HD 5750 & HD 5770 Review - PAGE 16

Operating temperatures

To measure core GPU temperature, we used the hardware monitoring program in RivaTuner 2.24. The idle temperature was taken after leaving nothing running, on Vista's desktop, for a minute. The load temperature was taken after a 100,000ms run of Furmark at 1680x1050 with no AA.

The HD 5750 and HD 5770 have average thermal performance. When stressed the GPUs went up to the high '70s, like some last generation ATI parts. 

Power Usage

To measure power usage, we used a Kill A Watt P4400 power meter. Note that the above numbers represent the power drain for the entire benchmarking system, not just the video cards themselves. For the 'idle' readings we measured the power drain from the desktop, with no applications running; for the 'load' situation, we took the sustained peak power drain readings at the end of 200,000ms run of Furmark at the maximum resolution.

These cards are great on power -- the HD 5750 especially offers a tremendous amount of horsepower for the low power requirements. You will not need much of a power supply to keep these cards happy. A generic 500W PSU is easily up to the task.

Conclusion

The HD 5700 series offers a formidable feature set for the relatively low introductory price they are targeted to sell for (about $160 and $130 USD). While on a strict price-per-performance metric, the 5700 series will not destroy the competition, when you consider that both cards are only using a 128-bit memory interface, they are excellent performers.

In our benchmarks, the HD 5770 often scored around the mildly factory overclocked Gigabyte GTS 250 OC, while the HD 5750 traded blows with the heavily factory overclocked Sparle Calibre P980 9800 GT. At times, there were a few surprises, like in Far Cry 2, and when the HD 5770 came close to the performance of the mildly factor overclocked LeadTek GTX 260 Extreme+, but overall, the 5700s performed around the middle of our benchmarking line-up. 

Nvidia has taken a big blow to their bottom line with the introduction of the HD 5700 series, but their products are certainly still in the game. However the HD 5750 and HD 5770 are presumably much cheaper to produce than some of the Nvidia counter-parts in the line-up, that can no longer be discounted much further, because of materials cost (namely the GTX 260). The die sizes are smaller for ATI, only a light-weight cooler is needed, and the 128-bit memory interface also saves on PCB costs. Nvidia hasn't been around so long without surviving some tight spots before, so all eyes will be watching to see what equalization the next generation brings them.

While you might be able to get better game performance with last generation cards that will be plummeting in price very soon, such as the HD 4800 cards, or the still quite strong GTX 275, many folks will probably be encouraged by the HD 5700 series' support of DirectX 11. And like the the HD 4770, you can expect the HD 5700's to be great in CrossFireX setups.

As for the HD 5750 versus the HD 5770, it is a pretty close battle. If you have a bunch of games on your to-play list, we recommend going with the HD 5770, as it is worth the extra $30 -- especially if you overclock the video card.

In the end, the HD 5750 and HD 5770 are two more great editions to the new HD 5000 family. We expect a great many of these affordable DX11 gaming cards will be sold over the lifetime of the design.

Note: Because these video cards were engineering samples sent direct from ATI, they are not eligible for any winning any editorial awards.