ATI Radeon HD 5570: Affordable DX11 GPU

"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

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...

• ATI Radeon HD 5450: DX11 On The Cheap
• ATI Radeon HD 5670: DX11 For Under $100
• AMD ATI Radeon HD 5870: Unquestionably Number One
• ATI Radeon HD 4890: The RV790 Unveiled
• ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 - AMD Back On Top
• ATI Radeon HD 4850 and 4870: RV770 Has Arrived
• ATI Radeon HD 3870 and 3850: 55nm RV670
• ATI Catalyst Driver Analysis: CrossFireX and More
• AMD Hybrid CrossFire Sneak Peek

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.