AMD is back with a new medium range card which promises a good price/performance ratio, the Radeon HD 5670.

INTRODUCTION

The first member of the Evergreen family hit the market back in September (2009). AMD has since then not said much about what would follow.

AMD chose to release the 5670 card at last week’s CES 2010 event. The 5600 series chip is called Redwood and currently only includes the Radeon HD 5650 and 5670 chips. The 5600 series is clearly directed to the mid range segment of the market as illustrated in AMD’s release strategy below. AMD has release two versions of the HD 5670 card, one with 1GB GDDR5 and another with 512MB GDDR5. This review covers the latter one.

The 5600 series adopts the technologies of its big brothers like ATI Stream and ATI Eyefinity. Here are AMD’s own words about their new “ATI Stream” technology:

ATI Stream technology is a set of advanced hardware and software technologies that enable AMD graphics processors (GPUs), working in concert with the system’s central processors (CPUs), to accelerate enabled applications beyond traditional graphics and video processing. This enables balanced platforms to run computationally-intensive tasks more efficiently, providing a better application experience to the end user.

The 5600 series also has full support for Microsoft’s DirectX11 API. I guess most people buying a graphics card in the middle range segment don’t really know what the big deal is but anyone interested in the GPU industry knows that if you want to see the latest innovations in gaming you want to be on the latest DirectX train.

AMD ATI RADEON HD 5670, ENGINEERING SPECIFICATIONS

The test sample I will be reviewing today is a generic AMD ATI Radeon HD 5670 512MB GDDR5. It is a pre production unit which AMD sends out to selected publications before other outfitters’ versions hit the store shelves. I am actually a bit late out with my review, but hey, what’s the hurry anyway?

Here are the specifications for the HD5670 512MB GDDR5:

IN DETAIL: AMD ATI RADEON HD 5670 512MB GDDR5

I’m not going to spend too much time rambling about what the card looks like since most outfitters will be mounting their own cooling solutions. In short however, the card has a one slot cooler which is great and expected with a middle range card.

The card is manufactured with a 40nm technology which is great since it will increase its energy efficiency and decrease the generated heat in relation to performance.

A good thing about the fact that this card is fairly small and thin is that it fits in smaller cases suitable for HTPC and media PC projects. The length of the Radeon HD 5670 is 170mm.

The card has no PCI- Express power connector which should be considered as something positive I guess. It means that the card will never draw more power than what the PCI-Express bus can handle.

The 5670 generic card has 3 connectors; a Display Port; a HDMI and a DVI connector. It supports the “ATI Eyefinity” technology which means you can use monitors on each connector simultaneously.

The HMDI connector support s HDMI 1.3a which means full support for Dolby True HD and DTS Audio Masters.

TEST SYSTEM

I used my normal test system for this review, here are the specs:

And here are some screenshots of my configuration:

During my test I set the in-game graphics settings to the highest quality. I set the filter settings to “medium” because of the fact that this card is not intended for people who “must” have the filter settings to max.

For those of you who are not too familiar of how to measure the performance of a graphics card, here’s a table with frame rate numbers and what they actually mean in real life gaming experience:

TEST: BENCHMARKING SOFTWARE

I always do the tests with the benchmarking software first because it often gives a glint of the overall performance of the card. In this case the results tell me that the performance of this card is a bit above what I had expected from a medium range card in the new AMD generation.

As a comparison a Nvidia GT 240 GDDR5 card I have tested in the same system obtained around 7000 points in 3DMark 2006 and in my last review of a GT220 card (a card more towards the lower end segment) it achieved 6700 points. The Radeon HD5670 card came in at 11700 points which exceeds the NVIDIA cards by quite a lot.

As I have experienced with all the DirectX11 compatible cards I have reviewed, the performance diminishes with the jump from DirectX10 to DirectX11. This is strange because “higher performance” is one of the major selling points with the new API from Microsoft.

TEST: GAMES PART 1

The Radeon HD 5670 actually turns out to be even more powerful in the first batch of games that I had expected based on the results achieved in the benchmarking tests. I was actually somewhat surprised that this medium range card, at a price level below $100, could move these games with great fluidity.

Games like The Last Remnant, Street Fighter IV and Devil May Cry 4 actually ran really well no matter what level of graphics quality setting, resolution or filter I set. Even Resident Evil 5 ran OK

TEST: GAMES PART 2

A strange thing about the results above is the case of the games STALKER: Clear Sky and STALKER: Call of Prypiat. The first one uses DirectX10 and the second DirectX11. STALKER Clear Sky (DX10) offers a very limited gaming experience while STALKER: Call of Prypiat (DX11) has much better results. I mean, those games are part of the same series. It raises questions like: is DirectX11 more efficient than DirectX10 after all? Or; do these two games have different 3D motors? I am afraid I cannot answer those questions for you, just thought that I’d bring it to your awareness.

There are however clearly two games in this batch which this card cannot handle; Far Cry 2 and Crysis Warhead. The performance of the Radeon HD 5670 in Far Cry 2 at a resolution of 1680×1050 (without filters) at 41.04 FPS just isn’t good enough and far from the results I achieved with the Sapphire HD 5750 (61.57 FPS).

Still, the Radeon HD 5670 demonstrates a remarkable performance in very demanding games. If we can live with not always running the games in the highest resolutions with filters enabled, then you will not be disappointed.

HD VIDEO

In order to analyze the performance of the Radeon HD 5670 when replaying HD video I measured the average CPU load (%) during a 5 minute period while playing HD content. I did the measurements in two resolutions: 720p (H.261) and 1080p.

The excellent results are really thanks to the ATI Steam technology. It is great to see such a powerful card with such small dimensions. It makes the card ideal for a HTPC.

OVERCLOCKING, COOLING AND CONSUMPTION

Overclocking is always exciting (at least for me) but I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about this card since all I had to work with was the ATI Catalyst application. I did however reach a decent 9% increase of the GPU (775 MHz) and a 9.5% increase of the original memory frequency. This was the max numbers I could set in the ATI Catalyst application which leaves some room for other outfitters to unlock a greater overclocking.

The cooling system of this card fulfills its task. We must consider that is just a generic sample of the card so none of the outfitters fancy cooling solutions are present. The temperatures that you see in the graph below at full load are high but they are actually what I usually see with a new reference model AMD ATI card. We will just see what the different outfitters can come up with in terms of cooling solutions for the 5670 chip and what they can do with the temperatures.

The fan is automatically regulated and its rotation speed is around 28% when the card is in idle mode. Below 40% the fan is imperceptible but above 50% it is perfectly audible without ever getting as annoying as fans on high end cards.

The use of the new manufacturing technology at 40nm gives this card a better efficiency ratio than previous generation of graphics cards. In the real world this means an improvement of the performance at the same power consumption levels. Or the other way around; a lower power consumption at the same performance level. According to AMD ATI, the idle mode consumption should be 14W whereas the typical consumption in operation is at 61W.

I measured the total power drainage of my system in idle mode and overclock mode which is illustrated in the graph below. I cannot tell you if AMD ATI’s number are correct or not.

RESULTS OF THE TEST WITH OVERCLOCK

Of course I ran some tests with the overclocked card as well, here are the results:

As you can see the results show a slight increase of the performance. For instance the gain in Crysis Warhead was around 1.5 FPS and in Far Cry 2 the increase was around 3 FPS. In reality this doesn’t mean much.

CONCLUSIONS

OK, so this card is clearly not a high end gaming card, but the big question is if it’s powerful enough to be of any use for us gamers? I would say definitely yes! If you can accept playing FPS games without filters you will be satisfied with this card. Hard core gamers will however have to go for the next price level.

What is great with this card is that AMD has managed to squeeze in all the new technologies which we saw in the 5800 series, like the ATI Steam, DirectX11 and ATI Eyefinity. That fact combined with the fact that this card is quite small makes it ideal for anyone looking for a graphics card for HTPC project.

This card will start to sell around the $100 level which I feel is very affordable considering its capabilities.

Pros:

• OK performance
• Low noise level
• Low power consumption
• Single slot card
• Low price

Cons:

• None really

The final score is 89 out of 100 owls, and we give the “AMD ATI 5670 Radeon HD 512MB GDDR5″ our Recommended Award.

Thanks goes out to AMD ATI for letting me review this card.

Check out alternatives of the Radeon 5600 series at testseek.com

Author: Manuel González Fernández

Translator: Vince Emiloz Sanderson

Sapphire is back with a new exciting series of graphics cards called “Vapor-X” which has a very special cooling solution. In this review I will be taking a look at the Sapphire Vapor-X HD 5750 card.

INTRODUCTION

The Radeon 5000 series of graphics cards were rather recently released by AMD/ATI and for the very first time in a couple of years, AMD/ATI (hereafter referred to as only AMD) is back in the performance lead. NVIDEA will release their next generation of graphics cards rather soon but no date is set and very little information about it has leaked to the press.

Just a couple of weeks back AMD released the 5850 and the 5870 graphics cards which were very well received in reviews and by consumers. I did a review of an Asus 5850 card myself.

Just a couple of weeks later AMD release the HD 5970 which is a dual GPU card with the code name “Hemlock”, a very powerful and expensive card. You can check out reviews at testseek.com on it. Here’s the current lineup from AMD:

I already discussed the news with the Radeon 5000 series in my Asus HD 5850 review so I’m not going to repeat everything again. Suffice to say, the new generation has some new great characteristics. First, the chips are made in the new 40nm technology which promises lower power consumption and less heat.  Secondly, the ATI EyeFinity technology makes it possible to connect up to three monitors to each card which means a total of 6 monitors in CrossFireX. Other important characteristics are the ATI Stream (GPU acceleration), Open CL (API for processing in parallel GPU-CPU) and Directx 11 support.

ENGINEERING SPECIFICATIONS: SAPPHIRE VAPOR-X HD5750 1GB DDR5

OK, enough is enough; let’s have a look at the specifications of the Sapphire HD 5750 Vapor-X 1GB DDR5:

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: 5750 SAPPHIRE VAPOR-X HD 1GB DDR5

On the box Sapphire emphasizes the Vapor-X technology and all the new AMD technologies discussed above.

The card is secured in a card board box and enclosed by the usual anti static plastic bag.

The included accessories are: a manual; a CD with drivers and utilities; the application “ArcSoft SimHD”; a coupon to download the Dirt2 game (supports DirectX 11); 2 molex to 6 pin PCIe adapter cables; a DVI-VGA adapter and a CrossFireX bridge.

IN DETAIL: SAPPHIRE VAPOR-X HD 5750 VAPOR-X 1GB DDR5

The card itself really looks impressive with its massive cooling solution. I have had the chance to see models of the 5750 from quite a few manufacturers and the Sapphire card comes out on top.

The cooling solution occupies a double slot which may be a disadvantage because this card must be rated as a medium range card and many users prefer single slot cards in this segment. AMD/ATI sets the overall rules from which the manufacturers can build their cards and they often leave rather small margins which I guess must be the reason why I have yet to see a 5750 single slot card.

The technology used by the cooling system Vapor-X has its origins in the aerospace industry. The cooling liquid, (in this case water) becomes steam on a hot surface (the GPU) and the resulting steam is condensed when it comes in touch with a colder surface which turns the steam into liquid again and returns to the hot surface again and so the process repeats itself. Sapphire claims that the Vapor-X system is much more effective than the reference cooling system, up to 7 degrees.

In the right hands, less heat means less noise. And this is also another characteristic of the Vapor-X system.

In order to help the Vapor-X system to cool the liquid that circulates in its interior, Sapphire has installed an 80mm fan which is perfectly integrated with the black plastic cover. One of the sides of the plastic cover holds the Sapphire logo which glows blue when the system is running. Check out the image below to see what I’m talking about.

The “Black Diamond” condensers which caused some buzz in the industry are included on this card.  The aluminum polymer in these condensers is superior to the one used one in “normal” aluminum condensers. According to Sapphire, these condensers are 25% more energy efficient than normal condensers.

The card has an extra 6 pin PCIe power connector as you can see from the image below.

The 5750 actual has two CrossFireX connections although due to the inefficiency of the Catalyst drivers, it is not recommended to install more than two cards.

The memory units are visible on the PCB of this card. They are four high quality Hynix GDDR5 chips.

There are four video exits on this card, two standard DVI-I; a HDMI and a DisplayPort. This should satisfy the needs of even the most demanding users. The card is only 185 mm long and thus fits in most cases.

TEST SYSTEM

These are the components in my test system:

Here are screen shots of my test system configuration:

BENCHMARKING TESTS

Sadly I received this card a little too late to be able to test it on my old test system on which I have made many graphics card tests. This means I will have to comment on the numbers without having any real references to results from old tests. I’ll try to be as objective as possible.

It’s not a secret that AMDs cards often get surprisingly high scores in the FutureMark benchmarking programs (3D Mark 06 and 3D Mark Vantage). And this time was no exception as you can see from the graphs above.

The Unigine tests of the DirectX 10 and Direct 11X was interesting to me because of the results I got with the same tests on the Asus HD5850 card a couple of weeks back. One of the main marketing points of the DirectX 11 is that it is supposed to be much faster than its predecessor. With the HD 5850 I got the opposite results and as you can see from the graphs above, the same goes for the 5750 card. Obviously AMD are having troubles here. Hopefully we will see improvements with the release of new Catalyst drivers.

GAMING I

The performance of the Radeon HD 5750 is spectacular. It is able to maintain a high FPS rate with all the games in this first series. It had no problems when I beefed up the resolution and turned on filters. The fact that it includes 1GB of GDDR5 with a bandwidth of 108 GB/s must be what ultimately keeps the smoothness in the games going even with filters on.

GAMING II

In the second battery of games which includes the most demanding games, the limitations of the HD 5750 comes to light. Although it doesn’t prevent us from enjoying the games altogether, it is clear that this is a mid range card. In favor of HD 5750 it is necessary to say that even the incredibly powerful HD 5850 had some troubles with these games with all the settings at max. Considering that the HD 5850 has double the amount of stream processors compared to the HD5750 it is fair to say that the HD 5750 is a very potent card.

OVERCLOCKING, COOLING AND POWER CONSUMPTION

The release of the HD 5750 brings power to the medium range segment. Up till now, I haven’t said much about its overclocking abilities but reports from other reviews and forums have been positive. Therefore I was very eager to test a HD 5750 card myself and see of the overclocking potential really was as good as I had heard. I cannot deny that I got even happier when I learnt that I would be able to test a HD 5750 with the Vapor-X technology.

Indeed, the overclocking capacity of this card is high. Check out the following screen shots which I obtained without modifying voltages but by only using Catalyst Control Center.

After having tested innumerable combinations, I received a stable configuration at 860 Mhz for the GPU and 1345 MHz for the memories. This means an increase of the default numbers of 23% for the GPU and 17% for the memories (percentages was calculated based on the values for the reference model with 700 MHz for the GPU and 1150 MHz for the memories).

The Vapor-X cooling system obviously does a fantastic job. In the following graph you can see the temperatures when the card is in IDLE and FULL LOAD modes. The IDLE temperatures were measured after the system had been running for half an hour without any load. The FULL LOAD numbers were taken after the system had been in full load (using Furmark 1.7) for a half an hour. The room temperature was 17˚C.

The Vapor-X technology clearly does a lot to keep the temperatures down. It was a long time ago I saw these low numbers at full load. I say it again; the Vapor-X does a great job.

The noise level is always hard to talk about since it’s a very subjective thing.  The fan can be set manually or automatic. During my overclocking the fan was set to regulating itself and it rotated at 50% of the max speed. I think that the noise it made on these levels ware perfectly OK but when it goes above it becomes noticeable and somewhat annoying.

The power consumption of the 5800 series has been reduced rather drastically thanks to the use of the ATI PowerPlay technology that diminishes the consumption in 2D. According to the specifications from Sapphire, the power consumption of the card in idle mode is as low as 18W. The maximum consumption is 108W at full load. The graph below shows the power consumption of my entire system when the card is in IDLE and FULL LOAD mode respectively.

RESULTS OF THE OVERCLOCKING

OK, here are the results from the overclocking tests.

It could not be better. The results are almost hard to believe. In Far Cry 2, I saw an increase of up to 10 fps.  In Crysis Warhead however, the increase of the performance was more limited.

The Sapphire Radeon HD 5750 Vapor-X is the most “overclock friendly” card I have tested in a long time. Considering the other reviews available for this card I suspect that my results are not due to an especially good sample of the card.

CONCLUSIONS

Some has called the arrival of the new generation of AMD/ATI cards a revolution. I wouldn’t go so far as calling it a revolution even though they have pushed the performance up a level or two.  But nVIDIA has definitely been challenged by the new AMD generation with the combination of great performance and low power consumption. Time will tell if they can come up with a good response, I wouldn’t be too surprised.

Sapphire has succeeded in perfecting an already good product, the AMD/ATI Radeon HD 5750. The Sapphire card has great performance, support for DirectX11, lower power consumption, doesn’t emit too much noise and has great overclocking abilities. It’s currently available for around $150 which to me is a real bargain. Buy.

Pros:

• Looks and finish
• Compact dimensions
• Vapor-X cooling system
• Overclocking capacity
• Price

Cons:

• None I can think of

The final score is 98 out of 100 owls, and we give the “Sapphire Vapor-X HD 5750 1GB DDR5″ our Editor’s Choice Award.

Thanks goes out to Sapphire for letting me review this card.

Check out alternatives of the Radeon 5800 series at testseek.com

Author: Manuel González Fernández

Translator: Vince Emiloz Sanderson

Summary: AMD’s mid-range graphics cards are having great success. The AMD Sapphire Radeon HD 4770 is an example of this. It’s an excellent graphics card with a very inviting price.

It’s been awhile since we’ve had the chance to take a look at a graphics card. So, we thought it was time now to end that drought and examine one of the new models that have flooded the market in recent months.

INTRODUCTION

Sapphire looked favorably upon our request and sent us one of today’s mid-range models with the best price/performance ratio: the HD 4770. AMD is doing well with its powerful HD 4000 series. After launching high-range and mid-range cards, it has introduced various intermediate models, starting with the HD 4830 and then the HD 4770. This completes a well-populated range of cards and makes it harder for buyers to choose a particular model.

The main difference between the HD 4770 and other models just above and below it on the performance scale (the HD 4850, HD 4830, and HD 4670 respectively), is that this card uses GDDR5 (Graphics Double Data Rate 5) memory to provide better bandwidth. This should let the HD 4770 obtain excellent results without having a wider bus, which would make it much more expensive. It also doesn’t need to operate at stratospheric speeds, which allows for better temperature control. Here’s a summary of the card’s technical specs:

Admittedly, the HD 4770 doesn’t have any really new feature that we haven’t already seen in other cards in the HD 4000 range. Its most interesting point is something we pointed out earlier, its good price/performance ratio. But maybe we’ve gotten a little ahead of ourselves. So we’ll need to see what it can offer in our tests.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Sapphire sent us a Radeon HD 4770 in its retail configuration, just like you’d find it in a store. The box’s serigraphy is very striking. The front lists many of the card’s features, the most outstanding of which is its 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. Another item that stands out is that the card is accompanied by various Cyberlink programs for digital leisure.

On the back, Sapphire details what it feels are the Radeon’s outstanding features. It also gives a brief explanation of the advantages of each of its technologies. And it lists prizes that make it one of the industry’s biggest award winners.

The first thing you find on opening the box is the card itself, perfectly protected in an antistatic plastic bag. The accessories are in a separate compartment. They include 3 CDs with drivers and software, a manual, a CrossFireX bridge and several adaptors: DVI to HDMI, DVI to VGA, Molex to PCI 6-pin connector, and S-Video to RGB. We can’t complain about the bundle that Sapphire has given its Radeon HD 4770!

A DETAILED LOOK AT THE SAPPHIRE RADEON HD 4770

As we mentioned in the introduction, Sapphire has given the Radeon HD 4770 a customized cooling system. In this case, it’s dual slot, and made of aluminum. It also added an 80 mm (3.15″) fan, which should make it run quietly. To complete the cooling system, it put an aluminum plate in the in the power regulation system to get better heat dissipation without having the unit cover the entire PCB.

This graphics card requires external power. This is supplied by a 6-pin PCI-E connector. It consumes about 125W, receiving up to 75 of additional power. It’s not overly long — about 206 mm (8.1″) — so you shouldn’t have much trouble installing it any kind of box

The card has the usual video outs, 2 DVI and 1 S-Video. In case your monitor doesn’t have DVI or you’re interested in another type of connection, Sapphire includes all the necessary adaptors with the accessories. No matter what, you should be able to have your own way.

The only thing worth mentioning on the back of the card is the light heatsink adaptor, which only needs 4 screws to be properly anchored.

INSTALLING THE TEST SETUP

It’s time to get to the heart of the matter. So, here’s the equipment and software that we used in our tests:

Since the processor sometimes limits the ability to test a graphics card, we decided to overclock it to 3.5 GHz, while lowering the memory speed to 1 GHz. Our Phenom II X4 920 didn’t disappoint us. Here are some results for different components:

In all the games, we used the highest possible resolution, first without filters and then with them. In many cases, we saw low performance figures, but it’s important to remember that we were very demanding in picking such high resolutions.

SYNTHETIC TEST RESULTS

Note: This figure, and others after it, use commas as a decimal point, instead of a period. So, the first result is 341.4.

We limited our synthetic tests to the 3 that we thought were the most representative. We were very satisfied with the results, above all the excellent score in the 3D Mark. Some other cards are more powerful, but if we add in the price variable, the HD 4770 scores very well.

REAL TESTS I

For this analysis and the following ones, we introduced new benchmarks to better reflect the card’s performance with state-of-the art games.

The card performed very well in these game tests. But these aren’t the most demanding ones in our test bench. Frame rates were excellent in all cases, allowing us to enjoy excellent quality play, with no surprises.

REAL TESTS II

We reserved our most demanding tests for this section. Here’s where we must note that the HD 4770 is a mid-range card, which can produce minimal frame rates of over 30. From the data we collected, we believe that especially at lower resolutions, it can let users enjoy games with a high graphic quality, but that it doesn’t have much to boast about in terms of overall game performance.

OVERCLOCKING AND TEMPERATURE

The ability to overclock is one of the most interesting factors when it comes time to choose a specific graphics card, above all when we’re talking about the mid range and are looking for some extra performance. In our case, we used Catalyst for overclocking and got pretty good results:

To measure working temperatures, we used GPU-Z and Furmark. We measured the temperature when the system was at rest, after being in the Windows desktop for 30 minutes without doing anything. For our test under load, we ran a 30-minute Furmark 1.7 session. Here are the results:

The measured temperatures were very good. Leaving the fan in auto mode didn’t cause any problems except at brief moments when its rotational velocity was over 35%.

TEST RESULTS WITH OVERCLOCK

To see the performance gain from overclocking, we used just 3 tests, but the results are definitely representative. The gain didn’t turn out to be too large. The 3D Mark 06 results show that, but with Far Cry 2 we can see that the frame rates increased, making that game run much better. You can’t do much with Crysis, which continues to be the most demanding game. There’s no remedy other than sacrificing graphics quality to play it without jerkiness.

CONCLUSIONS

A mid-range product is always a safe investment. In this range, we usually find products with the best price/performance ratio. That’s what Sapphire has shown with its Radeon HD 4770. Its price ranges from about $125-$140. Given the card’s good performance, it’s a must-buy if your budget is tight and you don’t demand the ultimate in playability.

The Sapphire Radeon HD 4770 offers everything that any mid-range user needs, starting with its good included bundle and continuing with its cooling system. Its cooling is very effective, and except in extreme situations, is quiet. And we can’t forget its overclocking capability. Some of the frequencies it reached were more than acceptable, although we’re completely sure that simply installing some memory heatsinks could enable even higher frequencies.

To sum up, we can definitely recommend this card. As with us, it won’t leave you feeling cheated in any way.

The final score is 90 out of 100 owls, and we give the “Sapphire Radeon HD 4770 Video Card” our Editor’s Choice Award.

Thanks to Sapphire for loaning us a Radeon HD 4770.

Author: Manuel González Fernández

Translator: Ed Winograd