AMD HD 5670 in Review

Posted by Grant Brown in Games, Review, System on Jan 17th, 2010 | View Comments

Like a GPU clockwork, AMD has been pumping out a new version of their HD 5000 series every month, this month being no exception with its release of the Radeon HD 5670! The HD 5670 Reference Card This new revision of the popular 5000 series relies on a complete new build (code named Redwood, or RV830) of the GPU core, reducing the amount of transistors used in production. Also, By using a new production method the graphics giant has managed to shrink the die size of the RV830 from the previous iteration’s (the Cypress) size of about a quarter (American currency), to a penny! What these modifications do for you as the consumer is bring the capabilities of the 5000 series from its previous record low price of $129.99 to a new price of $99.99! Some of the 5000 series features brought along with this card are:

Support for DirectX 11
Support for OpenCL 1.0
Angle independent anisotropic filtering
Improved Anti-aliasing
Low idle power consumption
AMD Eyefinity multi-monitor gaming (up to three monitors)

A trend to note on the 5670 is the different types of display interfaces, HDMI, D-SUB, DVI, and DisplayPort. With this series there seems to be an increased usage of the last interface, DisplayPort, showing an increased awareness of this interface standard in the industry. Interestingly enough, none of the cards available from the major brands carry two of the same type of interface, so if you want to use Eyefinity for triple monitor support, then make sure you have all the right plug-ins. The HD 5670 Specs Sheet

In performance testing, the HD 5670 compares favorably with its price competitor from Nvidia, the GT 240 with 1GB DDR5 RAM. This is somewhat impressive as the 5670 only has 512MB of RAM right now, plus uses as much as 30 watts less power showing the AMD has made great strides in their efficiency departments. For the casual gamer this will be a great card, bringing the power of DX11 and Eyefinity to the mainstream, and frame rates as high as 40 FPS to some of the most demanding games on the market (CoD: World in Conflict). For the business side of things, this card will be a great performer for the office, powering multiple work displays and reducing power consumption, making less heat. As of now you can purchase these cards from newegg.com for the previously mentioned price of $99.99.

For some awesome benchmarks, read this article: