14 DAY TRIAL // Joining the crowd of hardware manufacturers that have released their respective Radeon HD 5670 graphics cards is PowerColor with two models of it own. Unlike Gigabyte, PowerColor chose, like HIS, Club 3D and MSI, to only install a special cooling solution on its new device instead of overclocking it. The video adapter thus uses a dual-slot cooling mechanism developed by the award-winning Arctic Cooling.
The HD 5670 was developed by AMD as an affordable DirectX 11-capable graphics card for the $100 price point. The PowerColor HD5670 cards have respective memory capacities of 512MB and 1GB, as well as 400 stream processors and stock clocks of 775MHz for the graphics processing unit (GPU) and of 4000MHz for the GDDR5 memory. Naturally, the adapter supports the advanced graphics features of DirectX 11 and can be used in CrossFireX configurations for even higher levels of performance. The memory uses a 128-bit interface.
“The PowerColor HD5670 will be the best-in-class performance leader,” Ted Chen, CEO of TUL Corporation, said. “With a customized board design and partnership with Arctic Cooling, the PowerColor HD5670 will provide the ultimate gaming performance at an affordable price. Next gen HD gaming starts from here.”
One of the advanced features of this adapter is the built-in ATI Stream technology. This capability utilizes the stream processors to offload data parallel compute tasks from the CPU to GPU, accelerating applications. All these capabilities are supported even while the cards do not require an external power connection to run.
The special dual-slot cooling solution uses a 92mm cooling fan optimized to reduce heat from the memory and PWM. It can deliver an increased airflow at lower fan speeds, thus even reducing the noise output. Providing the required silence for increased immersion when gaming, the HD 5670 can enable “the ultimate gaming performance in a low-noise and cool operating environment.”
The PowerColor HD 5670 versions will soon become available and will have tags hovering around the aforementioned $100 price point.