Legit Reviews

According to our contacts at AXLE the Radeon HD 5670 will retail for $119, which puts it $10 higher than many GeForce GTS 250's with 512MB of RAM (MSI N250GS Twin Frozr) and you can also find a couple with 1GB from $116.99 (EVGA GeForce GTS 250 1GB), which would perform better than the 512MB GTS 250 used here. Given its price point, there is no talking around the fact that you can get a more powerful card for DX9/DX10 as well as OpenGL for the same or lower price in a GeForce GTS 250 1GB, that's that. If you want to run DX11 game title, have DirectCompute capabilities in Windows 7 or use Eyefinity then a Radeon HD 5670 still has the edge.

Although horsepower is not the only thing on our readers minds, there is the power consumption that many people have to consider from a "can I even power this thing" standpoint. For those people the AXLE Radeon HD 5670 might do just the trick, so lets refer back to the power consumption:

The AXLE Radeon HD 5670 1GB consumes substantially less power than a GTS 250 512MB (and one would assume also the 1GB version), 100W less at load in fact and almost 20W less at idle as well. The HD 5670 would end up significantly saving money on the electricity bills in the long run. Going back to the "can I run this" question, a DELL 305W PSU can run the GTS 250 I used for testing but I certainly would not trust it long term as those units are not near as a efficient as even a low end OCZ.

If you can handle a small performance hit, or be willing to use slightly lower settings this would be a great card. In all the tests run here the settings were in most cases as high as possible so that has to be taken into consideration as well, making this more attractive in addition to being whisper quiet, running very cool and also being a much shorter card than GTS 250's.

GeForce GT 240's are available from $75-$110 with the 1GB models starting at $99 so the AXLE Radeon HD 5670 is not doing too bad now as it can out power a GT 240 across the board with the extra fun of DirectX 11 tessellation for a little more money in price depending on the model.

Legit Bottom Line: The AXLE Radeon HD 5670 1GB is attractive to those looking for low power consumption, cool operation and a quiet DirectX 11 card but understand there are more powerful DX10 cards available for the same price.