AMD’s Radeon HD 6670 & Radeon HD 6570: Two’s Company, Sub-$100’s A Crowd
by Ryan Smith on April 19, 2011 12:01 AM ESTTwo weeks ago we saw the paper launch of the Radeon HD 6450, the low-end member of AMD’s Northern Islands family of GPUs. It was a solid product for HTPC use and a very notable improvement over the 5450 it replaced, but it was an uncharacteristically delayed launch for AMD. At the same time we noted that the Northern Islands family had one more GPU we had not seen: Turks.
As it turns out, Turks-based video cards will be launching alongside the 6450 today, delivering all of the remaining Northern Islands products in a single push. Turks will be powering the Radeon HD 6670 and Radeon HD 6570, replacing the Redwood-based Radeon HD 5670 and Radeon HD 5570 respectively. Considering that we saw AMD deliver a solid update for their low-end lineup with the 6450, will we see the same with Turks and the 6670/6570? Let’s find out.
AMD Radeon HD 6670 | AMD Radeon HD 5670 | AMD Radeon HD 6570 (GDDR5) | AMD Radeon HD 5570 | |
Stream Processors | 480 | 400 | 480 | 400 |
Texture Units | 24 | 20 | 24 | 20 |
ROPs | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 |
Core Clock | 800MHz | 775MHz | 650MHz | 650Mhz |
Memory Clock | 1GHz (4GHz data rate) GDDR5 | 1GHz (4GHz data rate) GDDR5 | 1GHz (4GHz data rate) GDDR5 | 900MHz (1800MHz data rate) DDR3 |
Memory Bus Width | 128-bit | 128-bit | 128-bit | 128-bit |
VRAM | 1GB | 1GB / 512MB | 512MB | 1GB |
FP64 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
Transistor Count | 716M | 627M | 716M | 627M |
TDP | 66W | 61W | 60W | 42.7W |
Manufacturing Process | TSMC 40nm | TSMC 40nm | TSMC 40nm | TSMC 40nm |
Price Point | $99 | $65-$85 | $79 | $50-$70 |
Turks is the 4th and final member of the Northern Islands family, or to be more practical the 3rd and final member of the revised Evergreen family. Based on Redwood before it, Turks implements the Northern Islands series’ architectural improvements while also implementing a larger number of SIMDs in order to give AMD a mid-cycle performance boost on the same TSMC 40nm process. With the 6450 dragging up the low-end of the market and competitive pressure from NVIDIA, AMD needed a product above the 5670 but still smaller/cheaper than the 5750, and that is what Turks will provide.
Architecturally, Turks is very close to Redwood. Compared to Redwood it has 6 SIMDs instead of 5 SIMDs, giving it 480 SPs and 24 texture units versus 400 SPs and 20 texture units on Redwood. The ROP count remains unchanged at 8 ROPs, while the memory bus is still 128 bits wide. Of course being a Northern Islands GPU, Turks implements all of the common improvements we see with NI: UVD3, improved texture filtering, HDMI 1.4a (e.g. Blu-Ray 3D), a revised tessellation unit, and DisplayPort 1.2 support.
These improvements have of course added some bulk to the die; Redwood was comprised of 627 million transistors while Turks is 716M. This in turn has increased the die size slightly to 118mm2, coming from 104mm2 on Redwood. Power consumption has also gone up accordingly, but less so than the transistor count or die size did. For the 6670 the TDP is 66W, versus 60W for the 5670. The 6570 GDDR5 meanwhile is rated for 60W versus 43W for the 5570; this is largely a consequence of switching to GDDR5. Meanwhile idle power consumption is 10W for the 6570 DDR3, 11W for the 6570 GDDR5, and 12W for the 6670.
As far as performance is concerned, the 6670 is close to the 5670 on paper. At 800MHz the 6670 has a 25MHz (3%) core clock advantage, while the 1GHz (4GHz data rate) memory clock is identical to the 5670. The big advantages for the 6670 are any gains in architectural efficiency, combined with the additional SIMD; the SIMD alone gives the 6670 a 20% shading and texturing improvement over the 5670. With the same 8 ROPs between the two cards, the 6670 should excel in shading and texturing bound situations, while ROP or memory bandwidth bound situations will be much closer.
Top: Radeon HD 6670. Bottom: Radeon HD 6570
For the 6570 on the other hand, the performance advantage is quite a bit larger. The original 5570 – and the one we continue to test today – launched with DDR3 memory. AMD did introduce a GDDR5 variant in the summer of 2010, but it never gained much traction. So compared to the 5570, the GDDR5 6570 with its 1GHz (4GHz data rate) GDDR5 has 222% the memory bandwidth of the DDR3 5570 and its 900MHz (1.8GHz data rate) RAM. Now there’s a catch in all of this: similar to how the 5570 ended up, AMD will be launching cards with both GDDR5 and DDR3. The GDDR5 cards like the one we’re reviewing today will come with 512MB of RAM, while the DDR3 cards will come with 1GB of RAM. The extra RAM has its advantages in some edge cases, but our advice always has been and remains to be that you should pick the GDDR5 versions of most video cards over the (G)DDR3 versions. The only notable downside to the GDDR5 card in this case is that GDDR5’s power consumption is much higher, which is why the GDDR5 6570 is a 60W card while the DDR3 6570 is 44W.
RAM aside, the 6570 has the same advantages over the 5570 as the 6670 has over the 6570. With identical core clocks of 650MHz, the performance difference comes down to the RAM, followed by the 20% increase in the SIMD count. The GDDR5 6570 should outperform the DDR3 5570 by quite a bit at all times, but it’s going to absolutely shine in memory bandwidth or shader-bound situations, while anything that’s ROP-bound will be closer.
AMD will be launching the 6670 at $99 and the 6570 at $79, putting both cards right in the middle of the highly-competitive sub-$100 market. Competing cards include the Radeon HD 5670, the frequently discounted to $99 Radeon HD 5770, the similarly discounted GeForce GTS 450, and the GeForce GT 440 – a higher clocked GF108 (GT 430) part with GDDR5 that NVIDIA quietly released back in February. As was the case with the 6450 and most other sub-$100 launches, without a die shrink new parts cannot compete with discounted parts from a higher tier, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the 6670 in particular is easily beaten on performance at $99.
Thankfully unlike the 6450, the 6670 and 6570 are hard launching today. They will be appearing at e-tailers later today alongside the 6450.
April 2011 Video Card MSRPs | ||
NVIDIA | Price | AMD |
$700 | Radeon HD 6990 | |
$480 | ||
$320 | Radeon HD 6970 | |
$260 | Radeon HD 6950 2GB | |
$240 | Radeon HD 6950 1GB | |
$200 | Radeon HD 6870 | |
$160 | Radeon HD 6850 | |
$150 | Radeon HD 6790 | |
$130 | ||
$110 | Radeon HD 5770 | |
$99 | Radeon HD 6670 | |
$95-$110 | ||
$79 | Radeon HD 6570 | |
$50-$70 | Radeon HD 5570 | |
$55 | Radeon HD 6450 | |
$30-$50 | Radeon HD 5450 |
53 Comments
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Ryan Smith - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 - link
Our primary focus on reviews is for the North American market. I'm not sure about Europe and Asia, but in North America the 6450 does (did?) not go on sale in retail until today. It has been available to OEMs for a couple of months however.mino - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 - link
Even ignoring your global audience, if a card was available for MONTHS in the OEM channel, calling it "paper launch" is absurd.But; who pays, he gets. :(
AstroGuardian - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link
Consider opening an European branch. Many of us do not agree with many things in the reviews.Targon - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 - link
If a game is CPU limited after that many years, that hints that the game is not multi-threaded by design. Both Intel and AMD have really been more focused on multi-core designs, rather than really pushing the performance of individual cores. Yes, there have been improvements, but it has not been the real focus of CPU development. AMD looks to be working on getting the core design improved to be more competitive with Intel, but that is pretty much it at this point. Going to a 32nm CPU design should also help.vavutsikarios - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 - link
I guess it's not really multithreaded, and even if it is, it definitely won't use more than 2 cores. Afterall, it's a 2005 game. But this is besides the point. The game is CPU limited because of its nature. It is not a design flaw or anything. To clarify: the CPU is the limiting factor not from a performance POV but from a gaming experience POV. After you do whatever you have to do you click the "end turn" button. Then you have to wait for the AI to make their move. This takes awhile. It was minutes, worst case, on the PC I had when I first played the game, it may be less than a minute on the 3GHz quadcore I use now. Still, in order to have smooth gameplay, I need this to become 100x faster.SlyNine1 - Wednesday, April 20, 2011 - link
Thats like saying ChessMaster is CPU limited. Or saying Every game out there is HDD/SDD limited. Yes you will have to wait for complexe operations, but it doesn't interfer with gameplay. Because of that its hard pressed to say its CPU limited, as It doesn't limit gameplay.vavutsikarios - Wednesday, April 20, 2011 - link
I understand what you re saying. The CPU speed, at these levels of CPU performance, doesnt interfere with the functions of the game, that is true. But it does affect the gaming experience. Imagine having to wait a couple of hours for the AI. Wouldnt that be really frustrating? More than that, wouldnt it render the game unplayable? The way you define gameplay, having to wait any amount of time doesnt matter. So, I guess, it is a matter of semantics, of definition of what gameplay is.In the broader sense, which, IMHO, is what matters, things like that are important. They directly affect the pleasures we make for ourselves in the precious little time we have. So, yes, obviously, Every Game out there is HDD Limited! -nice line that one :)
Btw: Chessmaster is not CPU limited, although it should be. It is not though, because having to wait for your opponent to move is part of the normal chess experience. Truth is, chessmaster moves way too fast sometimes, and sometimes it thinks a lot when what it has to do is obvious, but still.
AstroGuardian - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link
+1fic2 - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 - link
CPU limited on an i7-2600k Sandy Bridge? Or CPU limited on the cpu you bought 6 years ago to play Heroes 5?vavutsikarios - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 - link
See my reply to Targon above. An i7-2600 Sandy would probably be a nice improvement over my phenom2, but still a long way from not being the limiting factor.