World's fastest graphics card is here

ATI Radeon HD 5970 - fast
ATI Radeon HD 5970 - fast

AMD has announced the ATI Radeon HD 5970 – the fastest graphics card ever created, supporting Direct X 11 and immediately available in a host of Alienware PCs

The Radeon HD 5970 supports AMD's new Eyefinity tech – meaning that multiple (in this case three) monitors can be connected together from a single card – so max resolution is a staggering 7680x1600.

The big numbers don't stop there, with the ATI Radeon HD 5970 delivers nearly 5 teraFLOPS of compute power harnessing up to 3,200 stream processors.

Plus, when not needed for something impressive, the Radeon 5970 runs at as low as 42 watts.

Graphics leader

"With the arrival of the ATI Radeon HD 5970, the fastest graphics card in the world, we've cemented AMD as the unquestioned graphics leader," said Matt Skynner, vice president and general manager, AMD Graphics Group.

"With the holiday shopping season right around the corner, the new card, coupled with the awesome power of ATI Eyefinity technology, is the ultimate setup for serious gamers."

Some of the first computers to feature the new card are Dell-owned Alienware gaming PCs.

Perfect match

"The extraordinary performance of the ATI Radeon HD 5970 is a perfect match for the Alienware Area-51, Area-51 ALX and Aurora desktops," said Frank Azor, senior product planning manager, Dell Gaming.

"By offering this level of graphics capability as well as the visual and performance enhancements made possible by DirectX 11 hardware, gamers will benefit from enhanced image quality enabling an incredibly intense gaming experience."

It's a fast, fast graphics card indeed. Over to you Nvidia...

Patrick Goss

Patrick Goss is the ex-Editor in Chief of TechRadar. Patrick was a passionate and experienced journalist, and he has been lucky enough to work on some of the finest online properties on the planet, building audiences everywhere and establishing himself at the forefront of digital content.  After a long stint as the boss at TechRadar, Patrick has now moved on to a role with Apple, where he is the Managing Editor for the App Store in the UK.