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
Battleforge
BattleForge is EA’s card-based online-only RTS. As the first DirectX11 title it’s of particular importance for the latest rendition of DirectX, although in this case we aren’t using any features that would be impacted by it. Even without ambient occlusion, BattleForge manages to be a rather punishing game for GPUs.
Battleforge is another game where you really have to give up some kind of quality to play at 1680 or higher. The 5670 is neck-and-neck with the 8800 GT, but the 4850 makes quick work of it.
Compared to more modern cards, the 5670 is still at the top of the $99 class, but the GT 240 is within a few frames here. The 4670 falls well behind here, with the 5670 coming out almost 50% faster in some cases.
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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 typoedI 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.