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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silverblue - Wednesday, October 14, 2009 - link
With any luck they'll become plentiful in a short space of time, offering early adopters the chance to set up a decent EF, umm, setup.If you think the typical EF setup will be two or three monitors, do you expect the full six monitor glory with an X2 part? I'm still wondering if even the 5870 can handle three monitors and still offer smooth gaming performance. That said, despite their power they're not going to strictly be gaming cards.
papapapapapapapababy - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - link
the fact that this cards consume little power is irrelevant when you have that great efficiency on the 5800... also including the Eyefinity gimmick here is a mistake, it only diminishes the value of that feature on the 5800. It should have been 1 card. HD 5770:no Eyefinity, 800 SP, 750MHz, 512MB = $99 USD
CarrellK - Wednesday, October 14, 2009 - link
Eyefinity (EF) will be in all 5xxx products for a multiplicity of useful reasons, many of which aren't apparent yet. There will be frequent roll-outs of new EF goodness. There will be many, many customers who will find EF very useful. Hopefully you will realize what EF can do for you and buy one of our products. We'd like for you to be a happy customer of ours.CarrellK
yacoub - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - link
" It should have been 1 card. HD 5770:no Eyefinity, 800 SP, 750MHz, 512MB = $99 USD "
Close, but no. 1GB of VRAM is mandatory anymore, and it needs the 256-bit bus or more texturing units and ROPs. And then it could be $125.
yacoub - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - link
Something's wrong when two of these in CrossFire can't match a single 5850. Blah.qwertymac93 - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - link
why no mention of 4770? i know its older and slower, but its also 40nm like the 5750 and is the same price, it would be nice to see the difference between the two as they are specked quite closely(640sp@750mhz, 720sp@700mhz, both 128bit gddr5)snarfbot - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - link
legion hardware has a good review comparing them both.the 5750 is between 1-3 fps faster.
the 5750 has better overclocking potential thanks to the ram i guess, but im not sure if its worth the extra 25 bucks.
kinda a wait and see thing for this part
Seramics - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - link
Yet another good reviews from AT, thanks Ryan. However, it becomes clear cards like HD5870 and HD5770 isnt a very good performer for its price. HD5850 and HD5750 512MB repeesents a more solid bang for bucks. Again its very amazing that AMD has been able to bring us so many next gen DX11 cards when Windows 7 isnt even launched yet and their competitor is being super slow by onli recently releasing a non high end part of G200 derivatives. That being said, from the point of view of solely performance, Cypress and Juniper is kinda a disappointing performer for its price, as well as for its specifications.pullmyfoot - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - link
Hmm. I was expecting the 5770 to perform either at the 4890 levels or slightly slower at very least while running cooler and taking up less power. This is quite disappointing. I was all ready to get one to replace my 4850 if the price was right. I wonder how well they can tweak the drivers for this thing.yacoub - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - link
Same here, although I'd replace my 8800GT with it. I expected about 25% more performance, and about $10 less MSRP ($150).