ATI’s Radeon HD 5670 – DirectX 11 for $100

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by Rob Williams on January 15, 2010 in Graphics & Displays

AMD has delivered a couple of firsts over the past few months, and it’s keeping the tradition going with its release of the market’s first $100 DirectX 11-capable graphics card. Despite its budget status, the HD 5670 retains the HD 5000-series’ impressive power consumption and low idle temperatures, along with AMD’s Eyefinity support.

Page 8 – World in Conflict: Soviet Assault

I admit that I’m not a huge fan of RTS titles, but World in Conflict intrigued me from the get go. After all, so many war-based games continue to follow the same story-lines we already know, and WiC was different. It counteracts the fall of the political and economic situation in the Soviet Union in the late 80’s, and instead provides a storyline that follows it as if the USSR had succeeded by proceeding with war in order to remain in power.

Many RTS games, with their advanced AI, tend to favor the CPU in order to deliver smooth gameplay, but WiC favors both the CPU and GPU, and the graphics prove it. Throughout the game’s missions, you’ll see gorgeous vistas and explore areas from deserts and snow-packed lands, to fields and cities. Overall, it’s a real visual treat for the eyes – especially since you’re able to zoom to the ground and see the action up-close.

Manual Run-through: The level we use for testing is the 7th campaign of the game, called Insurgents. Our saved game plants us towards the beginning of the mission with two squads of five, and two snipers. The run consists of bringing our men to action, and hovering the camera around throughout the duration. The entire run lasts between three and four minutes.

This game is a little misleading, as you wouldn’t expect it to be so strenuous on a GPU. But, thanks to it having so much going on at once, it is, and neither of our two resolutions here delivered what I would hope to be a playable FPS.

Graphics Card
Best Playable
Min FPS
Avg. FPS
NVIDIA GTX 295 1792MB (Reference)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 8xAA, 16xAF
40
55.819
ATI HD 5870 1GB (Reference)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
35
47.195
ATI HD 5850 1GB (ASUS)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 4xAA, 16xAF
29
40.581
NVIDIA GTX 285 1GB (EVGA)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 0xAA, 16xAF
34
49.514
NVIDIA GTX 275 896MB (Reference)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 0xAA, 16xAF
36
46.186
ATI HD 4890 1GB (Sapphire)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 0xAA, 16xAF
31
46.175
ATI HD 4870 1GB (Reference)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 0xAA, 16xAF
28
40.660
NVIDIA GTX 260 896MB (XFX)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 0xAA, 16xAF
23
39.365
ATI HD 5770 1GB (Vapor-X)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 0xAA, 16xAF
28
37.511
ATI HD 5770 1GB (Reference)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 0xAA, 16xAF
28
37.389
NVIDIA GTX 250 1GB (EVGA)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 0xAA, 4xAF
24
32.453
ATI HD 5750 1GB (Sapphire)
2560×1600 – Max Detail, 0xAA, 4xAF
23
31.769
ATI HD 5670 1GB (Sapphire)
1920×1080 – Max Detail, 0xAA, 16xAF
22
32.292
ATI HD 5670 512MB (Reference)
1920×1080 – Max Detail, 0xAA, 16xAF
21
31.872

Like some of our previous games, the anti-aliasing had to be dropped to increase our FPS to a high enough level for us to consider it as being playable. Even then, it wasn’t totally ideal, but I’m confident most gamers would be happy with a ~30FPS average here, rather than choose to downgrade their resolution.

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Rob Williams

Rob founded Techgage in 2005 to be an 'Advocate of the consumer', focusing on fair reviews and keeping people apprised of news in the tech world. Catering to both enthusiasts and businesses alike; from desktop gaming to professional workstations, and all the supporting software.

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