ATI Radeon HD 5570: Affordable DX11 GPU

Name: ATI Radeon HD 5570: Affordable DX11 GPU
Brand: ATI

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, February 09, 2010, 12:01 AM EDT

"This is like déjà vu all over again." That quote from the ever-so-quotable former New York Yankee Yogi Berra is particularly suitable for today's launch of the ATI Radeon HD 5570. Just last week, we brought you our coverage of the Radeon HD 5450 launch and wrote a bit about AMD's aggressive release schedule with regard to their DirectX 11-class GPUs. In this article, we will present to you yet another new DX11-class card from AMD, the ATI Radeon HD 5570.

A quick look at its model number, along with a bit of deductive reasoning, will reveal that the Radeon HD 5570 falls somewhere in between the Radeon HD 5450 and 5670 in AMD's current line-up. And in fact, the card shares some attributes of both cards. We'll get to the finer details in a just a bit; for now, check out the specifications and related information below and hunker down for a look at what could be one of the hottest graphics cards for HTPC users in quite a while.

The Half-Height ATI Radeon HD 5570

ATI Radeon HD 5570

Specifications and Features

A lot of groundwork had to be laid over the preceding months and even years before AMD could produce the entire Radeon HD 5000 series of products. Although the GPU at the heart of the Radeon HD 5570 is based on the same architecture as the other members of the DX-11 class Radeon HD 5000 series, the chip does leverage technologies already implemented in previously released GPU generations, so it's not all new. As such, we'd recommend perusing some recent HotHardware articles to brush up on a few of the technologies and features employed by the new Radeon HD 5450...

The articles listed above cover many of the features available with the Radeon HD 5570, like the UVD 2 video engine, Catalyst Control Center, PowerPlay, Eyefinity, GDDR5 memory, and more. There are also, however, many brand new features that were introduced with the Radeon HD 5800 series that we detailed in our Radeon HD 5870 coverage which are also pertinent, so that article at the very least is a must-read companion to this one--well, if you're up for some extra reading anyway.

Tags: AMD, ATI, Radeon, Gaming, graphics, GPU, video

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com