Earlier in the month we spied the Radeon HD 5750 at a DX11 event in China, but we were left to speculate over specs and speed. Guesstimating be damned, though, as the 5750 is now on the shelves of etailers everywhere. Let’s take a look at how it stacks up.
The first thing that can be noticed is that the 5750’s specifications fall short of the Radeon HD 4870. When translating the paper to testing, the spread still holds true: The 5750 frequently falls short of the 4870, sometimes by over 20 percent.
From the perspective of competition, the GeForce GTs 250 is the 5750’s main opponent. There are no solid victories here, though. The 5750 and the GTs 250 trade blows every time you change the title or the resolution.
The XFX Radeon HD 5750
Physically, the card is shorter from PCB to heatsink than its bigger brothers by about 35mm. At 7″, the board is a full 4″ shorter than ATI’s flagship, the 5870. This compact frame is owed both to a smaller die and the naturally superior power/thermals of the 5000 lineup. To that end, the card requires just one six-pin PCIe connector to grab all the juice it needs. The board also contains one HDMI, two DisplayPort, and two DVI ports. Rounding out the reference design, the 5750 officially features 1GB of GDDR5 on a 128-bit memory bus.
The issue of price has been a contentious and hotly debated issue, but the matter is finally settled: $129.99.
The 5750’s pricepoint makes it cheaper than any similarly priced GeForce. On the ATI side, it may even be a touch more expensive than the 512MB Radeon HD 4870, which is no slouch of a card. And, unfortunately, that seems to be the 5750’s biggest problem. The 512MB Radeon HD 4870, ravaged by the release of other ATI GPUs and NVIDIA price drops, can be had for just $125, and the performance is–in many cases–quite a bit higher. Lower performance and higher prices (if only slight) spell out a dire scenario for a fresh GPU that’s looking to sell.
Beyond price/performance, the Radeon HD 5750 is an outstanding addition to any HTPC setup. The Radeon HD 5000 family is the first to handle the Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA (bitstream audio) offered by select Blu-ray titles. This was a task that previously required an extremely expensive sound card and a nightmarish level of tinkering with software. This audio prowess–combined with a very low price, GPU video acceleration and an HDMI port–makes the Radeon HD 5750 what we feel is the ideal HTPC card, rather than any sort of gaming card.
All things considered, the Radeon HD 5750 falls disappointingly short. While great thermals, superlative multimedia capabilities and DirectX 11 support are appreciable high notes, the whole deal is soured by poor value. ATI and AIBs should work closely to bring the card below $100, at which point its outlook would be considerably brighter.
Ultimately, we believe the card is best suited for people with grand home theatre aspirations, or little desire to run demanding AAA titles. This is for your little sister when she plays the Sims, or the masses who play World of Warcraft with terrible integrated GPUs. The performance just isn’t there for much else.
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