AMD Radeon HD 6670 1GB & HD 6570 512MB Review

[SKYMTL]

HD Video & Audio Playback (Blu Ray / 3D Blu Ray)

HD Video & Audio Playback (Blu Ray / 3D Blu Ray)

One of the main selling points of any budget friendly graphics card is its supposed ability to decode the high definition images that define current generation Blu Rays.

In this test we take two demanding 2D movies (Avatar and The Dark Knight) which have each been encoded in a different format and play them back in order to determine CPU usage. In addition, a single 3D Blu Ray is used (Clash of the Titans 3D).

The signals are passed through to an Onkyo NR-808 receiver which has the ability to detect and play back lossless audio as well as pass through HDMI 1.4a signals for 3D playback. For all clips, lossless audio is enabled through PowerDVD 10 Ultra.

There is however one thing to note: the peak CPU usage should be taken with a grain of salt since and is included for reference purposes only. Even though every other unnecessary process has been disabled, there will always be some CPU usage not being dedicated to video playback. This means “peaks” could very well be influenced by sources outside a GPU’s ability to play back HD content.


Avatar (MPEG4 AVC + DTS HD Master Audio)

With a bitrate of 28.81 Mbps, Avatar is one of the most demanding Blu Ray movies currently around but every one of the GPUs here displayed an excellent ability to shunt video processing away from the CPU. For whatever reason, the AMD cards did do slightly worse than the PureVideo-equipped NVIDIA card but the difference between the two was minimal at most. It also seems like the new UVD3 allows for slightly better performance over UVD2.



The Dark Knight (VC-1 + Dolby TrueHD)

Performance in The Dark Knight closely mirrors that of Avatar as all of the cards perform quite similarly to one another.



Clash of the Titans 3D (MPEG4 MVC + DTS HD Master Audio)

Adding 3D into the mix really does push things to the next level with a constant bitrate of around 33 Mbps but once again, none of these GPUs really have an issue handling that. It should be noted however that if you are using a single core or lower end dual core CPU, you'll likely want a slightly higher end GPU if you plan on viewing stereo 3D content.

 

[SKYMTL]

GPGPU: Video Transcoding

GPGPU: Video Transcoding

Graphics Plus technologies have been championed by NVIDIA and AMD / ATI for the last few years as a means to speed up certain tasks which would normally take much longer to complete on the CPU. Naturally, media center PCs don’t always have the fastest possible processor so moving things like video and audio transcoding to the dedicated GPU only makes sense.

Unfortunately, finding a video transcoding program which is customizable and supports CUDA is easy but finding one which is compatible with ATI’s Stream is next to impossible. We finally settled on Cyberlink’s MediaEspresso 6.

The file used is a 600MB 1080P .m2ts rip of Samsung’s absolutely stunning The Beauty of Nature demo disk which is then converted into a typical H.264 MP4 format that is used by all of Apple’s devices.

Even after a number of driver revisions, it looks like AMD GPUs are still having some minor issues with transcoding under MediaEspresso 6. Nonetheless, it does work and the HD 6670 and HD 6570 offer middle of the road performance.

 

[SKYMTL]

Core Temperature & Acoustics / Power Consumption

Core Temperature & Acoustics

For all temperature testing, the cards were placed on an open test bench with a single 120mm 1200RPM fan placed ~8” away from the heatsink. The ambient temperature was kept at a constant 22°C (+/- 0.5°C). If the ambient temperatures rose above 23°C at any time throughout the test, all benchmarking was stopped. For this test we use the 3DMark Batch Size test at it highest triangle count with 4xAA and 16xAF enabled and looped it for one hour to determine the peak load temperature as measured by GPU-Z.

For Idle tests, we let the system idle at the Windows 7 desktop for 15 minutes and recorded the peak temperature.

Temperatures on entry level cards are typically quite low and these two cards are no different. The HD 6570's heatsink isn't all that well appointed which results in slightly higher temperatures but they aren't anything close to worrying. The HD 6670 and HD 6570 are also extremely quiet.

System Power Consumption

For this test we hooked up our power supply to a UPM power meter that will log the power consumption of the whole system twice every second. In order to stress the GPU as much as possible we once again use the Batch Render test in 3DMark06 and let it run for 30 minutes to determine the peak power consumption while letting the card sit at a stable Windows desktop for 30 minutes to determine the peak idle power consumption. We have also included several other tests as well.

Please note that after extensive testing, we have found that simply plugging in a power meter to a wall outlet or UPS will NOT give you accurate power consumption numbers due to slight changes in the input voltage. Thus we use a Tripp-Lite 1800W line conditioner between the 120V outlet and the power meter.

Power consumption is about what we would have expected for both cards which means they are both highly efficient considering the performance they deliver against some other GPUs in this chart. Just remember that the HD 6570 we used is the GDDR5 version which does consume more power than the lower priced DDR3 edition.

 

[SKYMTL]

Conclusion

Conclusion

Even though products at the budget friendly end of the market don’t make the headlines as often as their performance oriented brethren, there is still a plethora of options out there. When compared to the HD 5670 and HD 5570- the Turks-based HD 6670 and HD 6570 are superior in every way. Even though a generation to generation performance increase of 10-15% may not seem like a big step, attaining this without changing the manufacturing process while maintaining the same power envelope is no small feat.

Even though the basic gameplay differences between old and new architectures aren’t groundbreaking, these lower-end HD 6000 series cards do bring additional features to the table. Things like UVD3 with its 3D Blu Ray and DivX acceleration capabilities will make the HD 6670 and HD HD 6570 perfectly suited for future HTPCs as the stereo 3D gimmick gains support. The enhanced VLIW5 architecture also allows for higher framerates when AA is enabled.

However, there are some underlying issues with the HD 6670’s jack of all trades, master of none approach which makes us hesitate in recommending it. This hesitation is due to the existence of products better suited to either gaming or HTPC use lying above and below it in AMD’s product stack. If you are looking for a phenomenal HTPC card AMD’s own HD 6450 offers the UVD3 video processing engine while retailing for under $60 and consuming half as much power as the HD 6670. Meanwhile, both the HD 5750 and GTS 450 offer significantly more gaming performance and can both be found for less than $110. This puts the HD 6670 in a precarious position within a cut throat market, especially when its asking price of $99 is taken into account.

The $80 HD 6570 GDDR5 fares a bit better. It doesn’t have all that much competition aside from the HD 5570 which it replaces but with (slightly) superior AA performance, it can actually hold an edge over the HD 5670. In addition, its combination of low power consumption, an $80 price and a low slung heatsink design should be highly appealing to price conscious users that want a well rounded budget GPU without having to shell out another $20. The HD 6650 is also in an enviable position since NVIDIA currently doesn’t have a single product that can complete with it.

This generation of GPU releases has been an odd one for both AMD and NVIDIA since there seems to be a lot of hesitation to flatly discontinue older products in favor of newer cards. The HD 6670 suffers from this phenomenon more so than the HD 6650 since it feels far too expensive in a field littered with similarly priced, yet more appealing HD 5000 and GTS 400-series cards. The HD 6650 on the other hand has found a good niche to fit itself into so if you are looking for a low cost entry level GPU, it deserves some consideration.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...-1gb-hd-6570-512mb-review-comment-thread.html​