AMD’s Radeon HD 5570: Low Profile, Higher Performance
by Ryan Smith on February 9, 2010 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Meet Sapphire’s 5570
Sapphire also sent along their 5570. As a launch-day card it’s nearly identical to our reference card, utilizing the same PCB and RAM as that card. The only difference on the board itself is that our Sapphire card is equipped with a DisplayPort rather than an HDMI port.
The bigger difference is that like virtually everyone else, Sapphire has ditched the reference cooler for another design. It’s still a single-slot cooler, but instead of AMD’s blower Sapphire is using an open-ended design that vents air out the front and the rear. It’s painted black so we can’t tell what material it’s made from, but we suspect it’s aluminum rather than copper like AMD’s. This will be worth keeping in mind for later when we look at the cooling characteristics of these two cards.
As with Sapphire’s 5450, their 5770 comes in a surprisingly large box. Inside is the card, a low-profile bracket, drivers, an installation guide, and Arcsoft’s SimHD video conferencing plugin.
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vlado08 - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - link
Please give us comparison with intel HD graphics and also Ion in video post processing. Can we change gamma in intel drivers? Can we select different interlacing? Can we select the output RGB or YUV, 0-255 or 16-235? In some articles here on Anandtech you point intel HD as an perfect HTPC graphics? But is it really?Moizy - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - link
I forgot that you included those screen shots of the 210 and the 220 doing the "cheese slices" test in the 5450 article. Thanks for pointing that out. I downloaded those screen-shots as well. Very useful for comparison.It's kind of irritating that they (AMD and nVidia) can't get the HTPC thing fully right unless you spend $100 and get a card that has a bunch of 3D capabilities that aren't needed if you just want to enjoy HD. I wonder, though, if half of the 5570's video-quality issues are driver-related and not hardware-related. As far as I know, the 4670 can handle all of the video-quality stuff, and 5570 seems very comparable hardware-wise.
mariush - Wednesday, February 10, 2010 - link
We wouldnt need these 100$ cards just to run a movie well if the crap that INTERLACING is would have been removed from the HD standard.Almost all the performace problems are caused by the need to deinterlace content. With progressive content, these cards don't have issues.
Slaimus - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - link
The card really should be clocked at ~500Mhz with lower voltage, and maybe even 80 disabled SPs. All of that power wasting rendering ability is mostly idling while waiting for memory.MrSpadge - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - link
Agreed. Although that could become a HD5550.wolrah - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - link
Why do we still have VGA ports on these things? Those still using old-ass monitors can use an adapter off the DVI-I port that pretty much every video card includes for free. Give me DVI-I Dual Link, HDMI, and DisplayPort. VGA is dead and can be adapted with no downsides from other ports, there is no reason to keep putting that useless port there.Taft12 - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - link
Spoken like someone who doesn't understand how every penny needs to be scrimped with the miniscule margins on these parts, especially given DVI royalties.MadMan007 - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - link
You couldn't take a metal tool to the Sapphire heatsink to find out what material it is? I doubt it's actual 'paint' it's probably anodizing on aluminum which should be easy to scrape through.Ryan Smith - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - link
I actually tried scraping through it, but I don't exactly have the right tool for the task. At any rate, Sapphire tells me it's Aluminum.shiggz - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - link
Any idea if this card can handle MPCHC "sharpen complex 2" without stuttering on 720p files?