ATI Radeon HD 5570 - Sub-$100 HTPC & Gaming Solution

[Rob Williams]

AMD's clear goal at the moment is to finish rounding-off its HD 5000-series line-up in advance of NVIDIA's Fermi launch, and so far, it's doing a good job. It's continuing its success in this goal with the release of the $80 Radeon HD 5570, a card that's designed to offer stellar media capabilities along with reasonable gaming performance.

You can read the full article here and discuss it here.

 

[crowTrobot]

Great review! I love the "best playable" reference chart for each game, I wish more review sites had that.

This thing would be a great replacement for my 4550. I think the power consumption is almost the same but the performance is almost doubled from that.

 

[Rob Williams]

Thanks for the nice comments! We added the "best playable" about half a year ago, I believe, as it gives a better overall view of just what the card can handle. So in this regard, we try to have the best of both worlds.

It's funny you mention the HD 4550. A friend of mine was here just earlier and took one of the HD 5570's I had kicking around... in order to upgrade the HD 4550 in his Acer pre-built machine. We pretty much gauged that the HD 5570 would be up to 4x as fast as the HD 4550, and it wouldn't surprise me if the power consumption was around -10% as well.

If you are a gamer, I'd quicker recommend an HD 5670, if you can get it for $100 or just a bit under.

 

[killem2]

great review, i got a friend looking to build an old school gaming rig, to put certain old school type of games from certain old school *can't say don't want to get in trouble lol* systems, and pc games he's collected since 95-2004 or so.

 

[ramaniac]

thanks for great review

I would also like to say thanks for adding in the best playable settings. They make it a lot easier for those of us running older systems to judge if a card will be worth purchasing. Speaking of older systems I haven't gone widescreen yet and still using a 17" LCD @ 1280x1024. How do you think the 5570 would fare at that res for games like Dragon Age, Crysis, and WOW?

 

[Rob Williams]

Hi ramaniac:

At that resolution, all of those games would run fine, especially World of Warcraft. For Crysis, we could run the game at around 30FPS at 1080p, which is 2.07 million pixels. 1280x1024 is 1.31 million. So, I'd suspect you could see around 40 - 45 FPS with that one, which should be fine.

 

[Unregistered]

Was the GT240 a DDR5

Nice artical the only thing I'd ask is that when a GT240 is in the mix there's a clear referance that it either a GDDR5 or the DDR3 unit.
You have the link back to the Asus 512Mb Review so it looks like the GDDR5. I would think a DDR3 base card might be more in line to spare with the 5570.

 

[Rob Williams]

The GT 240 was indeed a GDDR5 model.

 

[TheGlowie]

Grand Theft Auto IV PC

HI! ^_^ Very good review I must say! That helped me a lot, so thank you!
But now, a familiar question: "Can it run GTA IV?"
Or rather, "what's the minimum card that will run GTA IV on maximum settings on a resolution of 1024 by 768 with no AA?"
I prefer NVIDIA, but the 5570 has DirectX 11 support and also the 5670..

I think I'm posting this in the wrong section, but speaking of GTA IV..
[I want to build a system that can run that game smooth on the highest settings (besides the resolution and AA), any ideas? From what I've researched, I know that I need a quad-core, 4 GB of RAM and a video card with 1 GB (9800GT perhaps?)]

Thank you for your time and attention and keep up the good work!

 

[Rob Williams]

Thanks for the nice comments

1024x768 is a very low resolution in today's scheme of things, and any mid-range card you purchase is going to handle any game at that resolution without an issue. If you could pick up a 9800 GT on the cheap, that sure wouldn't be a bad buy for that resolution. I highly recommend looking for a new monitor that supports a higher resolution though, unless you have a specific need for sticking with 1024.

 

[TheGlowie]

5770

Thanks for the answer! Yep, I know 1024 is a very low resolution in today's standards and I don't like it either.. It's not the monitor which is the problem (32 inch, full HD), but the game (GTA IV), and I would've played it even at that resolution if everything else was on max. (I guess it doesn't look that bad with AA and stuff..)(I know from experience how demanding that game is)

I'm planing to buy an ATI HD5770, and now I'm confident that I can max out GTA IV without any problems even at higher resolutions. I've found this version (from MSI) to be cheaper and at standard frequencies which ATI provides for this card (850Mhz/4800Mhz, right?):

http://us.msi.com/index.php?func=proddesc&maincat_no=130&prod_no=1963

The only thing that concerns me about this version is the fan, which I've heard it doesn't do a pretty good job on cooling the GPU.. I don't know, is it ok to stay at 60C when gaming (I've contacted MSI and they said that this is not true, and that their cooler is smooth and quiet and it keeps the GPU at about 40-50)?

Ok, I'll finish this now because it's starting to be in the wrong section..
Thanks again for the answer (now I don't have to go searching and researching the net again for a good answer) and I hope you don't mind the long replies...
(Great articles BTW! You've got 1 more happy gamer! ^_^

 

[Rob Williams]

That's the problem with GTA IV... the game is just a total hog. The sad thing is that there is little need of it, because if you compare the graphics in that title to another current one, chances are you're going to see better graphics and performance on the other title (Modern Warfare 2 is a good example). The same thing goes for Crysis Warhead. I don't particularly find the graphics that attractive, but the game requires a beast of a machine to look good.

I think with an HD 5770 you will be able to enjoy the game just fine with good detail levels. If you check out our GTA IV page in a recent review, you can see that the HD 5770 handled the game just fine at 1920x1080. The graphics were not maxed, but were still close enough. So yeah, you're right about maxing out at a higher resolution, and I hope that's the route you take ;-)

As for GPU temperatures, don't worry about 60°C... that is perfectly acceptable. The card is designed to handle well over 80°C, and you're unlikely to ever come close to that.

Glad you like the articles, and glad that we're doing something right ;-)