According to our info 2D performance, or to be precise a lack thereof on AMD's HD 5000 series cards should be fixed with the upcoming ATI Catalyst 10.4 drivers and that the problem is actually driver based.

You may already heard that HD 5000 series has serious problems when it comes to 2D power, and that even some integrated solutions are doing much better than, for example a $300 HD 5870 card. The problem is being fixed and AMD promises that the fix should come with a Catalyst 10.4 driver.

You can check out the tomshardware.com article here.