Conclusion
Conclusion
Let’s cut right to the chase: from the perspective of a hardcore gamer or an enthusiast, the HD 5670 1GB probably doesn’t look particularly interesting. However, while it doesn’t represent a grand leap forward in performance, it does shine like a bright ray of hope for those of us that don’t have the money to spend on anything in higher price brackets. Even for HTPC users the HD 5670 should be appealing when you take into account its power consumption, low noise output, bitstreaming over HDMI and thermal efficiency.
If you take a look at the past x670 card –the HD 4670-, the differences between it and the card reviewed today are like night and day. We already mentioned there aren't any giant leaps in performance but the gap between the HD 4670 and the HD 5670 is truly something to behold. Honestly, considering its specifications we were actually surprised at how well this little card performed.
Regardless of what Sapphire did with the disproportionately large heatsink on their version of the HD 5670 1GB, there will be several single slot cards out there and board partners are free to design their own low-profile profile. This is a dream come true for many an SFF or HTPC user who didn’t get any love with the oversized backplate and heatsink used on reference HD 5750s.
It should be more that obvious that ATI priced the HD 5670 to compete with the GT 240 but this Redwood-based card makes NVIDIA’s 40nm product look like a downright horrible buy right now. Meanwhile, the $100 price of the 9800 GT looks particularly interesting in terms of raw performance but the HD 5670 1GB is still the clear winner in terms of features and future compatibility. We just can’t forget that many of DX11’s most talked about features like tessellation and depth of field will murder performance on even the best of cards and will be a no-go on a product like the HD 5670.
Something else that should be mentioned is the fact that even though we threw a curve ball at this card with mostly newer games, its performance and the performance of other HD 5000 series cards was disappointing in some cases. Borderlands in particular shows some NVIDIA dominance while odd things happened in our Left 4 Dead 2 tests where the performance of current ATI cards is clearly not well optimized at all.
The HD 5670 1GB’s price is supposed to be around the $115USD mark which should have many of you asking where its value lies in relation to the $135 HD5670 and to be honest with you, we were asking the same thing throughout this review. We held out hope that the revised BIOS we were sent two days before this went live would change something in terms of performance. Unfortunately, that was an empty dream since even a new BIOS can’t hide the fact that the Redwood XT core just doesn’t have enough graphics processing power to make a convincing argument for itself over the HD 5750. The main problem ATI has with the pricing of this card is the small amount of wiggle room in the $110 to $140 price bracket. Think of it this way: the approximate 30% price premium when going from a $300 to a $400 product translates to one hell of a price gap. Meanwhile, things look much different with budget cards where a 30% price premium translates to a difference of a mere $30 in some cases. However, that $30 gap between the HD 5670 and HD 5750 means a world of difference in terms of performance.
All in all, we have to applaud ATI for bringing this convincing little card to market. It shows that great performance doesn’t need a high sticker price but in the end, while it rolls all over the immediate NVIDIA competition its toughest challenger in terms of price / performance is the HD 5750. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing and with the addition of an great cooler by Sapphire and extremely high efficiency, we’re awarding the HD 5670 our Dam Innovative award.
Pros:
- Very Efficient
- Quiet
- Good performance versus the competition
- Eyefinity support
Cons:
- HD 5750’s price is a bit too close for comfort