XFX ATI Radeon HD5670 1GB Passive Heatpipe CFx Review

1. Introduction2. The XFX HD5670 Passive Heatpipe Card3. Testing Methodology4. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark5. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage6. Media Encoding: Cyberlink Espresso7. Media Playback: Cyberlink PowerDVD 10 Ultra8. Media Quality: HQV Benchmark 2.09. Gaming: Alien V Predator10. Gaming: Far Cry 211. Gaming: Lost Planet 212. Gaming: Mafia 213. Gaming: Resident Evil 514. Gaming: Tom Clancy HAWX15. Power Consumption16. Thermal Dynamics17. Closing Thoughts18. View All Pages

Buying a new HD5970 or GTX580 is sure to clean out your bank account, and for the majority of people it is totally pointless. If you are in the market for a new high quality graphics card for a media center or 720p gaming system then the product we have for review today should certainly hit the spot.

For many people considering building a system, fan selection is very important – choosing the wrong products can make for a very noisy and painful mistake. If you don't want to take any chances, then a passively cooled card is the best option. Kitguru has already looked at Sapphires Ultimate Edition HD5670, and today XFX have sent several of their passively cooled HD5670's for review. This looks to be an ideal card for media fanatics who don't want to compromise with image quality.

Highlights of the XFX ATI Radeon 5670 HD 775MHz 1GB PCI-Express 2.1 HDMI

• ATI Eyefinity technology
• ATI Stream technology
• Designed for DirectCompute 11 and OpenCL
• Accelerated Video Transcoding (AVT)
• Compliant with DirectX 11 and earlier revisions
• Supports Open GL 3.2
• 40 nm Process technology
• ATI CrossFireX multi-GPU support for highly scalable performance
• ATI Avivo HD video and display technology
• Dynamic power management with ATI PowerPlay technology
• PCI Express 2.1 support

XFX have some of the finest artwork in the industry, often focusing on robotic/futuristic designs.

The bundle is rather spartan, but considering the price point this is expected. You get a ‘do not disturb, im gaming' door sign and literature on the product. Always best getting the newest drivers from AMD's website.

The card is based on a design which looks very similar to the Sapphire HD5670 Ultimate Edition. A super oversized heatpipe based cooler which wraps around the PCB for maximum heat dissipation.

The cooler is a chunky design which consists of two heatsinks on either end of a fat dual heatpipe configuration.

As we pointed out in previous XFX reviews, they have started placing ‘anti tamper' stickers on the cooler mounting screws. This is a common procedure with power supplies, but clearly they are trying to stop user interference via warranty claims.

We will be looking at both single GPU and Crossfire X performance today.

Today we want to see how the XFX HD5670 cards will perform as the centerpiece of a high powered media center. We will look at high definition media performance and the gaming capabilities in both single and CrossfireX configurations at 720p and 1080p.

We will, when possible be setting image quality settings to the limits – we know you don't want to compromise and neither do we.

XFX HD5670 CrossfireX.

Other Hardware:
Processor: Intel Core i7 950 @ 3.6ghz
Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer 13
Motherboard: ASRock X58 Extreme 6
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Tracer 1600mhz 6GB (3x2GB)
Power Supply: Thermaltake 750W Toughpower Grand
Chassis: Cooler Master CM 690 II
Monitor: Panasonic Viera NeoPDP 600hz 42inch Plasma.

Software:
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit

Unigine Heaven Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
HQV Benchmark
Catalyst 10.10 Driver
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark

Technical Monitoring and Test Equipment:
Keithley Integra unit
Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Extech digital sound level meter & SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter

Games:
Resident Evil 5
Lost Planet 2
Far Cry 2
Tom Clancy H.A.W.X.
Alien V Predator
Mafia 2

All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests all games across five closely matched runs and average out the results to get an accurate median figure.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

1080p is a standard resolution we use with the Heaven Benchmark on all graphics cards, this means all review results are comparible throughout previous months. We also test at 720p today.

Shaders are set to high, Tessellation to normal, anistrophy to 4 and Anti Aliasing is disabled.

Unigine is a very intensive benchmark and the HD5670 in single configuration struggles to generate smooth framerates at either resolution. In Crossfire X however the performance is significantly boosted – tessellation isn't the HD5670's forte however.

Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7.  This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.

Crossfire scaling in 3DMark is impressive at 88%. Neither card is going to set the performance world alight, but it is interesting to see such a good improvement with two of the cards in CrossfireX.

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favorite movies, songs and photos not just on your on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

New and Improved Features

• Ultra Fast Media Conversion – With support from the Intel Core i-Series processor family, ATI Stream & NVIDIA CUDA, MediaEspresso’s Batch-Conversion function enables multiple files to be transcoded simultaneously.
• Smart Detect Technology – MediaEspresso 6 automatically detects the type of portable device connected to the PC and selects the best multimedia profile to begin the conversion without the need for user’s intervention.
• Direct Sync to Portable Devices – Video, audio and image files can be transferred in a few easy steps to mobile phones including those from Acer, BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Palm, as well as Sony Walkman and PSP devices.
• Enhanced Video Quality – CyberLink TrueTheater Denoise and Lighting enables the enhancement of video quality through optical noise filters and automatic brightness adjustment.
• Video, Music and Image File Conversion – Convert not only videos to popular formats such as AVI, MPEG, MKV, H.264/AVC, and FLV at the click of a button, but also images such as JPEG and PNG and music files like WMA, MP3 and M4A.
• Online Sharing – Conversion to video formats used by popular social networking websites and a direct upload feature means posting videos to Facebook and YouTube has never been easier.

For our testing today we are converting a 2.8GB 720p MKV file to Apple Mp4 format for playback on a portable device. This is a common procedure for many people and will give a good indication of system power.

It is worth remembering that while this is ‘only' a 10.4% speed increase with acceleration on – we are using a fast Intel Core i7 950 processor. With a slower processor this time increase will be significantly enhanced.

Our good friends at Cyberlink kindly supplied the software for our Bluray and conversion tests. This software fully supports GPU acceleration and while the system we received for review wasn’t supplied with a BluRay player we have a USB 2.0 powered unit at hand to measure system performance.

Cyberlink PowerDVD 10 is one of the finest solutions for the Blu-Ray experience on Windows and we found this software to work perfectly with this chipset. We tested with the Bluray Disc of Avatar, one of our favourite sci-fi films in recent years.

Average CPU time was around 5% with peaks between 11% and 12%. Excellent results for the Intel and AMD combination.

HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evalute motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.

There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on Bluray. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content so will we.

This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.

Read our initial analysis over here.

	XFX HD5670
Dial	4
Dial with static pattern	5
Gray Bars	5
Violin	5
Stadium 2:2	5
Stadium 3:2	5
Horizontal Text Scroll	5
Vertical Text Scroll	5
Transition to 3:2 Lock	5
Transition to 2:2 Lock	0
2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video	5
2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video	5
3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed	5
5:5 FPS Animation	5
6:4 12 FPS Animation	5
8:7 8 FPS Animation	5
Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP)	5
Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE)	5
Random Noise: Sailboat	5
Random Noise: Flower	5
Random Noise: Sunrise	5
Random Noise: Harbour Night	5
Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Luminance Frequency Bands	5
Chrominance Frequency Bands	5
Vanishing Text	5
Resolution Enhancement	15
Theme Park	5
Driftwood	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Skin Tones	7
Total	196

The image quality with Catalyst 10.10 is the best yet, as the driftwood test scores 5 now instead of 2 points, bringing the total to 196 points.

Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today.

To test the cards we used a 1080p resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on. We use this with most of our graphics card testing so cards are comparible throughout reviews.

At 1080p, the single HD5670 struggles to maintain playable framerates, dropping into the single digits in the middle of an intensive section. When placed into a Crossfire configuration the performance raises by about 80% in regards to average frame rates. It is still not entirely playable, but with a few image quality compromises the experience would be acceptable.

Far Cry 2 (commonly abbreviated as “FC2 or “fc2″) is an open-ended first-person shooter developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It was released on October 21, 2008 in North America and on October 23, 2008 in Europe and Australia. It was made available on Steam on October 22, 2008. Crytek, the developers of the original game, were not involved in the development of Far Cry 2.

Ubisoft has marketed Far Cry 2 as the true sequel to Far Cry, though the sequel has very few noticeable similarities to the original game. Instead, it features completely new characters and setting, as well as a new style of gameplay that allows the player greater freedom to explore different African landscapes such as deserts, jungles, and savannas. The game takes place in a modern-day East African nation in a state of anarchy and civil war. The player takes control of a mercenary on a lengthy journey to locate and assassinate “The Jackal,” a notorious arms dealer.

Far Cry 2 is still a popular game and the open world environment can be taxing on even the latest hardware available today.

Our settings: 1920×1080/1280×720 (60Hz), 8AA, D3D10, Fixed Time Step(No), Disable Artificial Intelligence(No), Full Screen, Anti-Aliasing(4x), VSync(No), Overall Quality(Optimal), Vegetation(High), Shading(High), Terrain(High), Geometry(High), Post FX(High), Texture(High), Shadow(High), Ambient(High), Hdr(Yes), Bloom(Yes), Fire(Very High), Physics(Very High), RealTrees(Very High).

At 720p both single and crossfire configurations can power through this engine, even with 8AA enabled. At 1080p the single card is unable to keep the engine running smoothly at all times. Slotting in another card resolves this situation, although you could remove the Anti aliasing to compensate.

Lost Planet 2 is a third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the sequel to Lost Planet: Extreme Condition which is also made by Capcom, taking place ten years after the events of the first game, on the same fictional planet. The story takes place back on E.D.N. III 10 years after the events of the first game. The snow has melted to reveal jungles and more tropical areas that have taken the place of more frozen regions. The plot begins with Mercenaries fighting against Jungle Pirates.

After destroying a mine, the Mercenaries continue on to evacuate the area, in which a Category-G Akrid appears and attacks them. After being rescued, they find out their evacuation point (Where the Category-G appeared) was a set-up and no pick up team awaited them. Lost Planet 2 runs on the MT-Framework 2.0, an updated version of the engine used in several Capcom-developed games.

We are testing in DX11 mode to ascertain HD5670 performance via HD television resolutions.

Lost Planet 2 is an intensive DX11 game which requires very powerful graphics hardware. In Crossfire X the game is almost playable at 720p, with a few lowered settings the minimum frame rate would increase into the 25-30fps zone. Scaling is very good however.

Mafia II is a gritty drama which chronicles the rise of World War II veteran Vito Scaletta, the son of Sicilian immigrants. As the game progresses, Vito will join the Falcone Crime Family and become a made man. There are 15 chapters in the game, connected into one storyline.

We tested at 720p/1080p with fullscreen: on, antialiasing:on , Anisotrophic filtering: 16x, Shadow Quality: High, Ambient Occlusion: on, Geometry Detail: High and APEX PhysX: off.

Crossfire scaling in Mafia 2 isn't quite as impressive as some of the other engines on test today. That said, at 720p the CrossfireX solution manages to deliver a fantastic gaming experience. It is clear that anti aliasing would need to be disabled for the other configurations and possibly some of the eye candy.

Resident Evil 5, known in Japan as Biohazard 5, is a survival horror third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the seventh installment in the Resident Evil survival horror series, and was released on March 5, 2009 in Japan and on March 13, 2009 in North America and Europe for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A Windows version of the game was released on September 15, 2009 in North America, September 17 in Japan and September 18 in Europe. Resident Evil 5 revolves around Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar as they investigate a terrorist threat in Kijuju, a fictional town in Africa.

Within its first three weeks of release, the game sold over 2 million units worldwide and became the best-selling game of the franchise in the United Kingdom. As of December, 2009, Resident Evil 5 has sold 5.3 million copies worldwide since launch, becoming the best selling Resident Evil game ever made.

We are testing at both 720p and 1080p with 8AA.

This engine has always performed well on AMD hardware and even a single HD5670 can power through this engine at 720p and 1080p. Crossfire delivers very solid scaling throughout, between 70% and 80%.

Tom Clancy HAWX is set in the same universe as Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter; as Captain Scott Mitchell, the Ghost leader, is featured in a few missions of the missions. Plot elements are carried over from other Tom Clancy games such as the missile defense system found in Tom Clancy’s EndWar. G4′s interview with H.A.W.X’s lead designer Thomas Simon reveals that the game takes place in between Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 and Tom Clancy’s EndWar.

The player begins the game in 2014 as the player assumes the role of former U.S. Air Force pilot, David Crenshaw, who is part of an elite unit called H.A.W.X (“High Altitude Warfare eXperimental squadron”), provides fire-support missions for the Ghost team carrying out covert operations in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. However, shortly after the mission, the Air Force decides to deactivate the H.A.W.X squadron and its pilots, including Crenshaw, are recruited into the PMC Artemis Global Security.

We are testing : DX 10.1 with shadows high, sun shafts high, ambient occlusion (SSAO) very high. view distance high, forest high, environment high, texture quality high, HDR on, Engine heat on and DOF on.

At 720p a single XFX HD5670 can power through the DX10 engine without problem, dropping to around 30 fps during heavy firefights with a lot of smoke on screen. Adding another card at this resolution delivers huge scaling benefits around 80%. At 1080p a single card finds it difficult to maintain smooth frame rates with 8AA enabled. Adding another card resolves this problem and ensures no compromises would need to be made with regards to image quality.

To test power consumption today we are using a Keithley Integra unit and we measure power consumption from the VGA card inputs, not the system wide drain. The best way to get maximum load results is by using Furmark, and even though it is not indicative of a real world situation it shows the limits the card can theoretically demand. The ‘gaming’ results are measured when playing Crysis Warhead and is a more valuable result to take from this.

At idle these cards only consume around 13 watts of power which is fantastic. When gaming this rises to around 52 watts. This is a very efficient board design combining reasonable gaming performance with minimum consumption. Obviously when adding two cards this power consumption doubles. Gaming and Furmark results aren’t exactly 200%, falling slightly shy of each figure by a few watts.

The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 25c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.

Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test.

A result of around 60 degrees when gaming is fantastic, although in a confined HTPC with lesser airflow you can add about 5c to this figure. Under Furmark load this rises to around 68 degrees, which would translate to mid 70s within a small media chassis with limited airflow.

Return to ambient is a feature we have recently added to our reviews … we measure the time it takes for a solution to return to idle temperatures, immediately after full load. The faster the time, the better the cooler – for example a Noctua NH D14 cooler will return an Intel processor to idle temperatures much faster than a reference cooler. This is a good indication of how quickly a heatsink can dissipate heat.

As this card is passively cooled, the performance is going to rely on case cooling and airflow performance. With our side fan on exhaust, it took 30 seconds for the card to return to ambient, taking a longer time in the region below 50c to expel heat through the air. A side mounted fan, with a forced intake flow would probably help, but this is very much going to depend on your specific chassis design.

When building a low noise media/gaming center there really are only a handful of suitable options. If gaming is your main priority then a single slot HD5770 will deliver better performance than the products tested today, with noise level penalties. If your budget is tight and you don't care about gaming then the HD5550 is a good solution.

The HD5670 in the right hands (XFX and Sapphire) can be passively cooled and will still deliver enough performance to enjoy a game on your television set when the need arises. We have highlighted today that the HD5670 can handle 720p gaming with relative ease, although more intensive DX11 titles such as Lost Planet 2 really will need a Crossfire configuration if you don't want to deal with image quality compromises.

After reviewing many high end boards, it is rather refreshing to test products which dont need fans or power connectors. These cards consume very little power and remain reasonably cool, even when loaded. The fact that programs such as Cyberlinks PowerDVD 10 Ultra and Espresso can also use their power to help with encoding and decoding really adds value to the discrete solution.

When you factor in that one of these is currently retailing for £85 inc vat, they really are difficult to ignore, especially if you are building a media center for High definition playback and want the highest possible reproduction at 1080p. Some of the credit has to go to AMD, because Catalyst 10.10 really does deliver an unparalleled HD experience.

KitGuru says: Built for media, IQ is top drawer.

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