AMD's Radeon HD 5670: Sub-$100 DirectX 11 Starts Today
by Ryan Smith on January 14, 2010 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Meet The 5670
Today’s launch is the Redwood based Radeon HD 5670. The 5670 is a full Redwood card, with all of its functional units enabled and running at its “full” clockspeed. The card we’re looking at is clocked at 775MHz core, and 1GHz(4GHz data rate) on the GDDR5 RAM. With a 128-bit memory bus, this gives the card 64GB/sec of memory bandwidth.
AMD stock photo, our sample boards are black and don't have CF connectors
AMD will be launching the card in a 512MB and 1GB configuration. The $99 card we’re looking at is a 512MB model, while the 1GB model will run $15-$20 more.
Attached to the card are 4 128MB Hynix GDDR5 RAM chips. These chips are specified for a 4GHz data rate, so AMD is only finally pairing up 5000-series cards with appropriately fast RAM. What this means is that unlike the 5700 and 5800 series, there won’t be any freebie memory overclocking to take advantage of the gap between the card’s clocks and what the RAM is specified for. What you see is what you get.
As is common for cards targeted at the sub-$100 price range, the 5670 runs sans external power. AMD puts the TDP for the card at 61W, which compares favorably to the 70W of the GT 240 that we saw last week. AMD tells us that they were merely designing this card to be under 75W, and that the 61W TDP of the shipping product is a good bit lower than they had been planning on.
With the lower power usage of this card, the need for a dual-slot cooler (and the 5000 series distinctive shroud) is gone. The 5670 is equipped with a slightly larger than normal single-slot blower, which blows air towards the front of the card. We call this cooler slightly larger than normal since AMD has extended the heatsink portion slightly to cover all of the GDDR5 RAM chips on the card, as evidenced by the heatsink jutting out of the top. This is an interesting design choice from AMD, since other cards like the 5750 do not apply any cooling to the GDDR5 RAM chips. This does leave us wondering whether cooling the RAM is necessary, or if AMD is doing it for cosmetic reasons.
The card measures at 6.61”, and finally drops AMD’s traditional Eyefinity port configuration. By moving to a single slot, AMD has dropped the 2nd DVI port, leaving the card with a DisplayPort, an HDMI port, and a dual-link DVI port. The card will be able to drive a second DVI monitor using an HDMI-to-DVI adapter, although only a single link. The 5670 still has full Eyefinity capabilities, and a 3rd monitor can be hooked up to the DisplayPort for that task. AMD tells us that the Redwood chip can actually drive 4 monitors, but none of the launch cards will configured for that (not that the 5800 cards were either). AMD’s ideal Eyefintiy configuration for this card is to pair it up with a trio of cheap 16:9 19” monitors, although as we’ll see the card doesn’t really have enough power for gaming like this.
The need for an active DisplayPort adapter is still an issue however, and at $99 the adapters are as much if not more than the card itself. At this point the best solution is a DisplayPort native monitor, but those are still fairly rare and seldom cheap.
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Spoelie - Thursday, January 14, 2010 - link
Also, the conclusion that the radeon really pulls away from the other value cards at higher resolutions (hawx) might be an artifact of the differing memory sizes.(need edit button!)
kmmatney - Thursday, January 14, 2010 - link
I bought a $99 HD4830 more than a year ago, and it much faster than this, especially when overclocked (as it had lot of OC headroom, and performs a little faster than an HD4850). Sad that the same amount of money a year later gets you a slower card.Griswold - Thursday, January 14, 2010 - link
You 4830 is a partial defective 4850, thats what made it nice value until the 4770 arrived (despite low availablility then). You have to wait for the already rumored 5830 to get the same feeling again...BelardA - Thursday, January 14, 2010 - link
What made the 4670 an exciting card well over a year ago was that it was under $100 when it was launched ($80 avg) and it was almost as fast as the 3870, sometimes faster (as drivers matured). So when looking at some of these benchmarks that DON'T have the 4670, just look at the 3870 and count it the same. So at $80, it had replaced the $200~150 3870 and ran cooler, etc.Anyway, the 5670 SHOULD have at least equaled the 4770 in performance! That would make the 5670 a very good value gaming card for the $90~100 price range. You can get 4770s for about $95~110 (until gone).
Hopefully in the coming months, the prices will start to get lower
naturally. But AMD should have a $100 card that *IS* equal to the 4850. Perhaps that would be a 5730 card, but its power should still be under 75watts under load.
Until Nvidia comes out with something competitive, AMD has little reason to load the prices... ha, notice how things have changed? :)
Ideal pricing by March/April.
5870 = $350 (Today = $400~440)
5850 = $225 (Today = $300~340)
5830 = $175 * hey, there was a 4380, why not?
5770 = $125 (Today = $155~200 for 1GB)
5750 = $110 (Today = $135~150 for 1GB)
5730 = $ 95 * hey, there was a 4380, why not?
5670 = $ 75 * Its cheaper to make than a 4670.
5650 = $ 60
5550 = $ 55 * Cause 555 looks cool.
5450 = $ 40
5350 = $ 30 * Office PCs that need DVI... 4350s are $25.
With such a line up, the entire 4000 series can go. There are still 3600s and 24/2600s on the market, usually lo-profile or AGP.
In the meantime, Nvidia will still be selling 9600 / 9800 / GT1xx / G/gt 2xx for another 1-3 years... ugh.
BelardA - Thursday, January 14, 2010 - link
OOPS! I typoedI meant to say "4830", not "4380".... doh!
Drazick - Thursday, January 14, 2010 - link
What About Some Open CL / Direct Compute tests?No games, just pure calculations?
Thanks.
haplo602 - Thursday, January 14, 2010 - link
hmm seems this card is a bit short of my needs ... a performance level around hd4770 would be great.Obsy - Thursday, January 14, 2010 - link
Idle and Load Power charts say "NVIDIA GeForce 4870 X2" ;)MadMan007 - Thursday, January 14, 2010 - link
Nice thorough review. I'd be interested in some more results with lesser or no AA as well though. While we all love AA it's kind of silly to expect to run it well at 1920x1200 or sometimes even 1680x1050 on <$100 cards. Plus it would give those who keep cards for a long time and just turn down features such as AA a better comparison.ET - Thursday, January 14, 2010 - link
While I already replaced my 3870 with a 5750, it's nice to see a sub-$100 card that beats it in all cases. I'm glad ATI went with 128bit GDDR 5 for this card.