 |
||
| Home | Forums | Article Search | Subscribe & Shop | Contact Us | Log Out |
| AMD ATI Radeon HD 5670, 5570 & 5450 |
 Email This
 Print ThisView My Personal Library |
|
Heavy Gear April 2010 • Vol.10 Issue 4 Page(s) 38-39 in print issue |
|
|
AMD ATI Radeon HD 5670, 5570 & 5450 Cypress Has Triplets |
 AMD’s graphics division has been firing on all cylinders lately. The ATI Radeon HD 5670, 5570, and 5450 are all based on the Cypress GPU that we revealed several months ago, and as such, they all support the same features, including DirectX 11, Eyefinity, and the latest ATI Stream specs. They also support the same technologies found in previous generation Radeon HD cards, including CrossFire, UVD 2, PowerPlay, and more. Although these GPUs aren’t record breakers, what they represent for AMD is nothing short of stunning—complete top-to-bottom market dominance. Having affordable cards on the shelves is one thing, but who wants to buy them? If 25 million active Steam accounts are any indication, then almost everybody does. According to the January 2010 Steam Hardware Survey, more than 83% of gamers using the service play primarily at resolutions of 1,680 x 1,050 or less, which is the sub-$100 graphics card sweet spot. Read on to see if there’s a Redwood- or Cedar-based card in your very near future. AMD ATI Radeon HD 5670 $99 to $119 AMD • ati.amd.com CPU Rating: 4 Specs: GPU: Redwood XT; Core clock: 775MHz; Memory: 512MB GDDR5 (1,000MHz); 400 shader processors, 20 texture units, eight ROPs The castrato version of the Redwood XT we tested, better known as the ATI Radeon HD 5670, lacks the CrossFire connector and comes with 512MB of memory. Even without the connector, this card still supports CrossFire, but the data exchange all happens over the PCI-E interface. To date, the Radeon HD 5670 is the least expensive card in the 5000 series that will benefit from GDDR5 and its double data rate. AMD equipped this GPU with a 128-bit memory bus and memory clocked at 1GHz, for a total 4Gbps throughput. To give you some perspective for what a hundred dollars will buy you, the 627 million-transistor GPU inside the Radeon HD 5670 consists of five SIMD engines, which is a quarter of those found in the flagship Radeon HD 5870. That works out to 400 stream processors, 20 texture units, and eight ROPs. The card we tested features a full-height, single-slot form factor and DisplayPort, HDMI, and DVI ports. The heatsink and fan combo covers about three-quarters of the board and vents heat inside the case, but with peak and idle power draw rated at 64W and 15W, respectively, heat is not a problem. With such a low TDP, AMD was able to forgo a supplemental power connector on the board. If the Radeon HD 5670 is anything like its last generation counterpart, expect this card to be wearing a variety of dual-slot coolers when you see it on store shelves. AMD ATI Radeon HD 5570 $79 to $89 AMD • ati.amd.com CPU Rating: 4.5 Specs: GPU: Redwood Pro; Core clock: 650MHz; Memory: 1GB DDR3 (900MHz); 400 shader processors, 20 texture units, eight ROPs The Redwood Pro, or Radeon HD 5500, is built using the same GPU found in the Redwood XT. As a result, many of the specs for this card mirror those of the Radeon HD 5670. Its GPU consists of 627 million transistors and features five SIMD engines, 400 stream processors, 20 texture units, and eight ROPs. It also has a similar memory subsystem, with a 128-bit bus; however, the Radeon HD 5570 we tested ships with 1GB of DDR3 clocked at 900MHz, which affords it a data rate of 1.8Gbps. The core clock is set to 650MHz. Like other 5000 series cards, the 5500 supports Eyefinity and DX11, but these features demand a lot from the GPU, so this card isn’t a compelling option for those looking into the latest games and multimonitor resolutions. CrossFire is also supported on this card over the PCI-E slot. This card features a half-height form factor and has a DVI, HDMI, and VGA port on the full-height bracket. The active cooler on this card is considerably smaller than that of the 5670, covering GPU and memory chips. We wouldn't be surprised to see this card sporting a passive cooler in retail. The 5570's power draw is a cool 40W under load and 10W at idle. AMD ATI Radeon HD 5450 $49 to $59 AMD • ati.amd.com CPU Rating: 3.5 Specs: GPU: Cedar; Core clock: 650MHz; Memory: 512MB DDR3 (900MHz); 80 shader processors, eight texture units, four ROPs In the bargain bin, we find ATI’s 292 million-transistor Cedar GPU, which forms the basis for the Radeon HD 5450. This card features a single SIMD engine, or 1/20 the pixel-crunching horsepower found in the RV870. That gives this card 80 stream processors, eight texture units, and four ROPs. But memory performance for the Radeon HD 5450 is also constrained due to the fact that it runs DDR3 and comes with a narrow 64-bit memory bus. The card we tested had 512MB of memory clocked at 900MHz and a core clock set to 650MHz. AMD informed us that cards on store shelves could have memory clocked as low as 800MHz, which the firm estimates gives our sample up to a 5.5% performance advantage over a sample with memory clocked at 800MHz. Like the other cards covered here, the Radeon HD 5450 supports CrossFire over the PCI-E slot. Our Radeon HD 5450 is a half-height card that includes DVI, HDMI, and VGA ports. The card will also ship supporting the DisplayPort interface. The cooler is a red-anodized block of aluminum that covers approximately two-thirds of the card. The 5450 power draw is a frosty 19.1W under load and 6.4W at idle.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Final Word 
| User Reviews | Be the first to write a review of this product |
|
 |
| Home Copyright & Legal Information Privacy Policy Site Map Contact Us |
| Copyright © 2010 Sandhills Publishing Company U.S.A. All rights reserved. |