Radeon HD 5550 And 5570: Pumped Up With GDDR5

Overclocking Benchmarks

Overclocked as noted previously, the HIS Radeon HD 5570 GDDR5, PowerColor PCS+ HD5550 GDDR5, and HIS Radeon HD 5550 DDR3 are benchmarked, and here are their results.

The overclocked Radeon HD 5570 GDDR5 doesn’t quite reach Radeon HD 5670 performance, despite an identical GPU and identical memory bandwidth (since the 75 MHz core clock advantage gives the Radeon HD 5670 everything it needs to take the lead). The overclocked 5570 does manage to best the stock GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 card, though.

PowerColor’s PCS+ HD5550 GDDR5 overclocks well enough to just about meet stock Radeon HD 5570 GDDR5 performance, which is impressive. Of course, the PowerColor card is built on the company’s custom Radeon HD 5670 PCS+ circuit board, and we suspect this is the reason for its aggressive 775 MHz core overclock. Our experience with the other Radeon HD 5550 and 5570 models leads us to believe that cards based on the reference Radeon HD 5550 GDDR5 PCB will probably cap out at 700 MHz or so without a voltage increase.

HIS’ Radeon HD 5550 DDR3 card manages to meet Radeon HD 5550 GDDR5 performance levels when overclocked, which is no small feat when you consider the memory bandwidth disadvantage that DDR3 suffers in relation to GDDR5. This shows us that the Radeon HD 5550 DDR3 makes a great candidate for a budget overclocker’s card, especially when you look at its performance relative to the Radeon HD 4650.

  • amk09
    Very interesting but strange article.
    Reply
  • welshmousepk
    crysis 2 'on the horizon'?

    either you have not heard the terrible news, or you are a far more patient man than I.
    Reply
  • gkay09
    No surprises IMO as it was the same with the HD 4650/ 4670...the 1GB DDR2 was slower than the 512MB DDR3...
    Reply
  • You've mixed up the HIS5550 and HIS5570 end-on port pictures I think. You state the 5550 GDDR5 has no VGA and one is shown and vice-versa for the 5570 GDDR5. In fact it looks like quite few of the pictures are misplaced.
    Reply
  • edlight
    When you do the HQV tests, could you investigate drivers? They have a desktop color and a video (movies) section. With my 4670, it's not always clear which videos the video section works on. It varies between Win 7 and XP. Basically it works on movies in the overlay, and/or players with hardware acceleration turned on. In Win 7 it works on the flash videos, in XP it doesn't. In XP in video you can adjust Gamma, in Win 7 you can't. In XP the brightness etc. adjustment in video is independent from the desktop. In Win 7 desktop adjustments to brightness etc. affect the videos, even in the overlay. In XP the Dynamic Contrast button is there, but does nothing.

    After driver 10.4, in XP, video brightness and other adjustments just don't work. If you want to adjust the video you have to go back to 10.4.

    Contrast this with nvidia. As far as I know, their drivers work properly, with Gamma adjustment for video, and video brightness etc. separated from desktop brightness etc.

    But, in the last nvidia drivers I tried, there are problems with profiles. While you're in video, you can't save the settings as a profile. You have to go to desktop. Then you can save them. You used to be able to right-click on the tray icon and select your profiles. In the last nvidia driver I checked, you couldn't do that. At least you can do that in the ATI drivers. You can't sort the darn things, though.

    So, to select a profile in nvidea you'd always have to open the control panel. In ATI, if you've come upon a dark video and you have several profiles to try on it, it's fast and easy by right-clicking in the tray.

    I don't think the programmers actually use the control panels themselves. Such awful logic!

    One last thing I'd like to know from the coming article is if the nvidia video section works on flash videos (with the 10.1 flash) in XP. It must in Win 7.
    Reply
  • dconnors
    welshmousepkcrysis 2 'on the horizon'? either you have not heard the terrible news, or you are a far more patient man than I.
    I would say anything under a year is "on the horizon" so a March 2011 street date lines up pretty well with that statement.

    -Devin
    Reply
  • LordConrad
    Wrong connector picture for the HIS 5570?
    Reply
  • LordConrad
    Or maybe the caption is wrong...
    Reply
  • Onus
    I would like to have seen the HD4670 in the benchmarks; I think that is more likely competition than the HD4650, which was beaten pretty badly.
    Reply
  • belardo
    Yeah, the 4670 does belong on this benchmark article, but for the most part - the 5570 OC is on par with a standard 4670. Give or take.

    But what really belongs here is the 5450!

    That would show how much MORE powerful the 5550/70 cards are... Yeah I know, about 4x... but still it should be there. Maybe the 5470 will come out ;)

    Current pricing of the lower 5000 & 4000 series (Order of performance)
    5450 = $40~70 ($55+ = 1GB useless versions)
    4650 = $50~80
    5550 = $65~90 (DDR2 or DDR3 ver)
    5570 = $70~90 (DDR3)
    4670 = $70~90
    5670 = $85~105
    5750 = $125~150 (Ouch - considering they cost less to make that 4670s)

    First, when it comes to DX11 games, they are too much for the 5550 and below - but under DX10 - they do pretty good. So for your $70~75, you might as WELL buy the 4670 over the 5550s and 5570-DDR3. Now if the the 5550-DDR5 sells for the same price or less of a 4670, then it maybe worth it.

    Considering the age of these cards, the 5670 should be $80~90... as it doesn't touch the $100 4850! But the 4850 & 57xx requires more power/bigger PSUs.

    A non-eyeinfinity version of a 5750 for $100 would be a sweat card to get that would hammer the nail into the 4800 series.



    Reply