Radeon HD 5670 launched

Robert Hallock 15 Jan, 2010 at 12:30pm ET Article published in Tech

AMD announced yesterday the launch of the Radeon HD 5670, a sub-$100 GPU ideal for productivity and light gaming.

Long known only by its codename, Redwood, the 5670 is another member of AMD’s 40nm/DirectX 11 Evergreen family. Specifications for the card include a 775MHz core clock, 1000MHz GDDR5, a 128-bit memory bus and 400 shaders. The following table contains the card’s complete specifications, along with those of the 5770, 5850 and 5870 for comparison:

	Radeon HD 5670	Radeon HD 5770	Radeon HD 5850	Radeon HD 5870
Core clock	775MHz	850MHz	725MHz	850MHz
Mem. clock	1000MHz	1200MHz	1000MHz	1200MHz
Memory	1GB	1GB	1GB	1GB
Bus width	128-bit	128-bit	256-bit	256-bit
Mem. Bandwidth	64GBps	96GBps	128GBps	154GBps
Texture Units	20	40	72	80
Shaders	400	800	1440	1600
ROPs	16	16	32	32

In practice, the 5670’s specs make it the ideal card for people who are comfortable with low or medium detail settings and gaming resolutions equal to or less than 1680×1050. It’s also a fantastic GPU for productivity people who need seamless multi-monitor support, as the card’s I/O configuration can support up to three displays–one via DVI, one via DisplayPort or the included DisplayPort-to-DVI adapter, and a third via HDMI.

With DirectX 11, Eyefinity, a single-slot design, industry-leading performance per watt (14W idle/61W load!), and no need for a PCIe power connector, the 5670 is the quintessential solution for casual gamers. If you’ve been looking for a no-fuss drop-in upgrade for yourself or a relative that will deliver the goods without breaking the bank, look no further. Nothing else comes close.

Comments

15 Jan 2010 ~ 2:17pm Cliff_Forster I like to point out to enthusiasts that this is not necessarily positioned to be a card you build a new system around.

What the 5670 is, its a great drop in upgrade for that guy that purchased a cheap, but decent HP, or Emachines box for basic use, many of those have an open PCIE slot these days. The guy who says to himself after the fact, damn, I wish I could play Call of Duty, or or Command and Conquer on this damn thing, but it wont work!! The 5670 is their solution and it will run in their crappy mini tower, with the crappy little power supply.

Drop it in, update driver, bam, your in business, and as long as your willing to keep the resolutions reasonable, and not turn on every graphical bell and whistle, you can get surprisingly playable frame rates with it on most modern games.

Really, its designed to be the best drop in upgrade for a guy who purchased a so/so OEM desktop system, not really a card you build a new system around.
15 Jan 2010 ~ 2:23pm MAGIC Or for your WoW box.
15 Jan 2010 ~ 5:13pm primesuspect This card would be PERFECT for my dad's computer. He paid ~$300 for an Acer and this would be a great drop in to be able to play Sims 3.
15 Jan 2010 ~ 5:26pm lordbean I'm surprised nobody has touched on this yet... The fact that this card does not require additional juice from the PSU makes it a very good choice for an HTPC. It would provide all the power you'd ever need for media decoding while offering excellent additional perks (such as the ability to play a lot of games on your TV).
15 Jan 2010 ~ 6:05pm Thrax If you're building an HTPC, it's silly to get a Radeon HD 5xxx anything. The AMD 785G has outstanding HTPC performance, at one half the price of a separate mobo and CPU.
15 Jan 2010 ~ 7:06pm mirage If it is not capable of running any DX11 game with eye candy, why is it called DX11 capable?
15 Jan 2010 ~ 9:11pm Tim 5670 > 4870 or 4870 > 5670 ?

I can run Ultra settings in WoW on my 4870 at stock speeds with no problem at 1600 X 1200.
15 Jan 2010 ~ 9:30pm mirage

Tim wrote:

5670 > 4870 or 4870 > 5670 ?

I can run Ultra settings in WoW on my 4870 at stock speeds with no problem at 1600 X 1200.

Are you serious?
15 Jan 2010 ~ 9:41pm lordbean

Tim wrote:

5670 > 4870 or 4870 > 5670 ?

I can run Ultra settings in WoW on my 4870 at stock speeds with no problem at 1600 X 1200.

World of Warcraft = fail comparison. If you have any HD38xx card or higher you can automatically max it.
23 Feb 2010 ~ 9:23pm Edwin I have the Sapphire HD 5670 video card and I'm experiencing several failures with it. I'm running Win7-64 bit OS on 2 displays (46" LCD and Projector, both at 1080p through HDMI cables) and here's what I'm seeing fail.
- PowerDVD does not recognize this card as HDCP compliant... so no Blu Ray movies.
- Cannot enter and wake from sleep states, I get system hangs.
- Cannot switch from 1920x1080 to 1280x1024 without a system hang.
- Cannot get through a 3DMark Benchmark without a hang.
- When I play a movie using PowerDVD it only shows up on one display, not both.

How do I know this was all video card related? Because I dropped in an NVidia 9600 and every issue was GONE.
23 Feb 2010 ~ 9:29pm Thrax What Catalyst driver version?
15 Mar 2010 ~ 7:12pm Notlim Edwin, are you sure it's not a win7 compatibility problem?...many drivers are still not working properly on that system....