AMD reveals Mobility Radeon HD 5000 series
updated 02:10 am EST, Thu January 7, 2010
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5K takes DX11 portable
AMD tonight claimed the performance crown by launching the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5000. The new graphics core is the first to support DirectX 11 (and equivalent OpenGL 3.2) visual effects, and on most models can also handle DirectCompute and OpenCL general computing. It should also be AMD's most performance-per-watt most efficient chipset as it can push over a teraflop per second in the fastest models but, through the new design and a smaller 40nm process, consumes much less power at the same time.
The series is split into four key lines and is headlined by the 5800 series. The 5870 claims the teraflop performance benchmark, but it as well as the 5850 and 5830 all have 800 stream (visual) processors. Thinner mid-range notebooks are served by the 5600 and 5700 series, which halve the processors to 400 but still have the same feature set.
At the low end, the 5400 series has 80 processors, while the 5165 and 5145 are considered absolute entry level and support only older DirectX 10-level visuals while using a less advanced 55nm process.
Notebooks based on the new ATI cores should be available within the first half of the year.
