discussion Sapphire Radeon HD5570 1GB DDR3 Single & Crossfire Review

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Borderlands

Borderlands (DX9)

In this benchmark we once again stayed away from the in-game benchmark as it is not representative of an actual gameplay sequence. Instead, a 10 minute combat sequence was played through and the results were recorded using FRAPS. The location of this benchmark is right after the first town you enter and includes explosions and fast-paced action. In addition, we made sure to set the smoothframerate line in the game’s config to “false”.

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Dawn of War II

Dawn of War II (DX9)

Even though Dawn of War II has its own in-game benchmarking tool, we decided not to use it. Instead, we played through approximately 10 minutes of the final Sapce Marine mission “Last Stand” while recording framerates with FRAPS. With a massive amount of enemies rushing your position and additional troops deployed on your side, this mission features some of the largest battles in the single player game. In addition, since the Tyranid swarms appear at regular intervals, this mission is also perfect for comparison testing.

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DiRT 2 (DX9)

DiRT 2 (DX9)

Being one of the newest games on the market, DiRT 2 cuts an imposing figure in terms of image quality and effects fidelity. We find that to benchmark this game the in-game tool is by far the best option. However, due to small variances from one race to another, three benchmark runs are done instead of the normal two. It should also be mentioned that the demo version of the game was NOT used since after careful testing, the performance of the demo is not reflective of the final product.

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DiRT 2 (DX11)

DiRT 2 (DX11)

Being one of the newest games on the market, DiRT 2 cuts an imposing figure in terms of image quality and effects fidelity. We find that to benchmark this game the in-game tool is by far the best option. However, due to small variances from one race to another, three benchmark runs are done instead of the normal two. It should also be mentioned that the demo version of the game was NOT used since after careful testing, the performance of the demo is not representative of the final product.

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Dragon Age: Origins

Dragon Age: Origins (DX9)

To benchmark Dragon Age, we used a simple walkthrough coupled with a short combat sequence. The benchmark run begins with a walk through one of the most demanding scenes we have come across in the game so far: the walk over the bridge and through Ostagar. This is followed by a combat sequence outside of the fortress itself. In total the runthrough takes about 6 minutes.

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Far Cry 2 (DX9)

Far Cry 2 (DX9)

Even though Far Cry 2 has its own built-in benchmarking tool with some flythroughs and “action scenes”, we decided to record our own timedemo consisting of about 7 minutes of game time. It involves everything from run-and-gun fights to fire effects. The built-in benchmarking too was then set up to replay the timedemo and record framerates

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Far Cry 2 (DX10)

Far Cry 2 (DX10)

Even though Far Cry 2 has its own built-in benchmarking tool with some flythroughs and “action scenes”, we decided to record our own timedemo consisting of about 7 minutes of game time. It involves everything from run-and-gun fights to fire effects. The built-in benchmarking too was then set up to replay the timedemo and record framerates

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Left 4 Dead 2

Left 4 Dead 2 (DX9)

For benching Left 4 Dead 2, we used a pre-recorded 6 minute timedemo taken on the hectic Atrium level. Framerates were captured with FRAPS.

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Heat & Acoustics / Power Consumption

Heat & Acoustics

For all temperature testing, the cards were placed on an open test bench with a single 120mm 1200RPM fan placed ~8” away from the heatsink. The ambient temperature was kept at a constant 22°C (+/- 0.5°C). If the ambient temperatures rose above 23°C at any time throughout the test, all benchmarking was stopped. For this test we use the 3DMark Batch Size test at it highest triangle count with 4xAA and 16xAF enabled and looped it for one hour to determine the peak load temperature as measured by GPU-Z.

For Idle tests, we let the system idle at the Vista desktop for 15 minutes and recorded the peak temperature.

There is actually a story behind the results you see above. Basically, it looks like the HD 5570 sample we have does run a bit hot but (and this is a big “but”), the sapphire card has an extremely low noise profile. On the other hand, the reference HD 5570 we used tended to make itself noticeable above all the other fans we had working. Its high-pitched wail was annoying to say the least so we are glad that Sapphire took it upon themselves to redesign the stock heatsink for slightly improved airflow characteristics.

Power Consumption

For this test we hooked up our power supply to a UPM power meter that will log the power consumption of the whole system twice every second. In order to stress the GPU as much as possible we once again use the Batch Render test in 3DMark06 and let it run for 30 minutes to determine the peak power consumption while letting the card sit at a stable Windows desktop for 30 minutes to determine the peak idle power consumption. We have also included several other tests as well. Please note that after extensive testing, we have found that simply plugging in a power meter to a wall outlet or UPS will NOT give you accurate power consumption numbers due to slight changes in the input voltage. Thus we use a Tripp-Lite 1800W line conditioner between the 120V outlet and the power meter.

When it comes to the power consumption of the HD 5000-series of cards, we are continually amazed. In a single card configuration, the HD 5570 is one of the most efficient cards we have tested. However, when put into a Crossfire setup the law of diminishing returns rears it’s heard since power consumption gets pushed above a HD 5670 while not allowing for significantly higher framerates. It is also obvious that software Crossfire is bottlenecking the cards somewhere since we saw less than a 20W increase in power consumption after adding the second card.

 

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Conclusion

Conclusion

There is no denying the fact that ATI is simply hell-bent on cornering every section of the GPU market and they are doing quite well at that. The release of the HD 5570 in close proximity to the HD 5450 points towards a new emphasis on the lower end price segment which should be welcome news for all of you who don’t have $100 or more to spend on a graphics card.

The HD 5570 in particular offers an excellent feature set combined with great performance for HTPC users looking for some gaming muscle in addition to HD decoding capabilities. We also like the fact that ATI has made a conscious design decision to offer this card in an SFF-friendly size and there’s no doubt that it will be a winner in certain situations.

Judging from AMD’s marketing of this card, it is supposed to compete with the GT 220 1GB but the competition between the HD 5570 1GB and the NVIDIA product isn’t even close and neither are the two cards’ prices. From what we have seen, the HD 5570 1GB costs as much as a GT 240 1GB and approaches the price of NVIDIA’s GDDR5 model. This puts it into some stiff competition mostly because of some NVIDIA price cuts over the past weeks. Nonetheless, performance is usually above or equal to that of the GT 240 1GB but it has issues competing blow for blow against the GT 240 512MB GDDR5.

Unfortunately, the most disappointing aspect of the HD 5570 is its price when compared to the previous generation from ATI. The HD 4670 was released in September of 2008 for $85 and here we are about a year and a half later and $85 will buy you about the same performance in most games. For those of you who were expecting superior performance than the HD 4670, disappointment will be the name of the game here. Yes, there are situations where this new HD5500-series card will outperform the similarly priced HD 4670 but they are few and far between even though most of the time they are neck and neck. Granted, with the HD 5570 you get DX11 compatibility and higher efficiently but in our opinion, with any DX11 feature enabled this card’s performance grinds to a near-halt.

It is quite obvious that ATI and NVIDIA have succeeded in completely stagnating the lower-end marketplace with successive releases that do little to increase performance. So, what are we left with? Not much more than you could buy in September 2008 and that’s a damn shame.

There are other issues as well and they stem from the fact that someone at ATI seems hell-bend on pushing Eyefinity support even on cards that don’t have the performance to use it. We don’t have a problem with Eyefinity as a technology but questions have to be raised when we are presented with a product whose HTPC uses are seriously curtailed by the inclusion of a DisplayPort connector over a HDMI output. There will be HDMI-equipped HD 5570 cards out there but this particular sample lacks this simple addition and this is definitely a mark against it. Questions also have to be raised about software Crossfire as it seems to have a long way to go. We saw some cases where scaling was quite good but in most situations, it failed to provide the necessary performance increase to justify the price of a second card. Before you assume that our low results were due to us using a 4x PCI-E slot for the second card, the tests were also run on a P55 board with the same outcome.

While it may sound like we don’t care much for the HD 5570, that couldn’t be further from the truth. When taken by itself, this is one card that can act as the perfect bridge between the low priced spectrum and higher-end cards that are out of most consumers’ reach. However, in such a cluttered market, the HD 5570 becomes an hard sell from a purely gaming perspective. Basically, it all comes down to price and as we saw with the HD 5450, the HD 5570 is slightly more expensive than it should be but it serves as a perfectly reasonable follow-up to the card it replaces.



Pros:

- Good performance
- Class-leading HD video and audio decoding abilities
- Very good efficiency
- Low profile capable
- Sapphire version MUCH quieter than the reference card


Cons:

- HDMI output sacrificed for Eyefinity support
- Absolutely no performance improvement over last generation’s $85 card
- DX11 features can't be enabled without tanking framerates

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