Legit Video Card Reviews
Sapphire Radeon HD 5570 1GB CrossFire Video Card Review
| Manufacturer: | Sapphire |
| Product: | Radeon HD 5570 |
| Date: | Tue, Feb 09, 2010 - 12:00 AM |
| Written By: | Nathan Kirsch - |
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Final Thoughts and Conclusions
The ATI Radeon HD 5450 graphics card that was launched last week brought full DirectX 11 support, ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology, and ATI Stream technology support for ~$49. That is a hard combination to beat for the price, but the Radeon HD 5450 graphics card wasn't that great in gaming and some have said that it is too weak in compute performance. The ATI Radeon HD 5570 that was introduced today has four times the compute performance on paper and we were able to see nearly a two times difference in actual games. Not a bad increase for just an extra $30, but gamers will be hard pressed to go with anything less than a Radeon HD 5670 as it does much better across the board when it comes to gaming. When in a multi-GPU configuration the Radeon HD 5570 did well, but the CrossFire setup was barely faster than the Radeon HD 5670 as it really needs more memory bandwidth for it to really perform.
The ATI Radeon HD 5570 was designed mainly for HTPC or SFF use and for that it is golden. The single slot low-profile design on the Radeon HD 5570 is nice and the card runs cool and nearly silent even though it has a fan on it. No additional power supply power cables are needed, which is also a bonus for SFF PCs. Running HDMI 1.3a with Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio was problem free and a great out of the box experience. Like we mentioned last week, both the Radeon HD 5450 and Radeon HD 5570 video cards cost less than HDMI sound cards like the $139 ASUS Xonar HDAV 1.3 Slim HDMI Audio Card that were once needed for DTS-HD Master Audio bitstreaming. Now, with a graphics card like the ATI Radeon HD 5450/5570 you get pretty much all the same functionality plus additional GPU features.
Running a low-priced graphics card doesn't mean that you have to sacrifice too many features, to be honest. As time goes by, these entry level graphics cards keep getting better. The ATI Radeon HD 5570 at $79 was faster than the $49 after rebate NVIDIA GeForce GT 220, but slightly slower than the $99 after rebate EVGA GeForce GT 240 SuperClocked video card that we compared it against. That means the Radeon HD 5570 at $79 fits between these two NVIDIA graphics cards quite nicely. The Radeon HD 5570 is a solid choice if you are building a SFF PC where you want a low power card that is low profile.. The Sapphire Radeon HD 5570 with its custom cooler and tweaked PCB look and function great and you really can't go wrong with this card. If you are a gamer then we highly suggest that you spend an extra $5 and buy something like this PowerColor Radeon HD 5670 at $84.99 after a $10 rebate as you'll get much better gaming performance.
Legit Bottom Line: The ATI Radeon HD 5570 brings more gaming performance to the table, but they have managed to keep the price down and the card low profile!
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Page 1 - Radeon HD 5570 - $79 for 520 GFlops
Page 2 - ATI Radeon HD 5570 HDMI Page 3 - Sapphire Radeon HD 5570 1GB Page 4 - Retail Box and Bundle Page 5 - Radeon HD 5570 Test Settings Page 6 - Batman: Arkham Asylum Page 7 - Resident Evil 5 Page 8 - Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. Page 9 - 3DMark Vantage Page 10 - FurMark 1.7.0 Page 11 - Unigine 'Heaven' DX11 Page 12 - Temperature Testing Page 13 - Power Consumption Page 14 - Radeon HD 5570 Overclocking Page 15 - Final Thoughts and Conclusions |
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