| ATI Radeon HD5570 DX11 Video Card |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Video Cards | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Written by Bruce Normann | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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ATI Radeon HD5570 Video Card ReviewWith this latest release, ATI is doubling back to fill some gaps in its wildly successful Radeon HD5xxx series of video cards. The previous release, the HD5450, was the logical terminus of their GPU bisecting act. In fact, they got a little carried away, and lopped off almost all the Stream Processors, in order to reduce the power requirements down to the lowest possible level. This time, the goal was to create the best performing low-profile HTPC card they could. The HD5570 is the first in a series of HD55xx video cards, and for now, it will probably be the top card in the group. Loaded up with the Redwood GPU from the HD5670, 1 GB of GDDR3 memory, and an all copper active GPU cooler, the HD5570 looks to be the King of the low-profile world, without the attendant King's ransom. Follow along with Benchmark Reviews as we see how it stacks up against its siblings. 
Like all the HD5xxx video cards, since the original HD5870 based on the Cypress GPU, the ATI HD5570 has all the modern features that the larger and more expensive models bring to the table. Sporting only 627 million transistors, and 400 Stream Processors, the new card idles along at less than 10 watts and pulls less than 45 watts under load. They've managed to do this without the energy-saving benefits of GDDR5 this time, as the card will only be equipped with GDDR3. The top model reviewed here has 1GB of memory, but I suspect variants with 512MB will come out soon.
The flagship ATI video cards made a huge splash in September, but according to Mercury Research, cards costing over $200 only make up 7% of the market, and the 57xx series landed in the $100-$200 range, which makes up 27% of the market. That leaves a huge opening in the sub-$100 market, and ATI is filling in the gaps with all new, DirectX 11 capable cards in this segment. The specs of the HD5570 indicate a performance level that will have a good chance of adequate performance with gaming, at moderate resolutions and settings, and will have no problem supporting all the latest application in the home theater environment. About the company: ATIOver the course of AMD's four decades in business, silicon and software have become the steel and plastic of the worldwide digital economy. Technology companies have become global pacesetters, making technical advances at a prodigious rate - always driving the industry to deliver more and more, faster and faster. However, "technology for technology's sake" is not the way we do business at AMD. Our history is marked by a commitment to innovation that's truly useful for customers - putting the real needs of people ahead of technical one-upmanship. AMD founder Jerry Sanders has always maintained that "customers should come first, at every stage of a company's activities." We believe our company history bears that out. Radeon HD5570 FeaturesThe feature set of the ATI HD5570 video card is nearly identical to the entire HD5xxx series. The important differences are all related to the fact that the HD5570 chip is half the size of the HD5770, with half the transistors and half the processing power. Except for lower default clock frequencies, it's identical to the HD5670 that Benchmark Reviews looked at last month. For those who first saw the monster version of this graphic at the launch of the 58xx series, there's about ¼ of what was in the HD5870 left in the center of the diagram; 5 SIMD Engines with a total of 400 Stream Processors. The architecture diagram may have gotten smaller, but the feature list hasn't shrunk at all.
ATI Radeon HD 5570 GPU Feature Summary
Now that we've confirmed that the 5570 is not missing any important features, let's look at the hardware specifications in detail. Radeon HD5570 Video Card SpecificationsThe HD5570 has hardware specs that match up pretty closely to the HD5670 that was released last month. The clock rates are a little lower, and the GDDR5 has been replaced by GDDR3, but the GPU is basically the same. You can see the HD5570 specs in detail a little further below, and the parts that don't quite equal the HD5670 are reflected in the power numbers. ATI has done everything they possibly could to get these numbers down to where they are, and still keep its performance close to the HD5670. In a typical HTPC box, everything is jammed in tighter than sardines in a can, and the low profile of the sleek, shiny chassis only allows for small fans on the back. So, power is King. If the device consumes power, it had better do something useful with it, and not just dissipate it away, as waste heat! While the specs give us a good clue to the performance of the HD5570, ultimately, it's the real-world performance we care about, the design tradeoffs that were required to achieve it, and the price for that performance. This graphic puts the general pricing v. performance strategy in perspective:
But before we get to our detailed teardown and testing, let's look at the actual HD5570 specs: Radeon HD5570 Specifications
OK, tired of looking at numbers, let's take a closer look at the hardware, then? ATI was kind enough to send us a sample of the 1GB reference design video card with a full copper active cooling setup, so let's examine the ins and outs of the newest low-profile ATI video card. Closer Look: Radeon HD5570From the specification standpoint, the HD5570 is not that different from the HD5670 design. From the physical perspective though, the intended application for this diminutive card has driven a different approach. Everything is smaller and packaged tighter, to accommodate usage in low-profile HTPC cases. The sample card I received has a full height I/O bracket, but the DE15HD VGA connector is wired with ribbon cable and is removable, or it can be relocated to an adjacent slot. This way, the card can be easily reconfigured to a true half-height form factor. The card itself is only about an inch longer than the PCI-e interface that it connects to.
Power consumption is nowhere near the all-time low set by the HD5450, but the performance is going to be miles ahead as a result. This is the perfect card for those who saw the HD5670 and wished it was a low profile card. The same folks probably saw the HD5450 and bemoaned the fact that gaming with it was pretty much out of the question, with only 80 shaders in play. I hate to keep describing this card in terms of its two nearest siblings, but it really is the perfect mix of the best from both of them. ATI's AIB partners will have considerable flexibility for their cooling solutions, allowing them to optimize their offerings along several product pathways. I expect some current fan-cooled designs to be recycled, in order to reduce tooling costs. For now, ATI has given us a promising pint sized reference cooler that is 100% copper, excepting the fan and its shroud, which are both plastic. By the looks of it, I expect excellent cooling performance.
The connections on the I/O plate at the rear of the card are arranged in a common configuration for this class of video card. From left to right: one VGA, one HDMI and one DVI connector - one for everyone. This card did not have a DisplayPort connection, which is required for a three monitor Eyefinity setup. There will be some flexibility in the I/O port arrangement for ATI partners, so pay attention to the product specs when you buy, as it can be hard to tell the HDMI and DisplayPort connections apart with a casual glance.
Looking at the end-on image above, it's also clear that the cooling hardware consumes only one expansion slot. Since HTPC cases and their smaller class of motherboards have more restrictive space requirements, this is an important point for some builders. Remember, there will be a variety of options available from the AIB partners, although I don't think any of them are going to adopt a two-slot cooling solution. We saw quite the reverse when the HD5450 was released. All of the retail partners released single slot passive designs that looked (and performed) nothing like the passive heatsink ATI showed us in their engineering samples. The back of the Radeon HD5450 is not quite as densely packed as some of the uber-cards we test here at Benchmark Reviews, but it's filled, for the most part, with miniature surface-mount-technology components. The main features to be seen here are the metal cross-brace for the GPU heatsink screws, which are spring loaded, and connect to threaded standoffs on the heat sink assembly on the front side of the card, and the GDDR3 RAM modules. 4 modules of back side DRAM show up on this 1 GB version of the card, in conjunction with their mates on the front side, which are hidden below the GPU cooler. Neither the front nor back side RAM receives any active or passive cooling, as we'll see later when we look closer at the cooling system. 
For most high-end video cards, the cooling system is an integral part of the performance envelope for the card. Make it run cooler, and you can make it run faster was always the byword for achieving gaming-class performance from the latest and greatest GPU. The HD5570 takes a similar path, but the main design problem faced here is squeezing enough cooling for the Redwood-class GPU into a low profile form factor, for the HTPC application it will most likely be used in. The HD5570 offers the performance of a mainstream video card in a half-height form factor. With a very small GPU die, there just aren't too many transistors there to produce a lot of heat, but it's likely to be pushed to maximum performance levels by most customers, who buy this card because they needed the gaming performance that the HD5450 couldn't provide. What heat there is will all come out here, at the top and back end of the cooler housing.
That's all there really is to see on the outside, so let's peel back the covers and have a good look around on the inside. Radeon HD5570 Detailed FeaturesFor the first time in the history of the HD5xxx series launches, the latest model does not have a "half-size" GPU. The newest member of the HD5xxx family has the same number of transistors, SIMD engines, Shaders, Texture Units, and ROPs as the Redwood chip, which was released last month with the HD5670. The GPU on the 5770 is probably identical, although it has a slightly different part number (...004 instead of ...002), and some down-rated versions are likely to be used in the future on lower-spec models in the HD55xx series. The small size of the GPU die is critical to the cost strategy that ATI is pursuing with all these products. After some very lean years, struggling to make it in the graphics chip industry, it appears ATI has finally figured out how to make money. The Redwood die packaging on the HD5570 GPU is a little bigger than half of the Juniper, because the number of interconnects is roughly the same, and it's evident there are a lot of transistors consumed in the other functions of the GPU, besides shaders and ROPs.
The memory specification for the entire HD55xx series is going to be somewhat flexible, although I expect GDDR2 will not be offered. The top model, which we are reviewing today, will be sold with 1 GB of 900 MHz GDDR3, and is fully capable of Eyefinity usage with that amount. As mentioned above, the GPU-memory interface is 128 bits wide with a maximum bandwidth of 28.8 GB/s. That's a major hit, compared to the HD5670, with 64GB/s of bandwidth, and the absence of GDDR5 memory on this card will no doubt be felt in gaming performance.
The K4W1G1646E-HC11 GDDR3 memory chips are sourced from Samsung. They are rated for a maximum clock rate of 900 MHz, and the marketing specs for the card indicate that. Version 0.3.8 of GPU-Z reported correctly that the memory on my sample unit was running at 900 MHz. There's some room for expansion, as 1 GHz parts are available from Samsung, according to the product specs shown here below.
The power section of the HD5570 video card is simplistic, and optimized for size, cost and low power. In this case, all of the dynamic performance scaling is built into the GPU, and the voltage regulators just ride along. I was observing the shader and memory clocks in GPU-Z while using the PC for normal office-type duties, and this card ramped the clocks up and down just as fast and dynamically as the HD5450 card I reviewed recently. That's where the power savings are going to be made with this card, getting it down very quickly to idle power, which is a miserly 9.7 watts. Looking at the business end of the active cooler supplied by ATI, I found a much simpler and vastly more economic solution to creating that little square platform, located between the four threaded standoffs, which is the actual contact patch for the GPU. The platform is stamped into the copper bottom plate, a manufacturing technique that is made possible by the fabrication method for the fins; they are separate pieces of copper sheet that are soldered into place to form the tightly packed fins of the cooler. I'm pretty sure that the way the GPU chip is mounted on the board makes this little square bump essential, and it's interesting to see how ATI produced it with much lower cost this time around.
The assembly quality is quite good, for an engineering sample. The heat sink was coated with thermal interface material that had the look and feel of premium quality paste. Not that rock-solid light colored plastic that usually appears on OEM assemblies. When I reassembled the board, I used OCZ Freeze, and didn't see any lower temps while running FurMark v1.70, so it's safe to say that they are using some good quality thermal paste for their engineering samples. The soldering and surface mount component placement was well done, as you can see in the close-up view below, and the overall board layout was well designed, with a rational flow.
Before we dive into the testing portion of the review, let's look at one of the most exciting new features available on every Radeon HD5xxx series product, Eyefinity. ATI Eyefinity Multi-MonitorsEven at this low price point, ATI felt that people might want to take advantage of the new Eyefinity technology. Especially if you look at this product as an upgrade part for someone with OEM or IGP video, they can add a second or third monitor at the same time and really improve their gaming and HD video experience.
ATI Eyefinity advanced multiple-display technology launches a new era of panoramic computing, helping to boost productivity and multitasking with innovative graphics display capabilities supporting massive desktop workspaces, creating ultra-immersive computing environments with superhigh resolution gaming and entertainment, and enabling easy configuration. High end editions will support up to six independent display outputs simultaneously. In the past, multi-display systems catered to professionals in specific industries. Financial, energy, and medical are just some industries where multi-display systems are a necessity. Today, more and more graphic designers, CAD engineers and programmers are attaching more than one display to their workstation. A major benefit of a multi-display system is simple and universal - it enables increased productivity. This has been confirmed in industry studies which show that attaching more than one display device to a PC can significantly increase user productivity. Early multi-display solutions were non-ideal. Bulky CRT monitors claimed too much desk space; thinner LCD monitors were very expensive; and external multidisplay hardware were inconvenient and also very expensive. These issues are much less of a concern today. LCD monitors are very affordable and current generation GPUs can drive multiple display devices independently and simultaneously, without the need for external hardware. Despite the advancements in multi-display technology, AMD engineers still felt there was room for improvement, especially regarding the display interfaces. VGA carries analog signals and needs a dedicated DAC per display output, which consumes power and ASIC space. Dual-Link DVI is digital, but requires a dedicated clock source per display output and uses too many I/O pins from the GPU. It was clear that a superior display interface was needed. In 2004, a group of PC companies collaborated to define and develop DisplayPort, a powerful and robust digital display interface. At that time, engineers working for the former ATI Technologies Inc. were already thinking about a more elegant solution to drive more than two display devices per GPU, and it was clear that DisplayPort was the interface of choice for this task. In contrast to other digital display interfaces, DisplayPort does not require a dedicated clock signal for each display output. In fact, the data link is fixed at 1.62Gbps or 2.7Gbps per lane, irrespective of the timing of the attached display device. The benefit of this design is that one reference clock source provides the clock signal needed to drive as many DisplayPort display devices as there are display pipelines in the GPU. In addition, with the same number of I/O pins used for Single-Link DVI, a full speed DisplayPort link can be driven which provides more bandwidth and translates to higher resolutions, refresh rates and color depths. All these benefits perfectly complement ATI Eyefinity Multi-Display Technology.
ATI Eyefinity Technology from AMD provides advanced multiple monitor technology delivering an immersive graphics and computing experience, supporting massive virtual workspaces and super-high resolution gaming environments. Legacy GPUs have supported up to two display outputs simultaneously and independently for more than a decade. Until now graphics solutions have supported more than two monitors by combining multiple GPUs on a single graphics card. With the introduction of AMD's next-generation graphics product series supporting DirectX 11, a single GPU now has the advanced capability of simultaneously supporting up to six independent display outputs. ATI Eyefinity Technology is closely aligned with AMD's DisplayPort implementation providing the flexibility and upgradability modern user's demand. Up to two DVI, HDMI, or VGA display outputs can be combined with DisplayPort outputs for a total of up to six monitors, depending on the graphics card configuration. The initial AMD graphics products with ATI Eyefinity technology will support a maximum of three independent display outputs via a combination of two DVI, HDMI or VGA with one DisplayPort monitor. AMD has a future product planned to support up to six DisplayPort outputs. Wider display connectivity is possible by using display output adapters that support active translation from DisplayPort to DVI or VGA. The DisplayPort 1.2 specification is currently being developed by the same group of companies who designed the original DisplayPort specification. Its feature set includes higher bandwidth, enhanced audio and multi-stream support. Multi-stream, commonly referred to as daisy-chaining, is the ability to address and drive multiple display devices through one connector. This technology, coupled with ATI Eyefinity Technology, will be a key enabler for multi-display technology, and AMD will be at the forefront of this transition. Video Card Testing MethodologyThis is the beginning of a new era for testing at Benchmark Reviews. With the remarkably quick adoption rate of Windows7, and given the prolonged and extensive pre-release testing that occurred on a global scale, there are compelling reasons to switch all testing to this new, and highly anticipated, operating system. Overall performance levels of Windows 7 have been favorably compared to Windows XP, and there is solid support for the 64-bit version, something enthusiasts have been anxiously awaiting for several years. Our site polls and statistics indicate that the over 90% of our visitors use their PC for playing video games, and practically every one of you are using a screen resolutions mentioned above. Since all of the benchmarks we use for testing represent different game engine technology and graphic rendering processes, this battery of tests will provide a diverse range of results for you to gauge performance on your own computer system. All of the benchmark applications are capable of utilizing DirectX 10, and that is how they were tested. Some of these benchmarks have been used widely for DirectX 9 testing in the XP environment, and it is critically important to differentiate between results obtained with different versions. Each game behaves differently in DX9 and DX10 formats. Crysis is an extreme example, with frame rates in DirectX 10 only about half what was available in DirectX 9. At the start of all tests, the previous display adapter driver is uninstalled and trace components are removed using Driver Cleaner Pro. We then restart the computer system to establish our display settings and define the monitor. Once the hardware is prepared, we begin our testing. According to the Steam Hardware Survey published at the time of Windows 7 launch, the most popular gaming resolution is 1280x1024 (17-19" standard LCD monitors) closely followed by 1024x768 (15-17" standard LCD). Given the mainstream user base that this card is aimed at, we limited our testing to 1280x1024 and the commonly encountered wide-screen format of 1680x1050 (20-22" wide-screen LCD). Even at these modest resolutions, our low-end cards that we dug out of storage struggled mightily with the modern game titles we normally test with. Each benchmark test program begins after a system restart, and the very first result for every test will be ignored since it often only caches the test. This process proved extremely important in the World in Conflict benchmarks, as the first run served to cache maps allowing subsequent tests to perform much better than the first. Each test is completed five times, the high and low results are discarded, and the average of the three remaining results is displayed in our article.
Test System
Benchmark Applications
Video Card Test Products
Now we're ready to begin testing video game performance these video cards, so please continue to the next page where we start off with our 3DMark Vantage results. 3DMark Vantage Benchmark Results3DMark Vantage is a computer benchmark by Futuremark (formerly named Mad Onion) to determine the DirectX 10 performance of 3D game performance with graphics cards. A 3DMark score is an overall measure of your system's 3D gaming capabilities, based on comprehensive real-time 3D graphics and processor tests. By comparing your score with those submitted by millions of other gamers you can see how your gaming rig performs, making it easier to choose the most effective upgrades or finding other ways to optimize your system. There are two graphics tests in 3DMark Vantage: Jane Nash (Graphics Test 1) and New Calico (Graphics Test 2). The Jane Nash test scene represents a large indoor game scene with complex character rigs, physical GPU simulations, multiple dynamic lights, and complex surface lighting models. It uses several hierarchical rendering steps, including for water reflection and refraction, and physics simulation collision map rendering. The New Calico test scene represents a vast space scene with lots of moving but rigid objects and special content like a huge planet and a dense asteroid belt. At Benchmark Reviews, we believe that synthetic benchmark tools are just as valuable as video games, but only so long as you're comparing apples to apples. Since the same test is applied in the same controlled method with each test run, 3DMark is a reliable tool for comparing graphic cards against one-another. 1680x1050 is rapidly becoming the new 1280x1024. More and more widescreen are being sold with new systems or as upgrades to existing ones. Even in tough economic times, the tide cannot be turned back; screen resolution and size will continue to creep up. These two, relatively low, resolutions are the most appropriate for a review of mainstream hardware, and we'll also be using the following reduced settings for 3DMark Vantage: No Anti-Aliasing, 2x Anisotropic Filtering, all quality levels at Entry, and Post Processing Scale set at 1:2.
Test one, all about the exploits of our fictional espionage heroine Jane Nash, has some wonderful graphics when quality levels are cranked up. The water modeling is exceptionally accurate and detailed. This is only a synthetic benchmark, so the results we get, in terms of frames-per-second are not always typical of real world gaming performance, but we can already see a huge jump in performance from the single digit results we got when we looked at the HD5450. The slightly lower GPU clock and the lower GDDR3 memory spec stop the HD5570 from keeping up with the HD5670. It's just possible that the HD5570 card will be able to hack it when we start firing up actual gaming applications.
Test two is a little more challenging for most video cards, due to the large number of irregularly shaped asteroids that need to be rendered in New Calico. Once again, the HD5570 jumps out of the gate, with average FPS numbers in the low double digits. Dropping the resolution down to 1280x1024, the card gains 1/3 more frames per second. For those who track 3DMark performance by the synthetic "Score", the HD5570 achieved 4310 and 5720 at the two different screen resolutions. We really need to look at actual gaming performance to verify these results, so let's take a look in the next section, at how these cards stack up in the traditional standard bearer for gaming benchmarks, Crysis.
Crysis Benchmark ResultsCrysis uses a new graphics engine: the CryENGINE2, which is the successor to Far Cry's CryENGINE. CryENGINE2 is among the first engines to use the Direct3D 10 (DirectX 10) framework, but can also run using DirectX 9, on Vista, Windows XP and the new Windows 7. As we'll see, there are significant frame rate reductions when running Crysis in DX10. It's not an operating system issue, DX9 works fine in WIN7, but DX10 knocks the frame rates in half. Roy Taylor, Vice President of Content Relations at NVIDIA, has spoken on the subject of the engine's complexity, stating that Crysis has over a million lines of code, 1GB of texture data, and 85,000 shaders. To get the most out of modern multicore processor architectures, CPU intensive subsystems of CryENGINE 2 such as physics, networking and sound, have been re-written to support multi-threading. Crysis offers an in-game benchmark tool, which is similar to World in Conflict. This short test does place some high amounts of stress on a graphics card, since there are so many landscape features rendered. For benchmarking purposes, Crysis can mean trouble as it places a high demand on both GPU and CPU resources. Benchmark Reviews uses the Crysis Benchmark Tool by Mad Boris to test frame rates in batches, which allows the results of many tests to be averaged. Once again, we are going to concentrate on relatively low-resolution testing performance. At the 1280x1024 resolution used by 17"; and 19"; monitors, the CPU and memory may have some influence on the results, but our test rig in this case is well above the specs that a typical HD5450 user will have, so we've eliminated that variable. At 1280x1024, and the widescreen resolutions of 1680x1050, the performance differences between the video cards under test are mostly down to the cards.
The results here are pretty consistent with 3DMark Vantage, in that the HD5570 doubles the performance of the HD5450 and the HD5670 has a little less than a 50% performance advantage over the new HD5570. At 1280x1024, the HD5570 gets close to that preferred 30 fps, but there will be some stuttering evident with these settings. For those looking to play a little Crysis on their 1080P HTPC, I ran a couple extra tests, just to see what kind of frame rates could be achieved at lower quality settings, and full 1920x1080 resolution. Using Medium settings, I got 31 fps, and at Low settings, I got 55 fps. Both of these results are eminently playable, and you don't have to give up your full-screen resolution to get it.
Once a decent amount of anti-aliasing is factored in, the situation degrades a bit, but it doesn't take you out of the ballpark. Frame rates with these quality levels are still below acceptable until you get close to the $130 mark with the HD5750. Bumping down the quality a notch, or doing a little research on the net for some optimized quality profiles will get you back up to the 30fps mark in no time. But, if you want to play this game in DX10 with all the eye candy turned on, you are going to have to pay, both with extra cash as well as increased heat and power consumption.
In our next section, Benchmark Reviews tests with Devil May Cry 4 Benchmark. Read on to see how a blended high-demand GPU test with low video frame buffer demand will impact our test products. Devil May Cry 4 BenchmarkDevil May Cry 4 was released for the PC platform in early 2007 as the fourth installment to the Devil May Cry video game series. DMC4 is a direct port from the PC platform to console versions, which operate at the native 720P game resolution with no other platform restrictions. Devil May Cry 4 uses the refined MT Framework game engine, which has been used for many popular Capcom game titles over the past several years. MT Framework is an exclusive seventh generation game engine built to be used with games developed for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and PC ports. MT stands for "Multi-Thread", "Meta Tools" and "Multi-Target". Originally meant to be an outside engine, but none matched their specific requirements in performance and flexibility. Games using the MT Framework are originally developed on the PC and then ported to the other two console platforms. On the PC version a special bonus called Turbo Mode is featured, giving the game a slightly faster speed, and a new difficulty called Legendary Dark Knight Mode is implemented. The PC version also has both DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 mode for Windows XP, Vista, and Widows 7 operating systems. It's always nice to be able to compare the results we receive here at Benchmark Reviews with the results you test for on your own computer system. Usually this isn't possible, since settings and configurations make it nearly difficult to match one system to the next; plus you have to own the game or benchmark tool we used. Devil May Cry 4 fixes this, and offers a free benchmark tool available for download. Because the DMC4 MT Framework game engine is rather low-demand for today's cutting edge video cards, Benchmark Reviews used the 1680x1050 resolution to test with 8x AA (highest AA setting available to Radeon HD video cards) and 16x AF.
Devil May Cry 4 is not as demanding a benchmark as it used to be. Only scene #2 and #4 are worth looking at from the standpoint of trying to separate the fastest video cards from the slower ones. Still, it represents a typical environment for many games that our readers still play on a regular basis, so it's good to see what works with it and what doesn't. Any of the tested cards will do a credible job in this application, and the performance scales in a pretty linear fashion. You get what you pay for when running this game, at least for benchmarks. This is one time where you can generally use the maximum available anti-aliasing settings, so NVIDIA users should feel free to crank it up to 16X. The DX10 "penalty" is of no consequence here. The HD5570, once again slots itself almost evenly between the HD5450 and the HD5670. As usual, we get higher frame rates across the board in this test v. the more challenging titles in our test suite, but the two low-end cards still can't make it to the recommended 30 FPS minimum. The HD5570 makes the mark, however. This is one time where you can achieve full required performance at max performance settings, with a graphics card that will fit snugly into a typical low profile HTPC case.
Our next benchmark of the series is for a very popular FPS game that rivals Crysis for world-class graphics, and is more representative of games optimized for DirectX10. Maybe we'll get some relief there... Far Cry 2 Benchmark ResultsUbisoft has developed Far Cry 2 as a sequel to the original, but with a very different approach to game play and story line. Far Cry 2 features a vast world built on Ubisoft's new game engine called Dunia, meaning "world", "earth" or "living" in Farci. The setting in Far Cry 2 takes place on a fictional Central African landscape, set to a modern day timeline. The Dunia engine was built specifically for Far Cry 2, by Ubisoft Montreal development team. It delivers realistic semi-destructible environments, special effects such as dynamic fire propagation and storms, real-time night-and-day sun light and moon light cycles, dynamic music system, and non-scripted enemy A.I actions. The Dunia game engine takes advantage of multi-core processors as well as multiple processors and supports DirectX 9 as well as DirectX 10. Only 2 or 3 percent of the original CryEngine code is re-used, according to Michiel Verheijdt, Senior Product Manager for Ubisoft Netherlands. Additionally, the engine is less hardware-demanding than CryEngine 2, the engine used in Crysis. However, it should be noted that Crysis delivers greater character and object texture detail, as well as more destructible elements within the environment. For example; trees breaking into many smaller pieces and buildings breaking down to their component panels. Far Cry 2 also supports the amBX technology from Philips. With the proper hardware, this adds effects like vibrations, ambient colored lights, and fans that generate wind effects. There is a benchmark tool in the PC version of Far Cry 2, which offers an excellent array of settings for performance testing. Benchmark Reviews used slightly lower settings for this test, with the resolution set to 1280x1024 and 1680x1050. The performance settings were all set to 'Medium', Render Quality was set to 'Optimum' (which was the same as "High" in this case), 4x anti-aliasing was applied, and HDR and Bloom were enabled. Of course DX10 was used exclusively for this series of tests.
Although the Dunia engine in Far Cry 2 is slightly less demanding than CryEngine 2 engine in Crysis, the strain appears to be similar. Far Cry 2 also seems to have been optimized for, or at least written with a clear understanding of, DX10 requirements. Using the short 'Ranch Small' time demo (which yields the lowest FPS of the three tests available), only the more robust video cards are capable of producing playable frame rates with moderate settings applied. The Radeon HD5570 is stuck just below the 30 fps range again, whereas the HD5670 is comfortably over the hump. Lowering the quality settings will be necessary to enjoy stutter-free performance from the HD5570 with this demanding title.
Our next benchmark of the series puts our collection of video cards against some very demanding graphics in the newly released Resident Evil 5 benchmark. Resident Evil 5 Benchmark ResultsPC gamers get the ultimate Resident Evil package in this new PC version with exclusive features including NVIDIA's new GeForce 3D Vision technology (wireless 3D Vision glasses sold separately), new costumes and a new mercenaries mode with more enemies on screen. Delivering an infinite level of detail, realism and control, Resident Evil 5 is certain to bring new fans to the series. Incredible changes to game play and the world of Resident Evil make it a must-have game for gamers across the globe. Years after surviving the events in Raccoon City, Chris Redfield has been fighting the scourge of bio-organic weapons all over the world. Now a member of the Bio-terrorism Security Assessment Alliance (BSSA), Chris is sent to Africa to investigate a biological agent that is transforming the populace into aggressive and disturbing creatures. New cooperatively-focused game play revolutionizes the way that Resident Evil is played. Chris and Sheva must work together to survive new challenges and fight dangerous hordes of enemies. From a gaming performance perspective, Resident Evil 5 uses Next Generation of Fear - Ground breaking graphics that utilize an advanced version of Capcom's proprietary game engine, MT Framework, which powered the hit titles Devil May Cry 4, Lost Planet and Dead Rising. The game uses a wider variety of lighting to enhance the challenge. Fear Light as much as Shadow - Lighting effects provide a new level of suspense as players attempt to survive in both harsh sunlight and extreme darkness. As usual, we maxed out the graphics settings on the benchmark version of this popular game, to put the hardware through its paces. Much like Devil May Cry 4, it's relatively easy to get good frame rates in this game, so take the opportunity to turn up all the knobs and maximize the visual experience.
The Resident Evil5 benchmark tool provides a graph of continuous frame rates and averages for each of four distinct scenes. In addition it calculates an overall average for the four scenes. The averages for scene #3 and #4 are what we report here, as they are the most challenging. This new game is still not quite playable with these settings and the HD5570 hardware, even at a slightly lower screen resolution of 1680x1050. Just to see what was possible, I backed the resolution down to 1280x1024, set the quality levels to medium and lowered the anti-aliasing to 4X, and voila; I got 38 fps and 47 fps for scenes #3 and #4. So, with some careful optimizing, this game can be made to run with smooth, fluid motion. You just can't run it at maximum settings and achieve that; you still need to use one of the higher powered cards if you want to run this, and many other games maxed out. If you're willing to compromise a bit on resolution and graphics quality, then feel free to fire up that 55" beast in the living room and have some big-screen fun.
Our next sections look at thermal performance and power consumption, both key qualities for this new product. ATI Radeon HD5570 TemperatureIt's hard to know exactly when the first video card got overclocked, and by whom. What we do know is that it's hard to imagine a computer enthusiast or gamer today that doesn't overclock their hardware. Of course, not every video card has the head room. Some products run so hot that they can't suffer any higher temperatures than they generate straight from the factory. This is why we measure the operating temperature of the video card products we test. To begin testing, I use GPU-Z to measure the temperature at idle as reported by the GPU. Next I use FurMark 1.7.0 to generate maximum thermal load and record GPU temperatures at high-power 3D mode. The ambient room temperature remained stable at 23C throughout testing. The ATI Radeon HD5570 video card recorded 35C in idle 2D mode, and increased to 50C after 20 minutes of stability testing in full 3D mode, at 1920x1200 resolution and the maximum MSAA setting of 8X. There were no fan settings for this test, as the built-in fan on the GPU cooler is a basic unit without speed control and monitoring. 50C is an excellent result for temperature stress testing, and it shows that the full copper GPU cooler supplied with this card is doing its job quite effectively. Compared to the 60C result I got with the HD5670, it's clear that ATI has a winner with this small, but efficient cooler. I don't expect any of the AIB partners to be able to improve on this result, and still keep the single slot form factor. This is a key performance measure for a card like this, and it really delivers the goods. FurMark is an OpenGL benchmark that heavily stresses and overheats the graphics card with fur rendering. The benchmark offers several options allowing the user to tweak the rendering: fullscreen / windowed mode, MSAA selection, window size, duration. The benchmark also includes a GPU Burner mode (stability test). FurMark requires an OpenGL 2.0 compliant graphics card with lot of GPU power! As an oZone3D.net partner, Benchmark Reviews offers a free download of FurMark to our visitors.
FurMark does do two things extremely well: drive the thermal output of any graphics processor higher than any other application or video game, and it does so with consistency every time. While FurMark is not a true benchmark tool for comparing different video cards, it still works well to compare one product against itself using different drivers or clock speeds, or testing the stability of a GPU, as it raises the temperatures higher than any program. But in the end, it's a rather limited tool. In our next section, we discuss electrical power consumption and learn how well (or poorly) each video card will impact your utility bill... VGA Power ConsumptionLife is not as affordable as it used to be, and items such as gasoline, natural gas, and electricity all top the list of resources which have exploded in price over the past few years. Add to this the limit of non-renewable resources compared to current demands, and you can see that the prices are only going to get worse. Planet Earth is needs our help, and needs it badly. With forests becoming barren of vegetation and snow capped poles quickly turning brown, the technology industry has a new attitude towards suddenly becoming "green". I'll spare you the powerful marketing hype that I get from various manufacturers every day, and get right to the point: your computer hasn't been doing much to help save energy... at least up until now.
To measure isolated video card power consumption, Benchmark Reviews uses the Kill-A-Watt EZ (model P4460) power meter made by P3 International. A baseline test is taken without a video card installed inside our computer system, which is allowed to boot into Windows and rest idle at the login screen before power consumption is recorded. Once the baseline reading has been taken, the graphics card is installed and the system is again booted into Windows and left idle at the login screen. Our final loaded power consumption reading is taken with the video card running a stress test using FurMark. Below is a chart with the isolated video card power consumption (not system total) displayed in Watts for each specified test product:
* Results are accurate to within +/- 5W.
The ATI Radeon HD5450 pulled 12 (142-130) watts at idle and 52 (182-130) watts when running full out, using the test method outlined above. These numbers are reasonably close to the factory numbers of 9.7W at idle and 42.7W under load. With the video cards power demands dropping so low, this type of test starts to show its limitations. Nevertheless, the numbers are still in the ballpark. I also tested power consumption while streaming 1080P video from YouTube. I waited until the clips were fully downloaded, and ran them full screen on my 1920x1200 monitor. I configured the graphics settings according to our helpful guide here on Benchmark Reviews, so that the bulk of the work was handled by the GPU, and also tweaked the visual settings to get maximum image quality. In the application it was designed for, mainly video streaming and HTPC, the Radeon HD5450 consumed slightly less power than it did during the FurMark stress test. Maximum power draw during 1080P video playback was 44 (174-130) watts, about 85% of the power required to run FurMark. This number seems a little high, but I'm sure the CPU load was contributing to it. Radeon HD5570 Final ThoughtsMost everyone who reads this site is familiar with the concept of diminishing returns. As you get closer to the highest level of performance (let's call that 100 %...), it costs considerably more to get the last 10% of performance than it does to go from 80% to 90%. When you look at two gaming-class video cards using the same technology, the increase in frames-per-second doesn't match the increase in price. The HD5850 and the HD5870 are a good example; does the 33% increase in price give you a 33% increase in performance? You wish.....which is why lots more people are buying the HD5850. Just as the law of diminishing returns works on the high end of the market, there is a corresponding force at work on the lower end of the scale. As you move closer to the lowest possible cost, you start to bounce up against fixed costs that won't budge. Marketing, sales, design, testing, certification processes, transportation, packaging, and connector costs are all stubbornly rigid. Right now, the cheapest cards at Newegg, based on NVIDIA and ATI chips are the 8400GS and HD4350, priced at $30 and $36, respectively. I dare say, we're not going to see any new cards introduced that will be any cheaper than these are; it's just not fiscally possible, if we assume that the vendor is going to make a profit. The vendor can try and cut every possible feature, performance enhancing hardware, included software, industrial design, packaging costs, etc. and end up with a product that barely functions, and it would still probably cost $25 on the retailer's shelf. In my review of the HD5670, I wondered out loud, "How many more times ATI can slice the pie and still come up with a fully functional video card? Could there be one more cut, for an ultra-low power solution?" As it turns out, the Radeon HD5450 is that fully functional low-power card, and the Redwood class of ATI GPUs is still the lowest you can go and still support modern games. The game just changed with the introduction of a low profile card based on a down-clocked HD5670 GPU. This card eats HDTV for breakfast, has tons of headroom left over for whatever HW acceleration scheme comes along next, and can effectively run any new gaming title, albeit at lower resolutions and/or low-to-medium quality settings.
Even the best Integrated Graphics Processor (IGP) is still less than 25% as powerful as the Radeon HD5570, and they generally max out with 128MB of SidePort GDDR3 memory. Many of them struggle to render full HD 1080P video smoothly, and the CPUs that they are bundled with usually can't help the effort much. Needless to say, they can't perform even light weight gaming tasks. So, grab that old microATX board out of the closet, dust it off, add the Radeon HD5570, drop it into a shiny new, slim line HTPC box and you're off to the movies and gaming in style. ATI Radeon HD5570 ConclusionLooking at the performance of the ATI Radeon HD5570, you have to give up the idea that this is going to be a star gaming rig. In modern FPS games, it was just below 30 fps for all of the games we routinely test with, at the visual quality levels that we use for entry-level cards. Of course, as I showed in a couple of examples, it's possible to reduce the resolution or the quality levels down to where you can achieve stutter-free performance. Given that possibility, this card is actually practical as a multi-purpose solution for movies, videos, browsing, and light gaming on the big screen in the living room. The strength of the HD5570 lies in the fact that it can do all this while fitting into a low profile HTPC case and running quite cool. It's not silent, and the HD5450 pulls much less power, but aside from a music server application, I think most users are willing to make the tradeoff in order to get half-way decent gaming results. ATI is currently leading the game in image quality for HD video, and this small, low power board supports all the latest software enhancements that make those improved visuals possible. If you want that level of video performance AND a medium-rez gaming experience in the same HTPC box, this is the only product that can deliver. The appearance of the HD5570 is pretty low key, compared to some of the more exotic gaming cards on the market. AIB partners will have the flexibility to implement their own cooling systems, but I don't expect any one of them to top this one for performance. The reference cooler doesn't represent the highest level of industrial art, like the Batmobile cooler on the 57xx and 58xx series, or the amazing red heatsink on the 5450; this one places function well ahead of form. The rest of the card is all business, front and back. I still look twice whenever I see a low profile card, as if something is wrong; the right place to appreciate its physical design is after it gets installed in a typical HTPC case, where it will look right at home.
The build quality of this Radeon HD5570 was quite good, for an engineering sample. The parts were all high quality, the soldering and component placement were to a high standard, and the cooling device was manufactured and assembled perfectly. I can't guarantee that production units will be this way, but my sample was assembled with high quality thermal interface material, which no doubt helped the card turn in its impressive temperature results. The features of the HD5570 have been carried over in full measure from the very first HD58xx series: DirectX 11, Full ATI Eyefinity Support, ATI Stream Technology Support, DirectCompute 11 and OpenCL Support, HDMI 1.3a with Dolby True HD and DTS Master Audio. Nothing was left out on this card, which is doubly important for a product that is designed to thrive in a multi-functional role. It provides a solid, future-proof HTPC experience, would be a huge upgrade for many systems still relying on IGP, and supports the latest graphics APIs, so that you can enjoy all the latest game titles. ATI is aiming at a price point of $79 to $85 for the HD5500 series, depending on DRAM configuration, GPU specifications, and possibly the cooling solution. As of March 2010, NewEgg offers the PowerColor AX5570 for $75, while the XFX HD5570 sells for $80. Sapphire lists their Radeon HD 5570 for $85, and Gigabyte sells their reference version for $85. This is a small price premium to pay for the performance that is available, but launch pricing is always a bit high, for obvious reasons. The only competition for this card is the old HD4650 or the 9600GT, which are available in low profile versions. The HD5570 beats them both on power and performance. We saw in our gaming tests that it takes an extra $50-70 to get better results with challenging titles and high quality settings, but the extra performance also buys you higher power requirements, more noise, more heat, and the inability to fit into a stylish, slim-line HTPC case. The ATI Radeon HD5570 earns a Golden Tachometer Award for bringing "Redwood" class performance to a low profile form factor. There are definitely some buyers that absolutely want a low profile video card that can be used for a little gaming, preferably at 1080p resolution. They've got the latest 240Hz, 55" LCD in the living room, a sleek HTPC case off to the side, and they don't want a gaming console cluttering up the living room, thank you very much. Until now, those requirements were mutually exclusive, now there is a product which completely meets their needs. Pros:
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