AMD’s Radeon HD 5570: Low Profile, Higher Performance
by Ryan Smith on February 9, 2010 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Meet Sapphire’s 5570
Sapphire also sent along their 5570. As a launch-day card it’s nearly identical to our reference card, utilizing the same PCB and RAM as that card. The only difference on the board itself is that our Sapphire card is equipped with a DisplayPort rather than an HDMI port.
The bigger difference is that like virtually everyone else, Sapphire has ditched the reference cooler for another design. It’s still a single-slot cooler, but instead of AMD’s blower Sapphire is using an open-ended design that vents air out the front and the rear. It’s painted black so we can’t tell what material it’s made from, but we suspect it’s aluminum rather than copper like AMD’s. This will be worth keeping in mind for later when we look at the cooling characteristics of these two cards.
As with Sapphire’s 5450, their 5770 comes in a surprisingly large box. Inside is the card, a low-profile bracket, drivers, an installation guide, and Arcsoft’s SimHD video conferencing plugin.
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andy o - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - link
I think you mean "when ESVP is enabled" here:"it looks like AMD is hardcoding their drivers to disable certain post-processing features when ESVP is disabled"
andy o - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - link
Ryan, I don't think this is such a big deal:"In our testing we didn’t notice any obvious playback issues with the 5450 or 5570 when we had ESVP disabled, but we’ve seen enough forum posts of this feature magically fixing poor video playback performance that we’re not confident enough to recommend disabling this feature. It’s something we think should be left enabled, at least for the time being."
I don't think there's any "magically fixing" for those people was probably done because of ESVP disabling post-processing features and nothing esoteric, so I think it's safe to assume that this aggressive disabling of feature by ESVP on these drivers is a bug, and you can safely disable it, and just enable some post-processing options you want, as long as you don't get choppy video or have issues with A/V sync.
I don't see how ESVP could affect smooth video playback more than what was explained by AMD (seems the forum user I mentioned on the 5450 thread was right about what it does). Once you have all the video frames showing in sync (no dropped frames), there's nothing more to make the video smoother besides using more post-processing to interpolate video and show it at higher refresh rates (which is clearly not happening here, and it would require a 120 Hz monitor at least.
juhatus - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - link
Remember that AA absolutly kills this card? So whats the point showing it on the big table-results.How would it compare to other sub-100 cards without AA?
knowom - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - link
Most cards bottleneck more with AA turned on and people tend to prefer having AA turned on as opposed to off when possible.juhatus - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - link
3870 uses its shaders to do the AA, hence the bad AA results.16ROPS 256bit memory and ~400shaders shouln't compare too badly to this card without AA.
OCedHrt - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - link
Per your numbers, the 5670 is 15W, not 25W, more under load.jigglywiggly - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - link
This card is fail.Pino - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - link
It´s perfect for me.I just play Day of Defeat Source and TF2, and I have a Dell Vostro 200 a low profile chassis, with a limited 200W PSU.
knowom - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - link
Pretty much the GT 240 basically wipes the floor with it in terms of performance, power, and noise. I don't see any real selling points on this card even DX11 and Eyefinity don't seem too viable on such a castrated card performance wise.Get the GT240 instead or spend the extra $10-$20's on a better performance card or save yourself a $10-$15's on the quieter and more energy efficient one is what it boils down to.
mczak - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - link
I think that's a bit harsh, though really the review was harsh I think in fact it was a bit unfair.- the lower power draw of the gt240 has no connection to reality. All other reviews (some of them measuring power draw directly, some at the wall) show the hd5570 has a quite a bit lower power draw than the gt240 ddr3 under load (at idle it's a wash), not to mention the gt240 gddr5 (or HD4670) which are even a bit higher. I strongly suspect either something was wrong with the sample card or measurement error (or rather, not keeping the setup consistent).
- the RE5 numbers are very puzzling, and I'd say they are just bogus. Toms also tested this game, and the HD5570 just behaved like in any other title (that is, close to HD4670) there. Seems a lot more believable.
- the comparison to gt240 gddr5 seems a tad unfair. Now AMD thinks this should be compared to gt220 which isn't really useful, but it seems to me that price-wise it will be really the same as the gt240 ddr3, not gddr5 version. Granted, that's probably only a 10 dollar difference but when talking about 80$ cards this does make a difference.