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AMD’s ATI Radeon HD5670

Posted by Robert Dow on January 18th 2010 | Discuss (0) |
Categories: Hardware Review
Tags: gpu ati amd radeon gpgpu pmark hd5670

While multi-card Crossfire/ SLi solutions and chasing record breaking performance get the headlines the bottom line is fueled by the $100 and under AIB’s. The Mainstream segment of the market has always been the monetary sweet spot of the GPU industry. What a company loses in profit margins in the segment is more than made up for in volume. In years past this segment would be reserved for the high-end parts that has fallen from grace and becomes obsolete, however recognizing the importance of this segment (Steam is reporting that 90% of AIB are <$100) GPU companies design GPUs specifically for the Mainstream. The HD 5670 is no exception, and in fact it’s a great example.

The core of the new HD 5670 is the Redwood XT GPU. The Redwood XT like its big brothers the Cypress and Juniper is a 40NM part with 640 Million transistors compared to 2.15 billion and 959 million of the Cypress and Juniper respectively. Fewer transistors contribute to the HD 5670’s efficient power consumption – 61W in use, 14w idle.

The HD 5670 is the first sub $100 mainstream part introduced by ATI that is DirectX 11 compatible; this will give obvious advantages to the Redwood XT solution over its GT 240 counterpart. Six months ago even three months ago DX 11 would not have been a major advantage in the Mainstream segment but with more and more DX 11 games being introduced DX 11 is becoming a necessity. It’s our speculation that Nvidia will not be able to introduce a Fermi derivative DX 11 for Mainstream until the fall which gives the HD 5670 plenty of time to wrestle away market share from the GT 240 until a DX 11 Nvidia successor can hit the street.

As of now the GT 240 is a comparable part and can outperform the HD 5670 as some of our test show. We tested both cards using an Intel Clarksdale – i5 661 @ 3.33 GHz.

ATI is planning to follow up the HD 5670 with two Value parts the HD 5500 – HD 5450 (the HD 5450 will be a fanless dual-slot solution) these are do to be rolled out in early February.

Pmark

The Pmark score shows the new EVGA GT 240 AIB to be the hands down best board available today.

The Pmark is a three parameter test

Where:

• Performance is expressed in 3DMark Pre-set Extreme Vantage score
• Price is expressed in US dollars (NextTag data used)
• Power is expressed in watts of the AIB

What do we think?

The relative performance of the AIBs is close and brand loyalty could easily make the decision. However, the AMD HD 5670 can run DX 11 games and therefore offers better investment protection.