HIS ATI Radeon HD 5670 IceQ 512MB review

It's true to say that whatever your budget, ATI will make a graphics card that suits you. The HD 5800 and 5700 enthusiast cards are now been followed by more mainstream offerings, of which this HD 5670 is the first we've seen.

The exact card we're testing here is the HIS HD 5670 IceQ 512MB, which uses the company's own heat sink design. This proved to keep everything nice and cool and it ran quietly too. Bar this one exception, the rest of the card is identical to ATI's reference design.

There are three outputs, with HDMI, DVI and VGA all provided. This means that you can connect any monitor without needing to use an adaptor. The card also supports ATI's triple-monitor Eyefinity technology, handy if you want to work on three monitors, though this mid-range card will struggle to render any modern game across all those displays – with typical resolutions being 5,760x1,080.

The HD 5670 is one step down from the Radeon HD 5750. Its core clock speed is actually faster at 775MHz, a rise of 75MHz. However, it has only 400 stream processors, compared to the 720 on the HD 5750, and so can undertake far fewer calculations simultaneously – a fact that became clear in our benchmarks. There's 512MB of memory onboard, half that of the HD 5750, though it's typical for a mid-range card like this.

In our tests the HD 5670 scored a respectable 41.8fps in Call of Duty 4, but struggled in the more demanding Crysis test with only 16.9fps, probably due to its limited 512MB of memory. We had to reduce the resolution to 1,280x720 and lower the anti-aliasing to 2x to get a playable 31fps from the card.

These scores are a long way behind the HD 5750, with just under 30fps in Crysis. More worryingly, the older HD 4770 is noticeably quicker with 22fps in Crysis, yet costs the same amount. That card doesn't support the fancy graphical effects in the latest DirectX 11 games, but then the HD 5670 doesn't have enough power to render these at smooth frame rates (as proven by a quick test drive on Colin McRae: Dirt 2), making it a moot point.

One of the HD 5670's key advantages over more powerful cards is that it doesn't require its own power supply, instead drawing all it needs via the PCI Express slot. This makes it ideal for upgrading PCs which don't have a 6-pin power supply connector, such as many compact designs. The card draws around 61W when gaming, which shouldn't overload most power supplies.

If you're looking to upgrade an older PC to play the odd game, and you aren't too demanding about detail settings, then the HD 5670 provides decent performance at a reasonable price. Older cards, like the HD 4770, do provide more bang for your buck, though; and if you want to enjoy the latest DirectX 11 games then you really need to spend a little more and buy at least the HD 5750 for around £100.