Every month we have a new graphics card launch it seems. This month it could be two with the Radeon HD 5830 rumored to come out in the final week of this month as well. We have mentioned a few times that while NVIDIA have started from the bottom and are working their way up, ATI chose to start at the top and work their way down. So while that's been true for the most part, the Radeon HD 5830 would actually slot in between. But today we are not looking at that, we are checking out the new Radeon HD 5670 from Sapphire which is the new lowest end model to come in to these ATI series and sits directly below the previously released Radeon HD 5750, which has quite impressed us. - TweakTown

Sapphire Radeon HD 5670 1GB Graphics Card Review

Checking out the board, you can see a typical value look to the whole video card. There's nothing too fancy, although the cooler used is designed by Arctic Cooling which kicks it up a notch when it comes to overall quality and design. You can see the cooler design is one which uses a lot more fins on the fan itself. Behind that we can see the heatsink that sits directly over the top of the core. In the middle of the fan we can see a Sapphire sticker, and apart from this there's not a whole lot more to look at. Having a look around the card, we can see across the top we have two CrossFire connectors, though no extra power is required.

Having a look at the specifications of the Radeon HD 5670 card, it's quite similar to the Radeon HD 5750. Both graphics cards share an 128-bit memory bus and both offer GDDR5 memory. The core clock on this Radeon HD 5670 is higher by 75MHz and the memory is down 600MHz at 4000MHz effective. So while at the moment it might sound like it could be faster, the biggest change comes in the shaders. Instead of 720 which is found on the Radeon HD 5750, we have only got 400. This is going to impact performance the most and while the extra MHz will help, it won't be enough to offer the same performance.

So, the first thing we need to really determine is from a gaming perspective, what kind of user should be looking at this board? That's pretty easy really. If you're on a 22inch monitor or smaller, don't game heaps, happy to use medium detail or lower and you don't want to bust the bank wide open, this is a great card for you. The other people who will really like these cards are ones who want to get in on the EyeFinity action from a desktop perspective. Due to the budget orientated cost of the card, it's a great option for people who want this kind of setup. On the bad side of things, performance in games isn't that fantastic.

We've got to put out a warning on this model, there's going to be a large number of variations of these models and we will no doubt see companies use different types of memory. This is going to put quite a hit on performance. So if you go hunting for a Radeon HD 5670 and you get excited by the low price of a particular one, please make sure you look at what kind of memory it uses. Some of the other variations will include companies not including the CrossFire connectors. And CrossFire will work, it be a software option. How this will affect performance, we're not sure, but it costs less for the manufacturer so it will be a cheaper price.

The Radeon HD 5670 card is quite an impressive model. It opens up EyeFinity to more people and it gives people who want to jump to these new series on the cheap a good option. But remember, we can't stress enough that if you're happy with the numbers you're seeing today, make sure that you look at what memory is used on the Radeon HD 5670.