5500 Series and 5450 Pre-Announcement

Along with today’s launch, AMD is also pre-announcing the 5500 series and the 5450. We say pre-announcing as they’re not launching the cards today, nor are they showing off the complete specifications of the cards. Today is an announcement of what they’ll be launching in February, the 6th and final month in their 6 month 4 chip launch window for the Evergreen family.

We’ll start with the 5500 series. There is one card pre-announced thus far, which we expect will get a real name (e.g. 5570) at launch. The 5500 series is specified for less than 50W load power, and will be a low-profile actively cooled card. In a full-height computer, a 3rd display output port can be attached, giving the card the ability to drive 3 monitors in an Eyefinity configuration.

The other card is the 5450, which is another low-profile card, but this time passively cooled. It too can drive 3 monitors in Eyefinity mode when put in a full-sized case to allow a 3rd display output. We don’t know what the power usage is, beyond the fact that AMD is calling it an “ultra low power” card.

Both of these cards will have the full 5000 series feature set, most importantly including audio bitstreaming. This should make either of these cards the great HTPC card we’ve been expecting to come out of the 5000 series, depending on how much rendering power you need.

As we stated before, both of these cards will be launching sometime in February. We do know more about these cards, but at this point we’re not allowed to talk about them. What we can suggest is that you look at our Mobility Radeon 5000 article, where AMD announced Redwood and Cedar in mobile form ahead of the desktop cards, and then take a very close look at this slide of AMD’s chip stack. The astute among you should be able to infer some additional information about these forthcoming cards.

Meet The 5670 The Test
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  • Spoelie - Thursday, January 14, 2010 - link

    Also, the conclusion that the radeon really pulls away from the other value cards at higher resolutions (hawx) might be an artifact of the differing memory sizes.

    (need edit button!)
  • kmmatney - Thursday, January 14, 2010 - link

    I bought a $99 HD4830 more than a year ago, and it much faster than this, especially when overclocked (as it had lot of OC headroom, and performs a little faster than an HD4850). Sad that the same amount of money a year later gets you a slower card.
  • Griswold - Thursday, January 14, 2010 - link

    You 4830 is a partial defective 4850, thats what made it nice value until the 4770 arrived (despite low availablility then). You have to wait for the already rumored 5830 to get the same feeling again...
  • BelardA - Thursday, January 14, 2010 - link

    What made the 4670 an exciting card well over a year ago was that it was under $100 when it was launched ($80 avg) and it was almost as fast as the 3870, sometimes faster (as drivers matured). So when looking at some of these benchmarks that DON'T have the 4670, just look at the 3870 and count it the same. So at $80, it had replaced the $200~150 3870 and ran cooler, etc.

    Anyway, the 5670 SHOULD have at least equaled the 4770 in performance! That would make the 5670 a very good value gaming card for the $90~100 price range. You can get 4770s for about $95~110 (until gone).

    Hopefully in the coming months, the prices will start to get lower
    naturally. But AMD should have a $100 card that *IS* equal to the 4850. Perhaps that would be a 5730 card, but its power should still be under 75watts under load.

    Until Nvidia comes out with something competitive, AMD has little reason to load the prices... ha, notice how things have changed? :)

    Ideal pricing by March/April.
    5870 = $350 (Today = $400~440)
    5850 = $225 (Today = $300~340)
    5830 = $175 * hey, there was a 4380, why not?
    5770 = $125 (Today = $155~200 for 1GB)
    5750 = $110 (Today = $135~150 for 1GB)
    5730 = $ 95 * hey, there was a 4380, why not?
    5670 = $ 75 * Its cheaper to make than a 4670.
    5650 = $ 60
    5550 = $ 55 * Cause 555 looks cool.
    5450 = $ 40
    5350 = $ 30 * Office PCs that need DVI... 4350s are $25.

    With such a line up, the entire 4000 series can go. There are still 3600s and 24/2600s on the market, usually lo-profile or AGP.

    In the meantime, Nvidia will still be selling 9600 / 9800 / GT1xx / G/gt 2xx for another 1-3 years... ugh.
  • BelardA - Thursday, January 14, 2010 - link

    OOPS! I typoed

    I meant to say "4830", not "4380".... doh!
  • Drazick - Thursday, January 14, 2010 - link

    What About Some Open CL / Direct Compute tests?

    No games, just pure calculations?

    Thanks.
  • haplo602 - Thursday, January 14, 2010 - link

    hmm seems this card is a bit short of my needs ... a performance level around hd4770 would be great.
  • Obsy - Thursday, January 14, 2010 - link

    Idle and Load Power charts say "NVIDIA GeForce 4870 X2" ;)
  • MadMan007 - Thursday, January 14, 2010 - link

    Nice thorough review. I'd be interested in some more results with lesser or no AA as well though. While we all love AA it's kind of silly to expect to run it well at 1920x1200 or sometimes even 1680x1050 on <$100 cards. Plus it would give those who keep cards for a long time and just turn down features such as AA a better comparison.
  • ET - Thursday, January 14, 2010 - link

    While I already replaced my 3870 with a 5750, it's nice to see a sub-$100 card that beats it in all cases. I'm glad ATI went with 128bit GDDR 5 for this card.

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