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For this review today we are using a budget oriented system based around AMD's Fusion platform. We have covered Fusion technology in recent months, and we felt that this particular system build could not only highlight AMD's latest low power platform, but give indications of possible performance related improvements by adding a discrete FleX card to the system. Obviously this motherboard can only handle 4x bandwidth via the PCI-E slot, but we have found that even with this limitation, discrete cards are vastly superior to the onboard graphics.
The added benefit is that this specific card doesn't require any power PCI-E connectors, so a very low power PSU can handle the load.
System build:
CPU/GPU: AMD Zacate APU – E350 (HD6310 graphics) @ 1.88ghz
Graphics: Sapphire HD5670 FleX Edition
Motherboard: Asus E35M1-I Deluxe Motherboard
Chassis: Thermaltake Armor A30
Memory: Corsair Dominator DDR3 (4GB)
Hard Drive: Samsung 3.5 inch 2TB
Power Supply: Zalman ZM500-HP Heatpipe Cooled 500W.
Supplemental Hardware:
Solid State: Kingston Hyper Max 3.0 x 2
Optical: Asus USB 2.0 BluRay Drive
Monitors: Sharp 50 inch 1080p Aquos LCD TV, LaCie 730 (IQ testing), Dell U2410, ilyama Prolite E2472HDD x2, ilyama Prolite B2712HDS.
Software:
Windows 7 64 Bit
Catalyst 11.2
ArcSoft Media Converter 7
Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra V10
HQV Benchmark V 2.0
Left4Dead
Far Cry 2
Resident Evil 5
Technical Monitoring and Test Equipment:
Keithley Integra unit
Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Extech digital sound level meter & SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter
Kill A Watt Meter
All results are gained from multiple test runs to ensure any abnormalities are removed before publication.
Even a 3 screen setup is a pipedream for me, but I can see this card behind used in a lot of design studios.
I like the idea of the flex cards but why on earth aren’t AMD doing this without Sapphire having to make customised products? Is there additional circuitry involved? obviously there is, but it seems like such a weird thing for AMD not to include. displayport monitors are a lot of cash.
Well I wont be buying this card, but its just made me part cash with cyberlink power dvd 10 ultra. my system might be more responsive with it running instead of crappy WMP.
Well its good to see they went to arctic cooling for the cooler. wish more companies would do that.
This is exactly what I want. I spend most of my working life video editing and ive already persuaded the boss to get me two more screens. Shall make sure we order a couple for the offices.
Decent enough card, but will anybody buy a card from the last generation in 2011? might be hard for Sapphire to sell this as people all want 6 series cards.
I agree that AMD need to do a card like this themselves, clearly isnt that difficult,.
I liked the flex 6870, decent gaming performance and you can add three screens. This would be ideal for workstations in a design or editing environment. I think you sold it well Zardon considering the relatively weak gaming performance,. certainly worked well with the fusion mobo.
Id actually get this for my workstation. I dont game on it, and id like the out of the box screen support. I opted for an ilyama screen at 200 quid, another 2 wouldn’t cost that much for the deskspace.
Wonder why they opted for a 5000 series card? Why not aim for the 6970 or even 6950? 6870 isnt a bad card, but even it can struggle, especially with 3 screens.