Sapphire Radeon HD 5670 1GB Review

1. Introduction2. The Sapphire HD5670 1GB3. System and Testing Setup4. Batman: Arkham Asylum5. Resident Evil 56. Left 4 Dead 27. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 28. Crysis Warhead9. Far Cry 210. 3d Mark Vantage11. Thermal Dynamics12. Power Drain13. Overclocking14. Closing Thoughts15. View All Pages

The current AMD 5 series graphics card range is exceptionally enticing with particular emphasis always being placed on the high end 5970 and 5870 models – its natural for us to always focus on the maximum performance hardware, right?

The only problem is that most of us cannot afford such expensive graphics cards for a system … this means that many people will end up with a HD5850 or HD5770 … which is not a bad thing as they are the strongest cards in the current lineup when you factor in price to performance ratios. What if you are on a limited budget, are you screwed?

Further down the range, AMD offer the HD5670 which is relatively inexpensive and features the same GDDR5 memory and 128 bit interface as the more costly HD5770.

Today we take a look at the Sapphire model which has been available for many months … however as KitGuru has just opened a few weeks ago we wanted to make sure we are in a position to offer current buying advice to our growing audience. The Sapphire model is not a reference design and instead features a very sexy Arctic Cooler unit – this already ticks the KitGuru ‘want' list.

As always Sapphire use a fantasy style computer created woman which will be immediately familiar to previous customers … they really do seem to like their woman pretty and capable of kicking ass.

The bundle contains the SimHD plugin – for the excellent ArcSoft Total Theater application as well as documentation, Crossfire cable and other standardised connectors. SimHD incidentally uses “ArcSoft’s in-house upscaling technology, which simply brings most standard-definition video to near high-definition quality” (not really quite that good, but it works reasonably well most of the time).

Sapphire have worked with Arctic Cooling with this model and it takes centerstage when you look at the board. The PCB is compact in design and due to reduced thermal power requirement there is no need for an all encompassing cooler. It measures 169mm x 110mm x 33mm and weighs only 279g.

No external power connector is required which makes it ideal for a media center and if gaming is reasonably important to you without using much power then the card fully supports Crossfire to help boost the framerates. Sapphire recommend a 400W power supply for a single card or 475W for Crossfire configurations.

Sapphires HD5670 is clocked at 1,000mhz (4,000mhz effective) memory with the core at 775mhz.

The Sapphire card features full connectivity with HDMI, Dual Link DVI and Displayport. We have seen many of the 512mb models on the market replacing Displayport with VGA so this is worth a mention. The Sapphire version on test today supports 3 monitor setups for Eyefinity and they offer a 2 year warranty with support in the first year direct from the dealer.

When testing the Sapphire HD5670 we feel it is important to use a processor that the buying public would be using in this specific sector. We could easily slot in an Intel high end Extreme Edition CPU, but its not a very realistic configuration so we opted for the excellent Core i5 750 which is one of the best value chips on the market right now.

Test System:

Sapphire HD5670 1GB GFX
ATI HD5670 512mb
ATI HD4670 512mb
nVidia GTS 250 512mb
nVidia GT 220
Intel Core i5 750 2.66ghz
Corsair 4GB DDR3 @ 1600mhz
MSI P55-GD65
Coolit ECO A.L.C.
Silverstone Raven 2 Chassis

Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit
Catalyst 10.4
Fraps Professional
Forceware 197.45
Corsair TX650W PSU
Dell 2405W Panel
Intel 160GB SSD & 1TB Western Digital Drive
Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp

Batman: Arkham Asylum
Resident Evil 5
Left 4 Dead 2
Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Crysis Warhead
Far Cry 2
3D Mark Vantage – Extreme

The video cards on test today show how the Sapphire 5670 compares against a last generation model as well as a current reference model with less memory. A GTS 250 has been used as it fails into the same basic price zone and a GT220 is a product that many people might be upgrading from if they want to take their gaming more seriously.

All the latest bios updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru test all games across five closely matched runs and average out the results to get an accurate median figure. We mix and match various games across our reviews to try and keep our regular readers interested – no one wants to see the same five games used in every review.

Batman: Arkham Asylum, written by veteran Batman writer Paul Dini, is based on the long-running comic book mythos, as opposed to most other Batman games which are adaptations of the character in other media besides the source material. The Joker, Batman’s arch enemy, has instigated an elaborate plot from within Arkham Asylum where many of Batman’s other villains have been incarcerated. Batman investigates and comes to learn that the Joker is trying to create an army of Bane-like creatures that threaten Gotham City, and is forced to put a stop to the Joker’s plans. The game’s main characters are voiced by the actors from the DC Animated Universe, namely Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, and Arleen Sorkin reprise their roles as Batman, the Joker, and Harley Quinn, respectively. The game is played as a third-person perspective action-adventure game with a primary focus on Batman’s combat abilities, his stealth and detective skills, and an arsenal of gadgets that can be used in both combat and exploration.

To test we set everything to maximum, but disabled phsyX and Multi Sample Anti Aliasing

The extra 512MB of ram doesn't really aid the performance of the 5670 with Batman at this resolution – we could push the resolution higher, but in this price range we would assume 1280×1024 or even 720p would be the most viable option. The frame rates would also struggle to remain playable in certain sections of gameplay

At our chosen settings the Sapphire HD5670 is able to power the game easily – and those using this card on a HD TV at 720p will be able to play Batman: Arkham Asylum perfectly.

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 have enabled 4 times Anti Aliasing for this test.

The Sapphire HD5670 trails slightly behind the GTS 250 in this benchmark but the results are better than we expected. The Sapphire card is perfectly capable of powering this game on a mid range monitor and 720p TV with a high level of AA applied.

The HD5670 can handle Resident Evil 5 with AA applied and maintain frame rate above 30fps throughout our section of gameplay – this is an impressive result especially considering the budget pricing.

Left 4 Dead 2 is a cooperative first-person shooter game. It is the sequel to Valve Corporation’s award-winning Left 4 Dead. The game launched on November 17, 2009, for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 in the United States; it launched November 20 in Europe. It builds upon the cooperatively-focused gameplay of the original and uses Valve’s proprietary Source engine, the same game engine used in Left 4 Dead. The game made its world premiere at E3 2009 with a trailer during the Microsoft press event.

In a similar fashion to the original, Left 4 Dead 2 is set during the aftermath of an apocalyptic pandemic, and focuses on four survivors fighting against hordes of the infected. The survivors must fight their way through levels, interspersed with safe houses that act as checkpoints, with the goal of reaching a rescue vehicle at the campaign’s finale.

The gameplay is procedurally altered by an artificial intelligence engine dubbed the “Director” that monitors the players’ performance and adjust the scenario to provide a dynamic challenge. Several new features have been introduced: new types of infected, melee weapons, and a story-arc that connects the game’s five campaigns together.

Left 4 Dead 2 isn't a particularly taxing game so we can raise the resolution to the native setting on most 23-24 inch screens – 1920×1200. Anything higher is pointless as people with a 30 inch screen who want to game will have a much higher specification graphics card.

The 5670 puts in a good showing remaining playable at all times even when the body count gets into the hundreds. The GTS250 leads the way with this game but its only marginal.

The Catalyst drivers are showing their maturity with a solid showing through all our testing environments – only once did the frame rate drop under 30 and never into a critical game ruining zone.

Similar to previous installments within the Call of Duty series, In Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2 the player assumes the role of various characters during the single-player campaign, changing perspectives throughout the progression of the story, playing as “Soap”, Roach, etc.

Each mission features a series or objectives that are displayed on the HUD, which marks the direction and distance towards and from such objectives. Damage to the player is shown by blood shown on the screen. the player's health eventually regenerates after time passes. Tasks vary in their requirements, having the player arrive at a particular checkpoint, eliminate enemies in a specified location, stand his/her ground to defend an objective, or plant explosive charges on an enemy installation. The player is accompanied by friendly troops who cannot be issued orders or harm you but you can have friendly fire and restart the mission. Laptop computers that contain enemy intelligence appear throughout the campaign and may be collected.

The game utilizes the in-house IW 4.0 game engine.

The 5670 powers through the title at our chosen settings whereas the last generation struggles to maintain playable framerates. We will analyse the min FPS next.

Throughout all our level testing the engine maintained a steady 40+fps throughout with only one heavy action scene dropping below.

Crysis Warhead, like the original, Crysis, is based in a future where an ancient alien spacecraft has been discovered beneath the Earth on an island east of the Philippines. The single-player campaign has the player assume the role of (Former SAS) Delta Force operator Sergeant Michael Sykes, referred to in-game by his call sign, Psycho. Psycho’s arsenal of futuristic weapons builds on those showcased in Crysis, with the introduction of Mini-SMGs which can be dual-wielded, a six-shot grenade launcher equipped with EMP grenades, and the destructive, short ranged Plasma Accumulator Cannon (PAX). The highly versatile Nanosuit returns.

In Crysis Warhead, the player fights North Korean and extraterrestrial enemies, in many different locations, such as a tropical island jungle, inside an “Ice Sphere”, an underground mining complex, which is followed by a convoy train transporting an unknown alien object held by the North Koreans, and finally, to an airfield. Like Crysis, Warhead uses Microsoft’s Direct3D 10 (DirectX 10) for graphics rendering.

Our testing was performed at 1280×1024 with mainstream settings.

Sapphires 5670 manages to maintain a good set of results throughout our Crysis Warhead testing and at our chosen settings remains playable throughout. While this game has been out for a while now, the engine is still incredibly demanding.

There are a few instances when the frame rate dips below 30 but generally the 5670 manages to keep the min frame rates  perfectly smooth. An impressive set of results.

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.

Our testing was performed at 1280×1024 with 4AA

Far Cry 2 is a demanding game however we know that most people buying a 5670 will still want anti aliasing at this resolution (or 720p). We managed to settle on 4aa which provides solid framerates throughout. Switching to 2AA would smooth out performance in some areas if you like to play with slightly higher min FPS.

During one section of gameplay which involved a battle with many NPC's the frame rate barely stayed above our ‘danger zone', however considering the anti aliasing settings the end result is impressive.

3DMark is a computer benchmarking tool created and developed by Futuremark Corporation (formerly MadOnion, formerly Futuremark) to determine the performance of a computer’s 3D graphic rendering and CPU workload processing capabilities.

The measurement unit 3DMark is intended to give a normalized mean for comparing different PC hardware configurations (mostly graphics processing units and central processing units), which proponents such as gamers and overclocking enthusiasts assert is indicative of end-user performance capabilities. Between 3DMark99 and 2000, MadOnion created a simpler 3D benchmark, which played only a DirectX 7 demo sequence at 640×480, with no extra tests. It was called XL-R8R and was aimed at providing upgrade information, based on the results of the benchmark.

We used the Extreme settings for testing with a resolution of 1920×1200.

The results are pretty much as we would expect from these cards, with the GTS250 pulling out slightly in front.

The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 24c – 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.

The Arctic Cooler utilised on the Sapphire HD5670 card is a massive improvement over the reference solution – 7c at idle and 20c under load!

Idle numbers were recorded after leaving the system resting in the desktop for 15 minutes. Load numbers were achieved by running Crysis Warhead and measuring the drain at the wall. External devices such as the monitor are not included in the end result.

While we have seen the GTS250 outperform the 5670 in many games we can see that the Sapphire HD5670 is a much more efficient solution with considerable savings under load. This could translate to a reasonable saving over the course of a years intensive gaming.

To overclock the card we used MSI Afterburner as we didn't want to be limited by the ATI Catalyst Control Center ‘overdrive' solution.

Our results were incredible as we managed to push the core to 940mhz and the memory to 4400mhz (effective). We retested to check how the Arctic Cooler coped with the massive increases.

When the card was overclocked to 940 core and 4400mhz on the memory the temperatures only rose by 10c under load. The card, even when overclocked to such huge levels was still running cooler than the reference design card at reference clocks.

With these overclocks, we noticed around a 4-5 fps increase in Crysis Warhead which really helped to smooth out some studdering with lower FPS in specific situations.

The Sapphire HD5670 is competitively marketed right now, with prices in the UK of around £85 inc vat. For such a small amount of money you get a card which runs significantly cooler than the reference design and is barely audible under the majority of situations.

While the 1GB GTS 250 generally outperforms the Sapphire HD5670 they are still around £10-£20 more and there is no DX11 support. We also recorded that the HD5670 was considerably more efficient under load which means less power consumption, lower temperatures and cooler running conditions.

While overclocking graphics solutions is very much hit and miss … meaning cards from the same batch will give varying results, our incredible findings with the review sample would make me feel that Sapphire could have applied a moderate overclock to make the deal even sweeter for a prospective customer. The headroom on both core and memory was as high as we have seen in our testing. With these massive overclocks the 5670 was more than a match for the GTS250 but the end user needs to have some experience with software overclocking which might omit a large portion of the audience.

If you are in the market for a low cost, high performing card with DX11 capabilities that doesn't suck a lot of power and runs ‘cool n quiet' then the Sapphire HD5670 is certainly a fine choice. Highly recommended.

KitGuru says: Once again Sapphire put the reference solution to shame.

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