Hi guys
ive bought many graphic cards over the years.. however at one time when you spent in the area of £50 you wouldnt expect to be able to use it for gaming.... cards in this price range were generally bought to replace intergrated/onboard graphic solutions or to allow you to use additional ports such as dvi or tv-out
well that was until the XFX RADEON HD5670 was released..... i purchased this after reading so many positive reviews and i simply couldnt beleive a £50 card could run games such as crysis or metro 2033 ..... so i went ahead and bought the card for £55 .... and upon receipt i was suprised how big the box was.... however the "shoe box" design is what used with most XFX cards.... this allows any accessories to be packed above the card in a small compartment... and the card is packed under this is a anti-static bag
accessories were minimal..... i got a vga to dvi adapter and a crossfire bridge,however you dont need a crossfire bridge when using two HD5670,s... you simply install the two cards and configure xfire using ccc........ however if your cards have the crossfire teeth then you can use the bridge if you so desire...( note : you can only run crossfire with 1gb versions of the XFX radeon HD5670 )
the HD5670 also requires no additional power.. with a maximum power draw of only 61w theres enough power from the pci-express x16 bus to power this card ..... and allthough you should be able to run this card using a generic 300w psu a 400w psu is recommended with 22A or more on the +12v rail(s) ....... im personally using a 500w stealthstream psu from OCZ ... which is actually powerful enough for HD5670 xfired ....
SPECS : for such a small card the XFX radeon HD5670 has some impressive specs.... these include a 775mhz core clock and 1gb/512mb of gddr5 memory running at 1000mhz(4000mhz ddr effective ) .... theres 400 stream processors and a 128bit memory interface resulting in a 64gb/sec memory bandwidth ....... direct x 11 and shader model 5.0 is supported as is open gl 3.2
heres some detailed specs for the HD5670 :
Manufacturer: ATi
Series: Radeon HD 5k
GPU: Redwood
Release Date: 2010-01-14
Interface: PCI-E 2.0 x16
Core Clock: 775 MHz
Memory Clock: 2000 MHz (4000 DDR)
Memory Bandwidth: 64 GB/sec
Shader Operations: 310000 MOperations/sec
Pixel Fill Rate: 6200 MPixels/sec
Texture Fill Rate: 15500 MTexels/sec
Vertex Operations: 0 MVertices/sec
Max Power Draw: 61 W
Noise Level: Moderate
Framebuffer: 512,1024 MB
Memory Type: GDDR5
Memory Bus Type: 64x2 (128 bit)
DirectX Compliance: 11.0
OpenGL Compliance: 3.2
PS/VS Version: 5.0/5.0
Process: 40 nm
Fragment Pipelines: 400
Vertex Pipelines: 0
Texture Units: 20
Raster Operators 8
theres many other features included with the HD5670 including powerplay.... this downclocks the stock speeds to 157mhz core and 300mhz memory when not gaming.... this in turn reduces the idle power to a record breaking 16w..... so if your building a "green pc " and i dont mean nvidia then the HD5670 is worth considering... throw in a ssd with low power requirements and you could well be on the way to saving the earth
one of the most popular features in all 5 series cards is "eyeinfinity " ... however i wouldnt expect to run games over 3 displays with a HD5670.... they are fine with a single display but hasnt got the horsepower to cope with 3 displays,especially when gaming ..... for gaming using eyeinifinty i would recommend a HD5770 or better....
ive included a "crysis warhead" benchmark (above ) to give you a idea on how well the XFX radeon HD5670 copes with demanding pc games and as you can see even at high resolutions such as 1920x1440 it can run at 29fps using mainstream settings and 4 x AA.... however lowering this to a playable 1600x1200 this increases to a smooth 39fps.... not bad for a £50 graphic card...... infact when run a 1280x1024 it acheives a amazing 59fps.... this is extremely good for any card,never mind a card that costs so little
CONCLUSION :
as i mentioned at the start of the review ive bought many budget cards... however this is by far the best .... the XFX radeon HD5670 ticks all the right boxes for the budget minded gamer.... low power requirements and good core/memory speeds..... and the GDDR5 memory allows to card to not only run cooler but also alot quieter..... and with no additional power needed this will run with most psu,s ... as long as its 300w(branded) or 400w+( budget ) your good to go
the gaming performance shocked me..... demanding games like crysis warhead and metro 2033 ran pretty smoothly allthough i had to reduce overall detail levels to acehive this.. and of course the resolution aswell... however running metro 2033 on low detail looks good... and i was able to run the game at 1920x1080 at low detail and get a steady 25 to 30 frames per second....
however if your a serious gamer i would save the extra £15 and go for a HD5750 or even better the HD5770 .... but if like me your a casual gamer then the XFX radeon HD5670 is well worth considering ..... and at around £55 it represents excellent value
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