Gigabyte HD 5670 OC Review - PAGE 17

Power Usage

For these results, we used the program OCCT to reach 'load' temperatures, taking a measurement once 200 seconds elapsed.

The power usage numbers for the HD 5670 are very good. There are very few other cards that offer this level of performance without the need for a PCIE power connector. The box suggests a 400W PSU is enough to keep the Gigabyte HD 5670 happy, and this would seem to be the case (unless, say, you have tons of optical and/or hard drives and are using a cheap generic 400W PSU...then things might be iffy.) 

Operating Temperatures

For these results, we used a Kill-o-Watt measuring device in conjunction with the program OCCT to measure 'load' temperatures once 200 seconds elapsed.

Gigabyte's cooler is sufficient enough to keep the HD 5670 running cool. 70 degrees at peak loads is pretty good; you can expect your HD 5670 to last indefinitely with those sort of lower operating temperatures.

Conclusion

The Gigabyte HD 5670 1GB is a good card for about $110 USD. We generally prefer this video card to Gigabyte's own GT 240 which we reviewed recently, even though the GT 240 did out-perform the HD 5670 in many benchmarks. Why's that? Because of three key features present in the HD 5000 series: CrossFireX, which enables you to eventually link the HD 5670 to any newer ATI card in the future, if your motherboard supports CrossFire and has two PCIE slots; Eyefinity, which allows up to three displays to run off of the one card; and finally, DirectX 11 support -- though we think this won't be much of a factor in coming PC games, in the real-world of gaming beyond marketing, it is still nice to have. If you have specific desire for NVIDIA's CUDA however, maybe the GT 240 would be a better fit; but for most, we'd recommend the HD 5670 over the GT 240. 

If you are looking and spending about hundred bucks on a new video card this first quarter of 2010, then you have one important question to ask yourself: what do I care more about -- either those three features above, or game performance. If you prefer game performance over those three key features listed, then you can't beat the value of going with a high-end gaming card of last generation, foremost of which come to mind the HD 4850, and the 9800 GT.  

When the HD 5670's first hit stores, the price difference between the 512MB and 1GB version was about $20 or so. That has now fallen to about $10. We don't think that the extra 512MB is a big selling point for most people-- because it doesn't make much of a difference unless you are running stuff at 2560x1600, and if you are running stuff at 2560x1600 and have the display to do so, we'd recommend going with a card with more horsepower. However, the big selling point for the 1GB is that it is CrossFire capable (most 512MB HD 5670 cards are not), so if you have a CrossFire board, we recommend going for the 1GB version. We are confident that something like a HD 5670 paired with a next-gen HD 6670, or HD 6770, will be a good combo, just as this card would work well with a HD 4770.

Gigabyte put this HD 5670 together well. While the "OC" is virtually a non-factor, and the bundle is just the basics, neither of these phase us too much. And while you can get more gaming performance from a last-gen card for about the same price as the HD 5670, performance offered by the HD 5670 isn't all that bad, and the feature set offered with the HD 5000 series is strong, which helps to offset the card's negatives. All in all, the Gigabyte HD 5670 OC is a good all-around video card choice for about $110 or so, but nothing that knocks off socks.