14 DAY TRIAL // The Radeon HD 5670 was rumored to be in development even back in early December. More recently, however, Advanced Micro Devices was reported to be planning on launching this new, more budget-oriented graphics solution sometime this week. Whatever doubts end-users may have had concerning the validity of those claims have now been swept away, with the first review of the HD 5670 emerging even before the actual launch.
The new graphics card will be powered by a Redwood XT graphics processing unit. This GPU has eight raster operating units, 20 texture mapping units and 400 stream processors. Furthermore, its core clock runs at 775 MHz and its memory at 4000MHz DDR. The card will be available with memory capacities of both 512MB and 1GB, with the memory bus width being of 128 bits.
The HD 5670 will be AMD's DirectX 11 graphics solution for those on a budget. The product's review showed it to be more capable, in most cases, than the GeForce GT 240 from NVIDIA, even though it wasn't able to keep up with AMD's first 40nm GPU-based adapter, the HD 4770.
The HardwareZone team states that the card “does look kind of lightweight” compared with the juniper-based Radeon HD 5750 with 720 stream processors. Nevertheless, ATI has reportedly stated that this new product will be significantly more affordable, even being sold for under US$100 (US$138). Not only that, but the card will still boast the EyeFinity technology for triple display scenarios. In addition, the card does not need more power than is provided through the PCIe slot and employs a single-slot cooler as well as DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort connectors.
The conclusion drawn by the reviewers is that the adapter is “a solid mainstream gaming solution” and “a solid, bang-for-buck graphics card.” Unfortunately, the reference model tested did not support CrossFireX, but manufacturers will be fully capable of adding such functionality.