ATI Radeon HD5670

Up Close

Published: 14th January 2010 | Source: ATI | Price: $99 / £60 rrp | Author: Bryan Waters

Before we take a closer look at the new ATI HD5670, it's important to let you know that the card is so brand spanking new that it was sent to us without any retail packaging, therefore we can only present the card naked, as nature intended.

The most obvious thing that you notice straight away, is the lack of external power. Not only is this a boon for those of us who dislike trying to route the copious power-cables that are a necessary part of high-end cards, but it also greatly reduces the power consumption and therefore the PSU needed. Less power = less cost. Another feather in the cap of the 5670, clearly knowing its target market is either on a budget, or wants a slim HTPC and not some 1kw behemoth.

Secondly, that's a very small cooler indeed. Hopefully it's small for TDP reasons and not for budgetary ones. We'll discover soon enough.

Turning the card over we can see how bare the back is. We've got so used to seeing immense support braces and solder crammed into every available space that it is a refreshing change to see something with just the right amount of stuff.

Moving to the input part, the first surprise occurs. The 5670 we were sent for testing prior to the lifting of the NDA comes with a DVI, Full Size Display Port and HDMI outputs. The official ATI photographs as used at the top of todays article shows a DVI, HDMI and VGA port. Curious, but of the two naturally a Full Size Display Port is way more useful and so it's good to see the ones in the wild come with that.

Finally to complete the laying bare of the HD5670, here it is sans cooler. Anyone who has read previous graphics card reviews we've done on this site will know how often a cooler gets removed and a veritable cornucopia of chips and things appear. Further demonstration of the purity of this card is how little is revealed once the cooler is removed.

Time to put this in our test rig for today and spank it until it begs for mercy.

Most Recent Comments

14-01-2010, 00:39:00

tinytomlogan

The latest 5000 series card is here, is it as bargintastic as we hoped?

Continue Reading

14-01-2010, 03:54:34

Mul.

Looks like a very reasonable upper entry level graphics card. As a 400 stream processor GPU paired with 512/1024mb GDDR5, it screams DX11 replacement to the once loved Radeon HD 3850/3870 and GeForce 9600/8800 series and while it's specifications are dwarfed by the rest of ATi's range today, there's no getting around the fact that the graphics card is far from "slow" either.

It's performed very much as expected although I can't help but feel that the frame rate drop with Anti Aliasing is slightly abnormal, even for a graphics card of it's calibre. We'll see what future driver releases bring to the table.

A RRP is not bargain of the centure but is sensible when compared against the £105-130 pricetag for the HD 5750/5770. Aside being used as a graphics card for a machine for games, it's low power consumption/noise could make it an ideal HTPC or Workstation graphics card. Like it's bigger brothers it still seems to support up to three monitors and so it wins from a productivity perspective as well.

Edit - Retailers have posted their HD 5670's from around £70 upwards

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18102060

Froogle indicates similar pricing from smaller retailers. Disappointing.

Top review

14-01-2010, 05:08:58

tinytomlogan

At the time of writing no where had prices listed, £70 isnt great but still not that bad, however for £91 I cant help feeling that I would rather buy a 4870 for example, the only reason to buy this would be its size and power requirements.

14-01-2010, 22:06:56

Makol

is it worth upgrading to the 5670 from the 4670?

15-01-2010, 03:14:38

tinytomlogan

Its going to perform better but I personally would advise if you want to game on it to save your money and buy something better. If you dont want to game then you have no need to upgrade.

15-01-2010, 03:55:23

Makol

I'm just looking for a upgrade on a budget.

I can get 4850 for $120USD or the 5750 for $160USD, but the 5670 seems like a good deal for $99USD.

15-01-2010, 11:34:22

tinytomlogan

I would personally hold out for a 5770 if it was me tbh.

16-01-2010, 01:47:34

Makol

but wouldn't the 5770 be slightly bottlenecked by my cpu?

16-01-2010, 03:26:09

tinytomlogan

What is it with everyone going on about bottle necks all of a sudden! You need as much gpu power as possible dude, better to have too much than not enough. Bottle necks only really come into play when you are talking 2 5870s in your rig

16-01-2010, 03:33:24

Makol

ok thanks, I'm just asking about bottleneck since everywhere else I go people say "LOL Pentium Dual Core!1!!! BOTTLENECK LOLOLOL!!!111!!!!1!!"

17-01-2010, 08:58:55

denis114

Well, i think this card its better for people who build rigs just to save money and do basic things such as internet and games that a lot of PC's can handle. Games such as CS:S, CS 1.6 im pretty sure this card can handle this games, but i would not buy it its a low end card i would save a lil bit and get a 5770.

23-02-2010, 08:58:57

lionsden

hi i have the ati xfx hd 5670 1gb card and have found that it runs worse than my old nvidia 8500gt 512mb card at counter strike source most maps run at between 30 -35 fps and my old card ran all maps at 70-80 fps wether this is a issue with the drivers or counter strike im not sure but games like dirt 2 fallout 3 modern warfare 2 all maxed out run perfect.

23-02-2010, 10:28:49

Runebeard

Quote:

Originally Posted by name='lionsden'

Try running another Source Engine based game and see if that performs similarly. If so, then the likelihood is it's some compatability issue with Source that I would hope can be ironed out by a future driver update.

23-02-2010, 12:35:31

lionsden

hi runebeard thanks for the advice will give that a try and see what happens. also not sure if it did help i installed .netframework 1.1 as i never had it and some maps seem fine now just millitia not getting the fps seems to range from 19 - 100 so quiet inconsistent and do notice the lag when fps drops to that level but hopefully if it is a source problem then they will hopefully resolve it many thanks again.

23-02-2010, 13:58:36

lionsden

hi just a update i installed halflife 2 and lost coastal but as soon as game goes to launch screen goes black for several seconds and then reverts back to desktop have looked on steam forums and looks like this is a common issue with ati cards so just hope they fix the problem soon.

23-02-2010, 18:24:34

tinytomlogan

Have you got the latest physX ect installed dude?

24-02-2010, 12:43:31

lionsden

i did have but guy in shop insisted uninstalling it as i wouldnt need it as only nvidia cards use it plus having reinstalled pc every game i have installed doesnt seem to have installed it so was guessing i wouldnt need it but maybe worth a try.

24-02-2010, 12:48:59

tinytomlogan

Shift will not run correctly without physX, I think you may find that is your problem in this instance now you say it has been uninstalled.

24-02-2010, 12:53:13

lionsden

true tinytomlogan just did a google and your right physx does indeed work with ati radeon cards have just downloaded driver and will install now thanks for the info.

24-02-2010, 12:59:16

lionsden

ok tried that but still no joy guess i will have to wait till some sort of update is available but does make me wonder why they pulled halflife 2 from the bundled version unless they realised there was a problem themselves.

24-02-2010, 13:12:36

lionsden

just did a search for half life 2 ati fixes and seems there was a problem with catalyst once before and they bought out catalyst 4.12 drivers so im guessing its a catalyst driver issue in version 10.2 possibly

24-02-2010, 15:05:30

tinytomlogan

Give physx a try anyways dude.

24-02-2010, 15:16:42

lionsden

done that tinytomlogan still no joy even tried reinstalling directx but just looked on ati forums and found there are problems with all games running the u3 engine and also flight sims so i thinks its a case of just keep looking for new catalsyt updates till problem has been resolved other than that i can only think it may be a hard drive fault but cant see it to be honest.

24-02-2010, 15:26:31

lionsden

this was the only thing i could really see in crash log

half-life 2\hl2\media\Valve.avi (0xcd0bbf8,1,131072,1,0,0xf43fd24) failed with error 11: End of file

half-life 2\hl2_2707_crash_2010_2_23T18_27_56C0.mdmp

ATI Radeon HD5670

Up Close

Published: 14th January 2010 | Source: ATI | Price: $99 / £60 rrp | Author: Bryan Waters

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