Review of AMD ATI Radeon HD 5670 512MB Graphics Card

INTRODUCTION



The first member of the Evergreen family hit the market back in September, game review, (2009). AMD has since then not said much about what would follow.



AMD chose, game review, to release the 5670 card at last week's CES 2010 event. The 5600 series chip is called Redwood and currently only includes the Radeon HD 5650 and 5670 chips. The 5600 series is clearly directed to the mid range segment of the market as illustrated in AMD's release strategy below. AMD has release two versions of the HD 5670 card, one with 1GB GDDR5 and another with 512MB GDDR5.



This review covers the latter one.



The 5600 series adopts the technologies of its big brothers, game review, like ATI Stream and, game review, ATI Eyefinity. Here are AMD's own words about their new, game review, "ATI, game review, Stream" technology:



ATI Stream technology, game review, is a set of advanced hardware and software technologies that enable AMD graphics processors (GPUs), working in concert with the system's central processors (CPUs), to accelerate enabled applications beyond traditional graphics and video processing.



This enables balanced platforms to run computationally-intensive, game review, tasks more efficiently, providing a better application experience to the end user. The 5600 series also has full support for Microsoft's DirectX11 API. I guess most people, game review, buying a graphics card in the middle range segment don't really know what the big deal is but anyone interested in the GPU industry knows that if you want to see the latest innovations in gaming you want to be on the latest DirectX train.



ENGINEERING SPECIFICATIONS



The test sample I will be reviewing today is a generic AMD ATI Radeon HD 5670 512MB GDDR5. It is a pre production unit which AMD sends out to selected publications before other outfitters' versions hit the store shelves. I am actually a bit late out with my review, but hey, what's the hurry anyway?



Here are the specifications for the HD5670 512MB GDDR5:



AMD, game review, ATI Radeon HD 5670 512 MB GDDR5 GPU Redwood (Radeon HD 5670) Transistors 627 Ms, game review, GPU Speed 775 MHz Stream processors 400 Performance calculation 620GFLOPS Texture units 20 Texture fill rate 25.



2 GTexels/s ROPs 16 Pixel fill rate 6.2 Gpixel/s Z/Stencil 24.8 GSamples/s Type of memory GDDR5 Speed of memory 1000 MHZ Amount of memory 515MB Bandwidth of memory 64 GB/s Bus width 128-bit Consumption Normal (61W)/IDLE (14W)



IN DETAIL:



I'm not going to spend too much time rambling about what the card looks like since most outfitters will be mounting their own cooling solutions. In, game review, short however, the card has a one slot cooler which is great and expected with a middle range card.



The card is manufactured with a 40nm technology which is great since it will increase its, game review, energy efficiency and decrease the generated heat in relation to performance.



A good thing about the fact that this card is fairly small and thin is that it fits in smaller cases suitable for HTPC and media PC projects. The length of the Radeon HD 5670 is 170mm.



The card has no PCI- Express power connector which should be considered as something positive I guess. It means that the card will never draw more power than what the PCI-Express bus can handle, game review, .



The 5670 generic card has 3 connectors; a Display Port; a HDMI and a, game review, DVI, game review, connector. It supports the "ATI Eyefinity" technology which means you can use monitors on each connector, game review, simultaneously. The HMDI connector support s HDMI 1.3a which means, game review, full support for Dolby True, game review, HD and DTS Audio Masters, game review, .



TEST SYSTEM I used my normal test system for this review, here are the specs:



Test equipment Processor Intel Core i7 920 Fan Prolimatech Mega Shadow Motherboard Asus Rampage II Gene Graphics card ATI Radeon HD 5670 512MB GDDR5 Soundcard Integrated Memory 3, game review, x2 GB GSkill Trident 1600 MHZ (6-7-6-18) Hard disk Intel X25-M G2 Postville 80 GB Power supply Corsair HX850W



Operating system and software Operating system Windows 7 64bits System dirvers Controller 8.



69_RC3 (BETA) DirectX August 2009 Benchmarking software 3D Mark 06 3D Mark Vantage Furmark 1.7 Unigyne Heaven Benchmark Games The Last Remnant Street Fighter IV Resident Evil 5 Weak May Cry 4 S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Prypiat DIRT 2 Far Cry 2 Crysis Warhead Other software CPU-Z 1.49 GPU-Z 0.3.7 OCCT 3.1



During my test I set the in-game graphics settings to the highest quality. I set the filter settings to "medium" because of the fact that this card is not intended for people who "must" have the filter settings to max.



For those of you who are not too familiar of how to measure the performance of a graphics card, here's a table with frame rate numbers, game review, and what they actually mean in real life gaming experience:



FPS (Frames per second) FPS lower than 30 Not a good gaming experience 30 - 40 FPS OK but not good gaming experience 40 - 60 FPS Good gaming experience Higher than 60 FPS Excellent gaming experience



I always do the tests with the benchmarking software first because it often gives a glint of the overall performance of the card.



In this case the results tell me that the performance of this card is a bit above, game review, what I had expected from a medium range card in the new AMD generation.



As a comparison a Nvidia GT 240 GDDR5, game review, card I have tested in the same system obtained around 7000 points in 3DMark, game review, 2006 and in my last, game review, review of a GT220 card (a card more towards the lower end segment) it achieved 6700 points. The Radeon HD5670 card came in at 11700 points which exceeds the NVIDIA cards by quite a lot.



As I have experienced with all the DirectX11 compatible cards I have reviewed, the performance diminishes with the jump from DirectX10 to DirectX11. This is strange because "higher performance" is one of the major selling points with the new API, game review, from Microsoft.



The Radeon HD 5670 actually turns out to be even more powerful in the first batch of games that I had expected based on the results achieved in the benchmarking tests. I was actually somewhat surprised that this medium range card, at a price level below $100, could move these games with great fluidity.



Games like The Last Remnant, Street Fighter IV and Devil May Cry 4 actually ran really, game review, well no matter what level of graphics quality setting, resolution or filter I set. Even Resident Evil 5 ran OK



A strange thing about the results above is the case of the games STALKER:, game review, Clear Sky and STALKER: Call of Prypiat. The first one uses DirectX10 and the second DirectX11. STALKER Clear Sky (DX10) offers a very limited, game review, gaming experience while STALKER: Call of Prypiat (DX11) has much better results.



I mean, those games are part, game review, of the same series. It raises questions like: is DirectX11 more efficient than DirectX10 after all? Or; do these two games have different 3D motors? I am afraid I cannot answer those questions for you, just thought that I'd bring it to your awareness.



There are however clearly two games, game review, in this batch which this card cannot handle; Far Cry 2 and Crysis Warhead. The performance, game review, of the Radeon HD 5670 in Far Cry 2 at a resolution of 1680