ATI Radeon HD 5670 Rule the Mainstream

source: hardwarezone.com
Capturing the Mainstream Market

Things are looking good for ATI lately. Not only were they first to get DirectX 11 compatible graphics cards into the market, but NVIDIA's inability to release their own DirectX 11 solutions in the same time span also meant that ATI has had the entire DirectX 11 market to themselves for almost a full four months! To rub salt into NVIDIA's wounds, in the past four months they have also reclaimed the title of fastest single GPU (the Cypress XT found on the Radeon HD 5870 ) and also the title of fastest single graphics card (Radeon HD 5970 ) from NVIDIA.

Not content with their dominant display of late, ATI is following up on its recent successes with a brand new graphics card for the more budget-minded, the Radeon HD 5670. The new Radeon HD 5670 cards will be powered by the Redwood XT GPU, which has 400 stream processing units, 20 texture mapping units and 8 raster operating units. Its core will run at 775MHz, with the memory at 4000MHz DDR. Memory bus width will be kept at 128 bits width (similar to the Radeon HD 5770 and Radeon HD 5750 ), and the new cards will come in either 512MB or 1GB flavors.

This is the reference ATI Radeon HD 5670 that we received from ATI. As you can see, it does not hide its budget and mainstream intentions for there's nothing fancy about it.

Admittedly, when compared to the current 'base' model of the Evergreen series - the Radeon HD 5750 - which is running on the 720-stream processor Juniper LE GPU, the Redwood XT does look kind of lightweight. However, ATI has said that the Radeon HD 5670 will be considerably more affordable - under US$100 (S$138) to be exact - making it the first truly affordable DirectX 11 graphics card. And despite being an affordable part with not as much horsepower as its other Evergreen brothers, the Radeon HD 5670 still supports EyeFinity, which means it can power up to three displays simultaneously.

According to statistics from ATI, over 15 million gamers have Steam accounts and there are over 11 million World of Warcraft players. Of them, only a mere 10% have a display resolution of 1920 x 1200 or more, and around 66% are using a sub US$100 graphics card. As such, the budget to mainstream segment is a huge one, and this is the exact target audience ATI is aiming with the new Radeon HD 5670.

We are sure you are eager to find out how ATI's latest offering fares, but first here's a look at the specifications of the Radeon HD 5670 and how it stacks up against other competitive SKUs.

There's a slight glitch there as the GPU clock is supposed to read 775MHz.

The Radeon HD 5670 & Competitive Comparison SKUs

Model	ATI Radeon HD 5670	NVIDIA GeForce GT 240	ATI Radeon HD 4670	ATI Radeon HD 4770	NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT	NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT
Core Code	Redwood XT	GT215	RV730	RV740	G92	G94
Transistor Count	627 million	Unknown	514 million	826 million	754 million	505 million
Manufacturing Process	40nm	40nm	55nm	40nm	65 / 55nm	65nm
Core Clock	775MHz	550MHz	750MHz	750MHz	600MHz	650MHz
Stream Processors	400	96	320	640	112	64
Stream Processor Clock	775MHz	1340MHz	750MHz	750MHz	1800MHz	1625MHz
Texture Mapping Units (TMU) or Texture Filtering (TF) units	20	32	32	32	56	32
Raster Operator Units (ROP)	8	16	8	16	16	16
Memory Clock	4000MHz DDR	1800MHz DDR (GDDR3) / 3600MHz DDR (GDDR5)	2000MHz DDR	3200MHz DDR	1800MHz DDR	1800MHz DDR
DDR Memory Bus	128-bit	128-bit	128-bit	128-bit	256-bit	256-bit
PCI Express Interface	PCIe x16 ver 2.0	PCIe x 16 ver 2.0	PCIe x16 ver 2.0	PCIe x16 ver 2.0	PCIe x 16 ver 2.0	PCIe x 16 ver 2.0
PCIe Power Connectors	None	None	None	1 x 6-pin	1 x 6-pin	1 x 6-pin
Multi-GPU Technology	CrossFireX (vendor dependent)	None	CrossFireX	CrossFireX	SLI	SLI
DVI Output Support	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
HDCP Output Support	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Street Price	Launch Price: <>	�~US$99	~US$75	~US$120	~US$110	~US$100

The ATI Radeon HD 5670

The reference card that ATI sent us is a decidedly simple affair. It comes in a single slot form factor and has a very compact cooler, which runs fairly quietly during operation. Clock speeds are reference, which means 775MHz at the core and 4000MHz DDR, and it comes with 512MB of GDDR5 memory that interfaces with a 128-bit wide memory bus.

Here are some shots of the card.

Note the ATI Radeon HD 5670's compact single slot cooler, and its lack of PCIe connectors, making it the ideal weapon of choice for HTPC and probably even LAN party enthusiasts.

The Radeon HD 5670 main competiton comes in the form of NVIDIA's GeForce GT 240, and here it is. It looks bigger because this card has a dual-slot cooler.

The Radeon HD 5670 has a DisplayPort, HDMI and DVI outputs, and is capable of driving three displays at once.

Eagle-eyed readers might have noticed that our card doesn't come with CrossFireX connector. We've been told by ATI that while CrossFireX is supported by the new Radeon HD 5670, the choice to implement them is ultimately up to vendors. Obviously, one can expect cards without CrossFireX capability to cost less.

Test Setup

The new ATI Radeon HD 5670 will be evaluated using our Vista system, which has the following specifications:

Windows Vista SP1 Test System

* Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 (3.00GHz)
* Gigabyte X38T-DQ6 motherboard
* 2 x 1GB DDR3-1333 Aeneon memory in dual channel mode
* Seagate 7200.10 200GB SATA hard drive
* Windows Vista Ultimate with SP1


We'll be pitting the Radeon HD 5670 against NVIDIA's latest sub US$100 card, the GeForce GT 240. It should be interesting to see how the two cards will fare given their competitive specifications. We have also included the Radeon HD 4670 and HD 4770 to see how the new card matches up against its predecessors, and also NVIDIA's mainstream stalwarts, the GeForce 9600 GT and 9800 GT.

Here's the complete list of cards tested and their driver versions:

* ATI Radeon HD 5670 512MB GDDR5 (Beta 8.69 RC)
* NVIDIA GeForce GT 240 512MB GDDR5 (ForceWare 195.62)
* ATI Radeon HD 4670 512MB GDDR3 (Catalyst 9.12)
* ATI Radeon HD 4770 512MB GDDR5 (Catalyst 9.12)
* GeForce 9600 GT 512MB GDDR3 (ForceWare 195.62)
* GeForce 9800 GT 512MB GDDR3 (ForceWare 195.62)


Also, the cards were tested using the following benchmarks:

* Futuremark 3DMark Vantage
* Crysis Warhead
* Far Cry 2
* Dawn of War 2

3DMark Vantage Results

The ATI Radeon

HD 5670 scored first blood on 3DMark Vantage as it outscored the NVIDIA GeForce GT 240 by around 10%. Compared to the older generation Radeon HD 4670, its scores were over 50% greater.

Elsewhere, we noted that the Radeon HD 5670 was more than a handful for the GeForce 9600 GT, and was just about a match for the popular GeForce 9800 GT.



Crysis Warhead & Far Cry 2 Results

The Radeon HD 5670 continued its fine showing on Crysis Warhead, easily overpowering the GeForce GT 240 and 9600 GT. The Radeon HD 5670 wasn't quite as quick as the more powerful Radeon HD 4770 nor the GeForce 9800 GT, but it did post tremendous improvements over the Radeon HD 4670.





It was the same story with Far Cry 2, as the Radeon HD 5670 proved to be too quick for the GeForce GT 240. However, the Radeon HD 5670 didn't seem too apt at handling anti-aliasing at high resolutions, no thanks to its low ROP unit count. With anti-aliasing enabled at 1920 x 1440, the Radeon HD 5670 actually posted the poorest results of the lot.

Dawn of War 2 Results

The new ATI card excelled on Dawn of War 2, having posted extremely playable frame rates right up to 1920 x 1440, and completely whipped the GeForce GT 240 as it was about 40% quicker overall. As it was, only the Radeon HD 4770 and GeForce 9800 GT were faster.



Temperature

Despite its low power draw and 40nm manufacturing process, the Radeon HD 5670 was, quite surprisingly, the hottest card of the bunch measuring in at 71 degrees Celsius. Hopefully with driver upgrades in the future or as vendors start plonking custom coolers on it, we will start seeing temperatures going south.

Power Consumption

Class-leading power efficiency is the hallmark of an Evergreen graphics card, and the Radeon HD 5670 continues this fine tradition. Idle readings were on a par with NVIDIA's GeForce GT 240, but readings at load pointed to an easy Radeon HD 5670 victory.

Also note that the Radeon HD 5670's power consumption readings were not that far off from that of the Radeon HD 4670's. With this in mind and considering how much faster the new Radeon HD 5670 is, we think that it's not an exaggeration to say that ATI has done wonders with the new Evergreen cards as far as power efficiency is concerned.



Overclocking

The Radeon HD 5670 seemed to be an eager overclocker as we could easily push it to the maximum allowable clock speeds using ATI Overdrive - 850MHz at the core and 4200MHz DDR. This gave us 2471 3DMarks, which translated to a bump of 5% on the Extreme preset of 3DMark Vantage.

The Affordable Evergreen

Casual and mainstream users and gamers who have been holding back on upgrading their graphics cards can rejoice, for the new Radeon HD 5670 is a solid mainstream gaming solution.

Seeing that the Radeon HD 5670 was remarkably faster than its predecessor - the Radeon HD 4670 - and that it also comprehensively beat NVIDIA's competing GeForce GT 240, we think it's fair to say that the new Radeon HD 5670 performs very well and up to our expectations. More impressive was the fact that it could (at times) match up to the GeForce 9800 GT, a very popular choice amongst mainstream users. The only downside to the new Redwood XT chip is that it seemed to exhibit some difficulty tackling anti-aliasing on very high resolutions, but that's not much of a problem considering that this series of cards weren't meant for such high resolution gaming.

Performance aside, we were also glad that despite its mainstream and budget billing, the Radeon HD 5670 gets useful features such as Eyefinity and support for multi-GPU via CrossFireX, making it possible to tack on additional Radeon HD 5670s as a means of upgrade. However, do take note that while the Radeon HD 5670 is technically capable of CrossFireX support, vendors might choose to omit that option on their cards to keep costs down.

With so much going for it, and with a launch price of under US$100 (S$138), the Radeon HD 5670 is a solid, bang-for-buck graphics card.

Overall, the Radeon HD 5670 is a decent and solid offering from ATI. It offers better performance and efficiency than NVIDIA's competing GeForce GT 240, and the ability to upgrade via CrossFireX (depending on vendor) is an added advantage over the GeForce GT 240.

Looking forward, there's more to come from ATI as there are plans to unroll more mainstream and budget variants of the Evergreen in form of the Radeon HD 5500 and 5400 series.

From the green camp, rumors are that Fermi cards will go into production in the third week of February and consumers can expect to find them for retail as soon as mid-March. However, it is said that the cards will be extremely limited as yields will be on the low side. Nevertheless, the arrival of Fermi can only be a good thing, seeing that developments in the graphics card scene have been increasingly one-sided in the past few months.