AMD's Radeon HD 5670: Sub-$100 DirectX 11 Starts Today
by Ryan Smith on January 14, 2010 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Power, Temperature, & Noise
As a note here, since NVIDIA does not offer a reference GT 240, we’re using our Asus 512MB GDDR5 GT 240 as our reference 240. It does have a dual-slot cooler, so the cooler is not directly comparable to the blower on the 5670.
The one thing AMD can’t quite best the GT 240 at is idle power. Here the GT 240’s sub-10W idle means the 5670 idles slightly higher. With that said it’s the 3rd lowest card of all time, behind only the GT 240, and the significantly slower 9500 GT.
Load power paints a different picture however, and this is where the concept of a “power virus” pokes its head up again. The 5670 has a lower TDP than the GT 240 according to the specs published by AMD and NVIDIA - at 61W and 70W respectively - and we have no reason to doubt these numbers. But here the load power of the 5670 is much higher, by just shy of 20W. You’ll notice here that the 4670 is also much lower in spite of similar specs – all of this leads us to believe that the other cards are throttling themselves some as compared to the 5670, whose VRM protection features let it run away compared to these cards. Compared to the 5750 the data is correct, so that makes a better reference point than the GT 240 or 4670.
Accounting for these quirks, the 5670 should be between the 3rd and 2nd lowest power consuming card that we have on-hand.
Less power usage leads to less heat, and in this case this means the 5670 once again trails the GT 240, which benefits from said lower power usage and the dual-slot cooler on our specific card. It’s still the 3rd best card however, beating everything except said GT 240 and the remarkably cool 5850.
At load, the picture looks very good for AMD. Even though we’re using a dual-slot cooler, thanks to the low load power usage we’re looking at a tie for the lowest load temperatures we’ve ever recorded. The dual-slot GT 240 ties at 71C, and we’re several degrees from anything else. The results are particularly good compared to the 4670, which was an inferno at 20C higher in this test.
Finally there’s noise. As is the case with all of our other cards, the noise at idle is virtually indistinguishable from the noise generated by the rest of the computer.
At load the 5670 continues to be a quiet card, at only 3dB louder than idle. The only thing it falls behind here are the GT 220 and GT 240, both of which use dual-slot coolers and can afford the use of a larger, quieter fan. This is actually very impressive for a single-slot blower.
All of this data points to the 5670 making for a good HTPC card, certainly one as good if not better than the GT 200 series, and definitely better than the 4670. It’s cool and quiet, everything an HTPC card needs. However we’re more interested in where the 5500 series would place here – few HTPCs need this much rendering power, and with the 5500 series sub-50W power draw, it may be an even better choice.
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JonnyDough - Sunday, January 17, 2010 - link
It's always good to see new cards rolling off the line that don't require me to open another coal-powered power plant in my town.PR3ACH3R - Monday, January 25, 2010 - link
The current situation with Anandtech ATI reports & coverage is absolutely absurd, & so disappointing,I do not even know where to start.
It seems like nothing is done by pros anymore at Anandtech.
From the endless 57XX Driver bugs, To the flaky incomplete & undocumented DXVA features,
To the High DPC usage in anything not 3d/dxva
all the way to the poorest 2d performance ever seen on the pc (this is not an exaggerated comment), NOTHING is discovered by Anadtech.
You have become a commercial, biased, & unprofessional, overrated site.
So there, I have done the work for you,
go check these issues & let's see when you will get the staff professional enough to analyze or even notice all the above.
529th - Friday, January 15, 2010 - link
According to benchmark reviews the 4670 idles at 9w - the way they come to this conclusion is they boot the pc without the vid card and run the psu cord through a Kill-A-Watt EZ P4460 wall socket mount that reads the wattage draw, take that number for system idle power and then run it against the system at idle with the card for a base number, then they run it through some 3D titles for total draw..7Enigma - Friday, January 15, 2010 - link
There is no marketing or business decision to continue producing the 4850. It's more expensive to make than the reviewed card, and it's making the new cards look like crap. I personally believe the Far Cry 2 data is not correct (it makes no sense), but in everything else the 4850 is significantly faster.I'm actually surprised AMD would be stupid enough to continue producing (not just selling out of existing stock) the 4850...they are shooting themselves in the foot and making their "new" product lineup underwhelming.
Hint, hint, if you are in the market for a card in this price range and don't care about power requirements or small size (ie HTPC), get the 4850 NOW. I can't imagine it will be around next month unless AMD is completely clueless (which I believe they are not).
peakchua - Friday, May 7, 2010 - link
hey im a noob on GPU'S :) is the 4850 better than the 5670? I own an imac :) with a mobility 4850, if apple upgraded to a mobilit 5750, would it be considerably faster? I tried asking apple but as usual they never reply :)JimmiG - Friday, January 15, 2010 - link
It seems not a single card in the 5-series bring you more performance at a particular price point. There's always a card from the 4-series that beats the 5-series and costs less. Why this trade off between performance and features? It's either a slower card with more features or a faster card with less features...This is completely unlike the 4-series, which revolutionized performance at every price point.
Guess things will change in, oh, about a year, when Fermi-derived cards are out at all price points...
marc1000 - Friday, January 15, 2010 - link
If we can expect the same "downsizing" that Nvidia did for the GT200, then there will be low-end Fermi's only in 2013....rjc - Friday, January 15, 2010 - link
On th first page of the article it said launch volume would be around 50k units and that is expected to be sufficient.Is that figure for US only? if it's the whole world, it works out about 1 card each for all the retail stores that sell graphic cards. Even with the price set high as it is would think a much greater supply is needed.
From here: http://jonpeddie.com/press-releases/details/reboun...">http://jonpeddie.com/press-releases/det...-for-the...
The market for grphics cards is about 20m units per quarter...this card is supposed to be in the mainstream segment would think it would sell in the millions.
ChoadNamath - Thursday, January 14, 2010 - link
How is the load power 63W higher than idle when the TDP is supposed to be only 61W? It sounds like something is funky with your review sample, or AMD's numbers are just wrong.Iketh - Wednesday, February 3, 2010 - link
Hey choad, let's bash AnandTech/AMD on the basis of your ignorance! YEA~!~! It's better to just ask why it's 63w than to assume.