AMD has launched a new member of its graphics card family today. The new card is the Radeon HD 5670. It has 400 stream processors running at 775 MHz, 20 texture units, 8 ROPs, and uses up eith 512 MB or 1 GB of GDDR5 memory running at 1 GHz. The 5670 is a DirectX 11 capable card, though few games make use of it. Eyefinity support is there, allowing the use three monitors. The best thing about this graphics card is that it is launching at a price point of $99 for the 512 MB version, or $119 for the 1 GB version. The sub-$100 market is an important one since it accounts for 2/3rds of all video card sales last quarter.

The main competition for the Radeon HD 5670 is NVidia’s GT 240, which is selling at a $90 price point, or $80 with the hated mail-in rebate. The Radeon HD 5670 performs much better in tests than the GT 240. Against NVidia’s 9800 GT, which also sells for $75 – $90 depending on the mail-in rebate, the race is much closer. Then there is AMD’s own Radeon HD 4850. This is a last generation card without the support for DirectX 11 or Eyefinity. It too sells at the $99 price point. From the Anandtech article:

The fact of the matter is that neither game is playable at those settings, the 5670 is simply too slow. This is a test that would be better served with more DX11 benchmarks, but based on our limited sample we have to question whether the 5670 is fast enough for DX11 games. If it’s not (and these results agree with that perspective) then being future-proof can’t justify the lower performance. Until AMD retires the 4850 it’s going to be the better gaming card …

It also might not make sense to run it in Crossfire. If you pick up two of the Radeon HD 5670 graphics cards for $200, and run them in Crossfire, you get about the same performance as a single $150 Radeon 5770.

via Anandtech: AMD’s Radeon HD 5670: Sub-$100 DirectX 11 Starts Today
via Guru3d: Radeon HD 5670 review (Crossfire tested)