AMD Radeon HD 6670 And 6570: Turkeys Or Turkish Delights?

Power, Temperature, And Noise Benchmarks

Before we demonstrate the results of the following tests, it’s important to note that the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 is not a reference model, but a Gigabyte GV-N240D5-512. Therefore, the results may not reflect typical reference performance.

Let’s start with the power benchmarks:

The new Radeon HD 6670 surprises us by using less power under load than the Radeon HD 5670, despite a higher ALU count and core clock. The GeForce GTS 450 suffers here, consuming significantly more power than competing cards. Note that we're using 3DMark 11 to measure load power, and the DirectX 10-capable GeForce GT 240 is unable to run that benchmark, so we could not capture its results.

GPU temperature is close across the board, with the Radeon HD 6570 suffering the highest levels under load. That's no surprise considering its tiny cooler. The 6670’s larger sink and fan combo is much more capable of dissipating heat effectively.

The GeForce cards perform admirably when it comes to noise output, but all of the Radeons are close behind. Even though the Radeon HD 6570 seems like a gross polluter, the 56 dB result as measured one inch from the fan is hard to notice.

  • jenkem
    price aside, i'm rather impressed with the 6670. sure the 5750 and gts 450 are more powerful, but nvidia's card just looks ridiculous in the power draw graph. being the fastest card without a pci-e connector is more than just a title, the 6670 will become the new go-to card for people with dells, hps, and ect looking to upgrade to discrete graphics(like the 4670 and 5670 before it).
    also, a 5670 can be found on newegg for $73 before rebate.
    Reply
  • 4745454b
    With $99 after MIR 5770s on newegg, the GTS450, 5750, and 6670 are all to expensive. I am most impressed that AMD has got this level of performance out of
    Reply
  • Nintendork
    The card has great overclock:

    960Mhz+ / 5000+Mhz for the memory. A 21% increase in games (tpu review).
    Reply
  • fatkid35
    i used to play cod4 with a 3.0 ghz dual core and a radeon 4650 @ 1400x900 with good frame rates. and the whole pc only had a draw of 135 watts at the wall. this new 6670 is a kick @ss low power solution for most wanting to game on the semi cheap. kinda want one for my back up pc now.
    Reply
  • enzo matrix
    For $80, how can you beat a card that can overclock to 6670 speeds easily? And perform identically due to the same specs otherwise?
    Reply
  • enzo matrix
    ^The 6570, is this card I am referring to.
    Reply
  • Pengle
    How much better is the 6570 than the 4550
    Reply
  • jestersage
    great review!

    just wondering why we used a 1200w psu when most systems use only 10% of its capacity... i believe the power draw graphs are skewed due to lower efficiency at that load.
    Reply
  • sudeshc
    Another gr8 review just loved reading it.
    Reply
  • mognet
    jestersagegreat review!just wondering why we used a 1200w psu when most systems use only 10% of its capacity... i believe the power draw graphs are skewed due to lower efficiency at that load.
    Its just standard practise to overkill all other components to make sure they don't cause weird results. Besides the absolute draw isn't important its how the cards compare with each other.
    Reply