AMD’s Radeon HD 5770 & 5750: DirectX 11 for the Mainstream Crowd
by Ryan Smith on October 13, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Meet The 5750
Below the 5770, we have the 5750, the other card being launched today. This is a 700MHz card with 1 SIMD disabled, and the memory clock at 1.15GHz(4.6GHz effective). This represents an 18% decrease in core clock and the performance of all units tied to that clock, and a 10% further reduction in computational and texturing power due to the loss of a SIMD, for a total theoretical performance reduction of 26%. The ROP count remains unchanged at 16.
The 5750 will come with either 512MB or 1GB of RAM, depending on the target price, with no change in memory clocks. As is the case with 5770, we find the choice of memory speeds interesting since vendors still have to use the same speed RAM on the 5750 as they do the 5870 (boy this stuff must be cheap). No one makes 1.15GHz GDDR5, so vendors have no choice but to equip it with something faster. Our samples are using Hynix 1.25GHz modules, which means the 5750 and the 5770 should be capable of some easy memory overclocking (bus capabilities withstanding). At the moment no one makes 1.2GHz modules, so this may persist for some time.
Compared to the 5770, gone is the expensive Phoenix shroud, replaced with what we’re calling the “egg”. The egg is a simple circular heatsink with a 2-pin fan embedded in it, which sucks in air and pushes it out along the fins. The egg shape is brought about by the plastic cover at the top of the heatsink – we’re not sure if it’s just for looks or if it’s accomplishing some specific function. The card length is 7.15 inches, with no shroud to extend that.
Once again we’ll see the same Eyefinity port configuration here; 1 DisplayPort, 1 HDMI, and 2 DVI. There’s still a half-slot vent here, but since the design of the cooler means that the card is blowing hot air in to the case instead of out the rear, it serves more as a window to look at the card. As a card with this performance level isn’t a good choice for gaming with Eyefinity, AMD is shooting at professional users with the Eyefinity capabilities of this card. We expect that this will be a bit harder of a sale, since Single Large Surface capabilities aren’t as critical with windowed programs, and the high price of DisplayPort->DVI dongles means that the dongle is as much as the card.
We should also note that it’s the desire to keep the Eyefinity port configuration that lead to the use of the egg cooler. For the second generation of cards, vendors are likely to drop the egg cooler for a single-slot cooler. Certainly the 5750 is cool enough at 86W TDP that it doesn’t need a dual-slot cooler.
For pricing, AMD is putting the 1GB version of this card at $129, and the 512MB version at $109. This puts it in competition with NVIDIA’s GTS 250 cards, and AMD’s 4850 cards. Unlike the 5770, the price here is certainly right, as we’ll see later.
As is the case with the 5770, the 5750 is expected to have “tens of thousands” of units available at launch, with any supply constraints likely to be the same between the two. The 1GB cards will come with DIRT 2 vouchers if the vender participates, the 512MB cards will not.
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Mint - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - link
The 4870 will only drop in price to clear inventory, because it's not worth it to produce them with the intent of selling them at $120 or less. I expect them to sell out before the price drops much further.Don't fret, though. The 5770 has a 128-bit bus and a fairly small die. It will drop in price soon enough, unless NVidia decides to stop bleeding $$ on its huge GT200 chips on $150 cards and Fermi-based mainstream cards can't get down in price.
samspqr - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - link
well, my favorite retailer (alternate.de) already has the 5750 and 5770 in stock, at 130eur and 160eur respectivelythey also have the 4870-1GB at 115eur, which is MUCH cheaper
in any case, right now, with my usage pattern (24/7 on, but mostly GPU-idle, maybe just one hour a day of GPU stress), the difference in power consumption between the 4870 and the 5770 is at least 50w, which means ((50*24*365)/1000)*0.15eur/KWh = 65.7eur/year
so it pays for the difference in just over 6 months, at the expense of slightly lower performance, with the advantage of less noise
speaking of which, I like my GPUs silent, passive if possible, thankyouverymuch, so I'll wait for vendor-specific designs or after-market coolers; by the time these are out, maybe the 4870 will not eve be available anymore
samspqr - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - link
(sorry, that was 8 months, don't know how I got that 6 the first time)7Enigma - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - link
Search for and download GPUTool. It's still in beta and has some quirks but for massive idle power drop it cannot be beat (at least for my system, 4870). I simply lowered the 2D core/memory clocks (they have a low/medium/high setting, and ALL need to be the same setting or you get flickering), down to around 250MHz, and this dropped idle power consumption by a crazy amount (40-80w, can't remember exactly). Once the creator of the program releases a newer version I'm hoping some of the fan speed and voltage mod bugs get worked out. Even so, the 2 second click to lower idle speeds is incredibly handy.HTH
chrnochime - Wednesday, October 14, 2009 - link
I don't know if you've tried using ATI tray tool already, but after scourging around the web trying to figure out way to keep my XFX 4870 1GB from drawing more power than needed(e.g. when just surfing/playing video), I was able to drop the GPU clock to 400 MHz, and memory to 225 MHz. The memory draws much more power than does the GPU, so leaving GPU at 400 doesn't really make that much of a difference, compared to 250.Keep in mind that running said program in Vista is somewhat of a headache, since the driver is not signed by MS, so you need to do the work-around to get it running as startup program so the clocks drop can be initiated by the program.
makechen - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 - link
48566565rdh - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
A year later, the 5770 is *cheaper* than the 4850/4870. I just purchased one for $99 from the egg. It consumes 30% less power at idle and at load than the 48xx cards.I suppose at the $160 price point, it was fine to slam this card. At the current price point, though, it is the BEST price-for-performance and performance-per-watt card out there.