Well DirectX 11 and the Radeon HD 5000 series have finally hit the mainstream market in the form of the Radeon HD 5670 graphics card. Priced at $99, it's the most affordable way to experience DirectX 11 features like hardware tessellation and compute shaders. Gigabyte has designed an slightly overclocked version of the Radeon HD 5670 graphics card, which bears the OC suffix. ATI has produced several sweet spot cards over the past year, and through aggressive pricing and new manufacturing techniques ATI has managed to get all of these video cards into that $100-150 range that bring excellent gaming performance at a fair price. Will the Radeon HD 5670 be worthy to join such hallowed company? - PCStats

Gigabyte Radeon HD 5670 OverClock Version Review

Let's start off with the heart of the Gigabyte Radeon HD 5670 board, code named Redwood. It's based on the same Evergreen architecture that powers the rest of the Radeon HD 5000 series graphics cards, including the flagship Radeon HD 5870. This Gigabyte Radeon HD 5670 video card is thus blessed with 40 stream processors and an core speed of 785MHz. And these CrossFire capable boards packs 1GB of GDDR5 memory with an fightin' 1000MHz clock, although due to quad pumping the effective speed is actually 4000MHz. The GPU communicates with this memory using a rather sober 128-bit wide interface.

ATI's Radeon HD 5670 brings DirectX 11 technology into the mainstream. In just a few months this Evergreen architecture has moved from the ultra high-end all the way to mainstream computer users. And technically this video board can do everything the big boys can do, the Gigabyte Radeon HD 5670 OverClock edition is capable of DirectX 11 tricks like tessellation and compute shading, which will start making major appearances later on this year. And tessellation especially will become an important eyecandy feature that allows just much more detailed character models and environments in current and also future games.

Now the Redwood chipset has fewer stream processors, texture units and raster operators than last generation mainstream and mid-range cards like the Radeon HD 4770 and Radeon HD 4850, which can also be found for around the $99 you'd pay for Gigabyte's Radeon HD 5670 graphics card. So even with a 785MHz clock speed, and its 1GB of GDDR5 memory operating at an effective 4000MHz, these OverClock edition can't keep up with its peers from the Radeon HD 4000 series. Most of the more intensive games had to have graphical settings, resolution and anti-aliasing turned down substantially in order to achieve playable frame rates.

All of this put together makes the Gigabyte Radeon HD 5670 OverClock version difficult to recommend. If you are looking for a modestly priced graphics card for lightweight gaming, you're better served getting Gigabyte's own Radeon HD 4770 or a Radeon HD 4850. Finally, if you really want to see DirectX 11 effects in your games, it's best to just invest a bit more cash into a Radeon HD 5770 or higher graphics card so you can play games at acceptable frame rates.