ATI Radeon 5670, 5550 & 5450 Review

ATI divides its products into segments based on price, power requirements and performance. The complete breakdown is as follows:

• Ultra Enthusiast: 5970, Eyefinity 6 and CrossFireX
• Enthusiast: 5870, 5850, 5830
• Performance: 5770, 5750
• Mainstream: 5670, 5550, 5450

To date we have benchmarked and reviewed the products in the Ultra Enthusiast, Enthusiast and Performance segments. This review will cover the Mainstream segment. In my review of the Performance segment, I found that the 5770 was a solid widescreen performer and offered users an opportunity to experience Eyefinity without a big investment in GPU or PSU.

As we take the last step into the Mainstream segment, we do not expect them to be capable Eyefinity solutions. Although ATI markets the Eyefinity capabilities, it simply isn't reasonable expectation considering the performance of the 5770 and the feature gap between the 5770 and these cards.

Architecture & Specs

The Mainstream segment has significantly smaller feature sets, Shaders, transistor counts and power draws. None of the cards in the Mainstream segment require additional power from the PSU.

Below is a spec block with comparing outlining the 5750 through the 5450.

Based on the stat block you can see the variation within the Mainstream family. Each step down reduces the number of Unified Shaders, and has a reduced clock speed.

Note

The ATI Radeon HD Mainstream cards I tested were only equipped with 512MB of RAM. Cards are available with 512MB or 1GB of RAM.