cooler is tough to beat (a review of the HD 5870 Vapor-X is coming shortly), but the HD 5770 still keeps things running reasonably with only the stock cooler.
Power Usage
We used the program OCCT to measure 'load' power demands.
Very, very nice -- the Sapphire HD 5870 required less power than the factory reference HD 4870 in our tests, and it has about twice the transistors. Great stuff!
Conclusion
As far as video cards on the market right now (November 2009), the Sapphire HD 5870 doesn't have much trouble securing a reservation for one of the best seats in the entire theater. If you've been keeping up with your Neoseeker review readings recently, you've probably noticed our prior recommendation of the HD 5870. It is tough to deny the HD 5870, as there just isn't much competition.
While you can get more frames in games for less, if you are looking for maximizing your gaming upgrade dollars, if you are looking at something high-end that will last, than the HD 5870 is best thinking going at the moment. With Nvidia's next-gen still anyone's guess off -- we suspect it won't materialize until February or later -- ATI is sitting pretty with the HD 5870 offering next-gen performance levels and a great feature set, including DirectX11 and Eyefinity.
And if you are considering HD 5870's, then Sapphire's HD 5870 is perhaps the best looking option available right now. While the factory overclock is pretty insignificant, the Vapor-X cooler is certainly worth the small price premium (+$10 USD seems the norm). The HD 5870 Vapor-X also comes with a good bundle, featuring two full games. So if you are anxious to dive into the HD 5000 series and are looking for the place to do it, check out this cool card from Sapphire.
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That's the next gen boost for you TBH.
The problem with gaming benchmarks, especially comparing old and new gen, is that it doesn't take into account how much of an improvement it would bring, visually, it just goes by pure performance. THe 5870 is no slouch in the FPS category (usually beating everything but the 295), but the improvements, visually, are not taken into account in those tests.
BTW: Is it just me, or shouldn't the NEW generation of cards have more interface memory than the old? the BFG 295 has way more than any of the others? Granted, I don't really know what it's for, but it strikes me that if an older gen card can have so much, why can't a new one? More is better, I'd think, unless it provides no noticable benefit and increases the cost...
The 5870 has plenty of memory bandwidth for a single GPU, and 1GB handles most games at 2560x1600. Of course, 2GB models will follow in time, as will an X2 (2GPU) version.
I'm not talking about the GPU RAM memory, I'm talking about "Interface Memory". It's in the 'bits' size range.
You're correct that using a wider interface costs more, partly because of the number of traces to the GPU. It's also difficult to connect so many traces for a wide interface to the smallest GPUs. AMD/ATI seem happy to stick with 256bit on their high end, and get sufficient bandwidth by using the fastest DDR5 (effectively twice the clock speed of GDDR3).