Published in Reviews

Sapphire HD 5670 1GB tested

by on14 January 2010

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Conclusion


These last couple of months ATI has been busy filling out its DirectX 11 offer, so as of today we have a new Radeon DX11 card on the market – the HD 5670. This card should nicely fit in lower-end segments of the market currently populated by DirectX 10 cards. Radeon HD 5670 card is based on Redwood graphics processors built in TSMC’s 40nm process and note that this is the first DirectX 11 card without the power connector.

As far as performance goes, the card packs enough punch to provide comfortable gaming at 1280x1024 or even at 1680x1050, but we’re not so happy about the pricing. Depending on whether you want a model with 512MB or 1024MB of GDDR5, the card will set you back from €75 to €100. Unfortunately, the similarly priced HD 4770 scores more than 30% better in majority of tests.

We’ve seen that Sapphire is the only partner that has its cards on the shelves. You can find out more on the pricing here, where you can choose between 6 different versions of the HD5670. You might want to make it quick though as some cards have been sold while we were writing this review.

Our today’s Sapphire HD5670 card features 1GB of GDDR5 memory running at 1000MHz (4000MHz effectively) and the GPU running at 775MHz. Sapphire didn’t tinker with reference clocks but they did use non-reference cooling, which has proven to be a great touch as Arctic Cooling’s dual-slot solution was quiet throughout our testing.

Apart from DirectX 11, Sapphire HD5670 1GB card brings many a new technology. Perhaps the most important ones would be Eyefinity and improved audio device with HDMI 1.3a support including Dolby True HD and DTS Master audio with 7.1 channel audio. The card consumes very little and features plenty of outs on the I/O panel (Dual-DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort). Sapphire’s card comes with native HDMI and DisplayPort connector, making it one of the best equipped HD5670 cards we’ve seen so far. Furthermore, Sapphire features dual-DVI and the company ships DVI-to-VGA and HDMI-to-DVI adapters.

It’s well worth noting that Sapphire’s HD5670 1GB is the first card to bring DirectX 11 support under €100, and the card’s non-reference cooling solution makes this an even sweeter deal.

Sapphire did a great job on the HD5670 1GB  and the card itself is a nice card with basically only one flaw – the price. With hope that ATI will introduce pricecuts sooner than later, we recommend this card to anyone who craves cheap DX11 with enough gaming potential not to regret splashing out on more expensive cards.




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Last modified on 24 September 2010
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