AMD’s Radeon HD 6670 & Radeon HD 6570: Two’s Company, Sub-$100’s A Crowd
by Ryan Smith on April 19, 2011 12:01 AM ESTFinal Words: It’s Nobody’s Business But The Turks
At the high-end of the market we’re used to seeing AMD and NVIDIA trade blows with similarly priced, similarly performing cards. In the sub-$100 market this is not the case however. At least among the non-crippled versions of various GPUs, NVIDIA and AMD’s GPUs seem to do a better job fitting in between each other than they do going head-to-head with each other. Pricing is what makes these cards compete in the market, rather than their GPUs performing similarly.
In this case Turks seems bound to fit in between NVIDIA’s GF106 (GTS 450) and GF108 (GT 430) GPUs, a position that Redwood (5670) has similarly occupied up to this point. Between those NVIDIA GPUs there’s a very small slice of space that AMD can call their own, at least before pricing is taken into account.
The fact of the matter is that the sub-$100 retail market is extremely crowded, with the space being shared by last generation cards on close-out, current generation cards on sale, and newly introduced cards like the Radeon HD 6670 and Radeon HD 6570 that are designed for that price range in the first place. Compared to the 5600/5500 series cards that the 6670 and 6570 replace, both cards are nice mid-cycle updates. Performance is up by over 10% for the 6670, while the 6570 is very close to the 5670. Without a die shrink, this is probably the best AMD can do to iterate on Redwood.
The problem of course is that based solely on performance, the sub-$100 market is too crowded. As long as power consumption and a low-profile form factor are not concerns, the Radeon HD 5770 and GeForce GTS 450 are both regularly on sale for under $100 and are easily 30% faster than the 6670. Cards like the 6670 and 6570 have their place, but it’s not as performance kings. For that, higher-tier cards on sale have and will continue to be the better buy.
So where to the 6670 and 6570 fit in? That’s hard to say. The 5570 was the ultimate HTPC card, but the 6450 has dethroned it. Unless you can snag a higher-tier card for $80 the 6570 is a good deal – or at least no worse than the 5670 – but the 6670 isn’t as well defined.
The best qualities of both cards are that they’re low-profile cards that don’t need an external power source, and that this is a reference quality we should see in partner cards. With the exception of a couple of one-off non-reference designs like the much more expensive PowerColor Go Green 5750, the 6670 and 6570 are going to be the fastest cards available that don’t require external power. In the OEM market that AMD sold these cards to first, that’s a significant advantage. For the retail market however this is only of particular use for HTPC users that need a bit more gaming horsepwer. For every other use in this price segment, time will tell if it is enough.
Ultimately Turks and the 6670/6570 are technically superior, but at $99 and $79 respectively they won’t have that same superior position on the open market.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
53 Comments
View All Comments
ClagMaster - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 - link
The HD6670 is a nice upgrade for a 9600GT, both of which are 65W cards.I beleive, based on 240GT performance, that the HD6670 has about 40-50% more performace over the 9600GT.
This card has plenty of performance for games published 4 years ago.
arthur449 - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 - link
Last page, middle of fourth paragraph:"... the Radeon HD 5770 and GeForce GTS 450 are both regularly on sale for under $100 and are easily 30% faster than the 6770."
Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 - link
Newegg has a sapphire 5750 for $103 ARhttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Best part is it can apparently be flashed into a 5770.
A 5770 curbstomps a 6670, by more than 50%.
Jasker - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 - link
Finally an actual comparison using an older card. I've been using my 8800 GTS 512 for years and yet to really see a game I could determine for sure was GPU bound (I have an old dual Operaton CPU). Thanks to this article I know I can almost definately see some games with todays mid range cards. Thanks!mosox - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 - link
you don't include the HD video quality benchmark but a load of TWIMTBP games instead.Read Tomshardware for a decent review.
Spivonious - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 - link
Agreed. These cards are not marketed towards gamers. They will more likely be used for media playback and casual gaming, not running Crysis.SlyNine1 - Wednesday, April 20, 2011 - link
No, I wouldn't buy a 6670 for someone thats just going to use it for media playback. There are much better options for that.casteve - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 - link
"The 5570 was the ultimate HTPC card, but the 6450 has dethroned it. "Except Ganesh is still in hiding.....so, you can't say it definatively.
I was going to say, these aren't gaming cards. Then I wandered over to the March 2011 Steam Hardware survey and found ~29% of users had 1280x1024 or less monitors. Yow.
The other humorous factoid was how the 6670 was the equivalent of the venerable 8800 GT; using 30W less in idle and half the power under load. Sort of a nice data point for progress.
But, the biggest missing piece to this article is the analysis for HTPC. How well do the 65xx/66xx score versus the 55xx/56xx/etc? How well do they implement 24fps?
Finally, Adobe is using gpu acceleration for some Photoshop/Lightroom/etc features. It would be nice (instead of Adobe's vague 'you can use your gpu card to accelerate' premise) to have some benchmarks for these lower tier cards to see what they actually do and whether a bottom end card is all you truly need for these apps.
Belard - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 - link
Agreed.Thing is, these new cards are quite usable for people on a budget - for gaming, or to do some gaming in an HTPC, which the 6450 cannot do. I still play games on my rather old 4670.
The video quality and feature set is what makes the 6000 series better than the 5000 and of course the GeForce cards which have severe HTPC / video output issues.
Spivonious - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 - link
Can the charts with noise levels please include the noise floor of the room, or of the system without the video card installed (which I'm assuming is around 41dBA in this case)? Also, can the distance of measurement be included? I would love to see measurements taken at two distances - one next to the case and one about 3-5 feet away to get the level at a normal seating distance.