Anandtech has posted an article today on the newly released AMD Radeon HD 5570. Last week was the launch of the 5450, with 80 shaders and a price point of $50. The 5570 has 400 shaders and a price point of $80. How does this compare to the AMD 5670 which also has 400 shaders and a price point of $100? Well, the 5570 has a clock speed of 650 MHz and a memory clock speed of 900 MHz. Both of those are slower than the 5670 which is running with a clock speed of 775 MHz and a memory clock speed of 1000 MHz. But that does not tell the full story. The 5570 is using GDDR3, which transfers two data words per clock cycle, while the 5670 uses GDDR5, which transfers four data words per clock cycle. The Radeon HD 5570 has 45% of the memory bandwidth of the Radeon HD 5670. That sentence tells you just about all you need to know about the Radeon HD 5570. If that doesn’t tell you enough, then the following quote from the article should help you out.
The GDDR3 9600GT can be found for around the same price point, and is anywhere between just as fast as the 5570 to completely clobbering it. The 5570 can’t compete amidst that much of a memory bandwidth gap. If you can fit a full-sized card, you can do much better than the 5570 when it comes solely to performance; the 9600GT and the GT 240 are both much more capable cards for the $80-$85 price tag.
The low end Radeon HD 5450 has a TDP of 19.1 Watts, which makes it great for a HTPC system since it is passively cooled. The Radeon HD 5570 has a TDP of 42.7 Watts, which means that it needs to be actively cooled. This makes it less than perfect for a HTPC system. Hit the article below for more information.
