ATi managed to launch their HD5xxx series of graphics card during the end of September, this year. The cards provided stellar performance, consumed only around 28W of power when in Idle and carried a true value for money price tag. The cards also had many new state of the art technologies like Dx11, ATi eyeInfinity and were successful in luring buyers towards them. What these cards failed to do was to get the performance crown back to ATi. In a move to get the performance crown back, ATi today has launched the HD5970. ATi HD5970 is made up of two Cypress cores, and uses a newer PLX chip to make sure the performance of both the Cypress cores are optimally used. 

The card has two 40nm based Cypress cores and has double the Stream processors and ROPs of ATi HD5870. The GDDR5 memory chips however run at frequencies similar to that of ATi HD5850, in order to keep power consumption in control. The maximum power consumption of the card is around 295W, and only 42W at idle. The card also features the latest technologies featured in ATi HD5850 and HD5870, like eyeInfinity, Dx11 and many new ones like real time power monitoring, pure ceramic super capacitors etc.

Interested buyers can find the HD5970 immediately at sale with retailers for an MSRP of 599$. With Nvidia, unable to launch their Dx 11 based Fermi cards before Q1, 2010, ATi has been able to get the performance crown back from Nvidia for at least the next 6-7 months.