Final Thoughts
There are at least a couple of ways in which you can look at the Radeon HD 5570. For starters, it is the most affordable DirectX 11 graphics card capable of gaming with a retail price of $79-85. How you value the ability to support DX11 games is ultimately up to you.
Personally, I feel that even the faster Radeon HD 5670 is barely adequate to run the latest titles using DX11 in all their visual glory. The Radeon HD 5570 scored just 44fps when testing with S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat at 1440x900 using medium quality settings, negating any advantages that DX11 may offer.
The Radeon HD 5570 is also one of the more powerful low-profile graphics card we have come across, a trait certainly worth mentioning. Having that said, it is not the most powerful. For example, you can purchase a Zotac or Sparkle GeForce 9600 GT in the low-profile format for $85. Or if you happen to crave for even more performance, Sparkle also makes a low-profile GeForce 9800 GT card, available for $99. Depending on who you ask, these GeForce cards tend to be a bit louder, so Radeon HD 5570 remains a good alternative for HTPC builders.
From a gaming stance, it remains true that the more you can spend the better, considering that cards offered for $30-50 more can double the HD 5570's performance, while lacking some of the flexibility of the form factor and power consumption. Compared to the previous generation product that it's effectively replacing, the Radeon HD 5570 is a slightly more compact and faster version of the Radeon HD 4670.
Against previous generation boards that are still widely available, in most cases the old Radeon HD 3850 was much faster than the Radeon HD 5570. The GeForce 9600 GT was an even bigger threat given the form factor consideration mentioned above. When testing with Crysis Warhead the GeForce 9600 GT was 59% faster, 21% faster in Far Cry 2, 39% faster in Unreal Tournament 3, 29% faster in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat, 26% faster in Street Fighter IV, 19% faster in World in Conflict Soviet Assault and 13% faster in Wolfenstein.
We have to give it to AMD, however, it's a great idea to keep all features intact across the entire HD 5000 series. The Radeon HD 5570 can take advantage of triple monitor output, if not for gaming, Windows and productivity apps will work just fine.
There is not a great deal more for us to say, the results we just showed you along with the pricing you find on retailers over the next few weeks should speak for themselves. After the disappointing release of the Nvidia GeForce GT 220 and 240, we honestly thought AMD would come out guns blazing and put away the competition, sadly without much competition they clearly saw no need to do so.