ATI Radeon 5570 Graphics Card Review

Gaming on a budget can be difficult, modern games require serious horsepower and not having the right components will seriously limit you gaming experience. ATI has been listening to the lowly gamer and provided us with a new series of card with just the right price point for our monetarily challenged friends. The ATI Radeon 5570 Series of Graphics Cards are out and they are making a big scene. These cards boast some pretty impressive features and still support DirectX 11 all for a sub $100 price tag. Let’s cut through all the hype and see how well the ATI Radeon 5570 can perform:

Provided by: ATI

Price: $79-$85

Closer Look:

Specifications and Features:

Microsoft DirectX 11 Support
ATI Eyefinity Technology, support up to 3 displays. *
ATI Stream technology**
40nm Process Technology
PCI Express® 2.1 support
Microsoft Windows 7® Support
Enhanced Anisotropic Filtering
Accelerated Video Transcoding**
Display Flexibility
HDMI 1.3
Dolby® TrueHD and DTSHD Master AudioTM Support
ATI PowerPlay ™ Technology***
ATI Avivo™ Technology Enhanced Unified Video Decoder 2 (UVD 2)***
Supports OpenGL 3.2 ****
ATI CrossFireX™ multi-GPU technology*****

ATI Eyefinity Technology can support up to 6 displays using a single enabled ATI Radeon™ graphics card – the number of displays may vary by board design and you should confirm exact specifications with the applicable manufacturer before purchase. ATI Eyefinity technology works with games that support non-standard aspect ratios, which is required for panning across multiple displays. To enable more than two displays, additional panels with native DisplayPort™ connectors, and/or certified DisplayPort™ adapters to convert your monitor’s native input to your cards DisplayPort™ or Mini-DisplayPort™ connector(s), are required4 ATI Eyefinity technology works with games that support nonstandard aspect ratios which is required for panning across three displays.

Refer to the following SKU feature for a list of SKU for Eyefinity support.

**Requires application support for ATI Stream technology.

***ATI PowerPlay™, ATI Avivo™ and ATI Stream are technology platforms that include a broad set of capabilities offered by certain ATI Radeon™ HD GPUs. Not all products have all features and full enablement of some capabilities and may require complementary products. The ATI Radeon HD 5450 Gpus can support bicubic upscale for SD content when desktop resolution<=1920×1200. All HD content or desktop sizes greater than 1920×1200 will go through bilinear scale.

**** OpenCL compliant driver and SDK release scheduled for later in 2010

*****ATI CrossFireX™ technology requires an ATI CrossFireX Ready motherboard, an ATI CrossFireX™ Bridge Interconnect (for each additional graphics card) and may require aspecialized power supply.

System Requirements

– PCI Express® based PC is required with one X16 lane graphics slot available on the motherboard

– 400 Watt or greater power supply recommended

– Certified power supplies are recommended. Refer to http://ati.amd.com/certifiedPSU for a list of Certified products

– Minimum 1GB of system memory

– Installation software requires CD-ROM drive

– DVD playback requires DVD drive

– Blu-ray™ playback requires Blu-ray drive

Maximum Display Resolution:

D-Dub(VGA): 2048 x 1536 @85 Hz.
DL-DVI-I: 2560 x 1600@60Hz
HDMI: 1920 x 1200
Display Port: 2560 x 1600@60Hz
Eyefinity: 5670 x 1200@60Hz*

*Grouped with 3 monitors supporting resolutions at 1920 x 1200 with one of them supporting Display Port input.

Operating System

Windows XP(32Bit/64Bit)
Windows Vista(32Bit/64Bit)
Windows Media Center Edition 2005
Windows 7

Radeon 5000 Series Comparison Guide:

Model	Core MHz	Mem MHz	Memory	Bus Width	Processors
Radeon HD 5970	725	1000	2048MB	256-bit	1600 x 2
Radeon HD 5870	850	1200	1024MB	256-bit	1600
Radeon HD 5850	725	1000	1024MB	256-bit	1440
Radeon HD 5830	???	???	???MB	???-bit	???
Radeon HD 5770	850	1200	1024MB	128-bit	800
Radeon HD 5750	700	1150	512MB – 1GB	128-bit	720
Radeon HD 5670	775	1000	512MB – 1GB	128-bit	400
Radeon HD 5570	650	900	512MB – 1GB	128-bit	400
Radeon HD 5450	650	800	512MB – 1GB	64-bit	80

SKU	11167-00
ASIC	Radeon HD 5570
Bus Interface	PCI-E x16 (PCI-E 2.1)
Memory	1024MB / 128-bit DDR3
Clock Speed	650MHz Eclk / Effective 1800 MHz Mclk
Cooling System	Single slot Fan with auto fan control
Bracket	Full Height (LP option in box)
Display Support	DVI-I HDMI VGA
HDCP	Yes
Eyefinity Support	No
Crossfire Support	Software Crossfire
Accessories	HDMI+DVI LP bracket x1 VGA LP bracket x1

SKU	11167-02
ASIC	Radeon HD 5570
Bus Interface	PCI-E x16 (PCI-E 2.1)
Memory	1024MB / 128-bit DDR3
Hyper Memory	Yes
Clock Speed	650Hz Eclk / Effective 1800 MHz Mclk
Cooling System	Single slot with auto fan control
Bracket	Full Height (LP option in box)
Display Support	DVI-I HDMI VGA
HDCP	Yes
Eyefinity Support	No
Crossfire Support	Software Crossfire
Accessories	HDMI+DVI LP bracket x1 VGA LP bracket x1

Testing Setup:

Installation:

If you missed it in our last review don’t worry because we have it here again. The proper technique of installing a graphics card done by the head of OverclockersHQ IT department….ok, ok, he really works for ATI but I am thinking of making him an offer he can’t refuse…

Testing:

In order to test the ATI Radeon 5570 I ran a number of benchmarks ranging from directX9 all the way to the new and improved 11 and everything in between. I showed you in the features section what you can expect as far as playable frame rates for this card so in this section I wanted to point out what you can expect from this card against its little brother the 5450. We will see if it is worth paying the extra $20 for the 5570 or if the 5450 is worth skipping over the additional cost for.

Conclusion:

Overall the 5570 is by far one of the best cards I have personally used; are there better cards out there? Yes, but does the overall improvement on performance worth the additional cost? That’s debateable if you are a casual gamer and there are only a handful of games you actually play on a regular basis this might be the right choice for you. Not everyone plays all their games in 1920×1080 resolutions in fact even now the two most popular resolutions are 1024×768 and 1280×1024 (polled from 26,000 casual gamers). The 5570 is the perfect card for a budget casual gamer it has all of the features gamers have come to expect then it takes things to another level by including Eyefinity technology, DX 11, and the new Stream Technology. The ability to play all of the Eyefinity games at playable FPS makes buying this card a no brainer.

Would I recommend this card? Yes, if you are a casual gamer and 1280 resolution lover than the 5570 is the card for you. On the other hand if you are a hard core gamer and want max settings all the time and have the coin to fund your addiction pick yourself up a 5800 or 5900 series.

Pros:

Price
DX11
Eyefinity
Stream Technology
Great Performance to Cost Ratio
Playable FPS on all Eyefinity games

Cons:

For this Price Point there are no Cons in my Opinion

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