new light weight 5450/5670

[forester joe]

any thoughts on these?

I was considering the Silent Sapphire 4670 over the 5750, for budget reasons.

now the 5450 comes in over 10$ cheaper, with a passive cooler, and limited power.
and the 5670 comes in 10$ more expensive, with an active cooler, and slightly better performance.

what say you?

[fwki]

I'm searching the same territory. Anand has weighed in here:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3734&p=15

The 5450 is primarily a cheap HTPC card whereas the 5750 is a gamer's card with the 4670/5670 in-between. I'm waiting to see what the 5500 brings to the table. It's supposed to be a more-powerful 5400 with active cooling. If I had to pick now, I'd go with the passive 4670 and forget the DX11 and eyefinity.

[swivelguy2]

What are your needs? Either you don't play games and the 5450 is plenty, or you want to play games, and the 5670 is advised (or some other options).

[tropical_nut]

I thought pages 4 and 14 of the Anand review linked above had some relevant information in choosing between these two model cards.

[CA_Steve]

Seems like the 5450 is a great low power passive HTPC card for people that don't game. Only caveat is it's inability to deal with some fast motion jaggies (as pointed out in the anandtech article) - whether this is a lack of h/w capability or a future driver update is still unknown.

The 5670 adds more horsepower and wattage, can resolve fast motion, and could be used for low end/low rez gaming...but then I'd lean toward the 5750/5770 if you want to game.

[fwki]

Fuad has some info on the HD 5570...looks close to the HD 5670 but with lower clocks..."the maximum TDP is 42.7W, while in idle the card's power consumption is 9.69W.....we will probably see quite a few passive cards"..more here:
http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/17561/34/

Edit:
Don't know about Forester, but I'm looking for HTPC video card...here's a thread on these new cards from the HTPC experts at avsforums:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthre ... p=18075213

[b_rubenstein]

This is Rene's summary and about all one needs to know:

So the decision is pretty simple.

- If you want the cheapest card for HD audio bitstreaming, go for HD 5450. Hardware is minimal and you may have to compromise video playback performance (e.g. Vector Adaptive deinterlacing does not work).
- If you want the best ATI card for video playback, choose HD 5570.
- If you want better gaming performance, go for HD 5670, 5750, 5770, 5830 (Feb 13), 5850 etc., depending on your budget.

TDP of HD 4650 is 48W, higher than HD 5570. So a quiet low-profile HD 5570 card should be possible.

[vortex222]

my 5450 seems to have working VA deinterlacing, however when that is checked on, you cant use any other post prossessing options. (smooth playback should be off). However this is only at 1080i. lower resolutions are fine. However that isnt really an issue unless you use a satalite card with 1080i channels.

No arguments about the cards performance, quality or power consumption otherwise, its all aces.

As for gaming its only very modest. Some newish games are at lowest quality and most new FPS titles are unplayable. Some older RTS games and such are just fine however. I am able to run Street Fighter 4 at decent settings at 1080 Res for example, and other titles like NFS Shift are at low quality but lag free for the most part.

[forester joe]

I finally bought the 5670. all in all I stretched my budget to the limit.

I've been playing supreme commander (basic) at 1280x1024 with medium settings. it's running smooth. I ran the built in benchmark and played around till I got an average of over 50 FPS and raised the minimum to well over 20.

since this is the game I wanted to lay - this is great.
I guess if I upgrade my display to a higher resolution or I add a second display, that I will have to compromise or spend money. although I might be able to get away with the O/B AMD 4200 for a second display.

[MavSPCR]

This is Rene's summary and about all one needs to know:
- If you want the cheapest card for HD audio bitstreaming, go for HD 5450. Hardware is minimal and you may have to compromise video playback performance (e.g. Vector Adaptive deinterlacing does not work).
- If you want the best ATI card for video playback, choose HD 5570.
- If you want better gaming performance, go for HD 5670, 5750, 5770, 5830 (Feb 13), 5850 etc., depending on your budget.

Why would the HD5570 be any better "for video playback" than the cards listed below it?

I think what he meant to say was "If you want the best ATI non-gaming card for video playback, choose HD 5570."