PowerColor HD 6670 1 GB Review 13

PowerColor HD 6670 1 GB Review

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Value and Conclusion

  • PowerColor's HD 6670 1 GB is available online for $100.
  • Low power consumption, excellent performance per watt
  • Good overclocking potential
  • Low temperatures
  • Up to three active displays
  • Native full-size HDMI output
  • Support for DirectX 11
  • Noisy fan
  • Overdrive limits too low
  • No support for CUDA / PhysX
AMD's Radeon HD 6670 offers decent 3D performance for resolutions up to, including, 1280x1024. If you are willing to sacrifice some details settings or live without anti-aliasing then 1680x1050 will be possible too, in many games. Even though AMD's Eyefinity support promises a better gaming experience, for this segment I think it's usefullness shows in non-3D desktop applications. Being able to use multiple monitors can be beneficial to productivity, the added screen estate really helps. For an office PC the HD 6670's low power consumption is also useful since it helps with the power bill, which can make a difference when deploying a lot of systems. For gaming, we saw outstanding performance per Watt scores, in 1024x768 no other card is even close to the HD 6670.
HD 6670 is sitting on a tight spot, price/performance wise. For just $10 more you can get a HD 5750 and $20 more gets you a HD 5770, both of which offer more performance. If you want a cheap, sub-$100 gamer card, then a used GTS 250 will give you more bang for the money - if you can live without DirectX 11. In this performance segment DirectX 11 support really doesn't offer much of a benefit, instead of improving performance by using the new API, all developers use it to add eye candy which reduces performance even more.
PowerColor's HD 6670 can not bring any noteworthy changes over the reference design. It has the same performance, low power consumption and decent overclocking potential. PowerColor's thermal solution ends up being noisier than the low-profile AMD reference heatsink which has a smaller fan - clearly a step backward. It seems PowerColor forgot to optimize the card's fan profile as the card runs at super low temperatures that do not offer any advantage over higher temps which would result in less fan noise. In my opinion, noise levels are crucial for a card like the HD 6670 that has so much media PC + light gaming potential.
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Aug 8th, 2024 16:18 EDT change timezone

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