Axle Radeon HD 5670 1024 MB Review 27

Axle Radeon HD 5670 1024 MB Review

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Value and Conclusion

  • According to Axle an expected street price of their HD 5670 is $119.
  • Low-noise Arctic Cooling heatsink
  • Low temperatures
  • Lower idle power consumption than reference design
  • Good overclocking potential
  • Native HDMI output
  • Support for AMD EyeFinity Technology
  • Support for DirectX 11
  • 1 GB of memory helps only at 2560x1600
  • High price (compared to 512 MB version and other cards in $100 segment)
  • Catalyst CCC Overdrive limits set too low
  • Not as quiet as it could be
  • Requires a 6-pin power connector
  • No support for CUDA/PhysX
Axle's Radeon HD 5670 is a rock solid, no surprises implementation of AMD's Radeon HD 5670. The card uses a custom PCB design and a low noise cooler with Arctic Cooling fan. This creates a winning combination. The card requires very little power, especially when idling, the power consumption is down considerably. Thanks to the low power requirements and Axle's thermal solution, the card runs at temperatures in the low 60s, even when overclocked. While the fan noise is sightly higher than what we have seen on other HD 5670 cards, it is still very quiet, making the card a possible candidate for a media PC. Overclocking is certainly not very high on the list of many HD 5670 shoppers, but with a little bit of tweaking, it is possible to get close to the performance of the HD 4770. The only issue here, for casual overclockers, is that the Overdrive limits in Catalyst Control Center are set too low on Axle's card, so you have to use non-ATI overclocking software that will not be limited.
Axle has equipped the card with a generous gigabyte of VGA memory, but unfortunately this can not make a tangible difference in all resolutions, except for 2560x1600, where the weak processing power of the Redwood GPU doesn't deliver a playable experience - no matter if the card has 512 MB or 1 GB VRAM. So the general buying suggestion is to go for a 512 MB variant and save some money. On the other hand a 1 GB card will have a higher resale value, whether that will be enough to warrant the price increase, only time can tell.
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Nov 20th, 2024 08:19 EST change timezone

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