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While many people will be using a BluRay player with a similar system to the one we are using today, many more will be playing high definition 1080p content inside an MKV container. For testing we are playing back a 1080p version of Robin Hood which was directed by Ridley Scott and stars Russell Crowe. Our specific encoding is set to an extremely high bitrate and can cause an ATOM processor to skip frames, even at 1.8ghz.
The video below shows the movie playing on the Fusion system initially without Sapphire HD5670 FleX hardware acceleration enabled. Around half way through the video playback (40-45 seconds) we enable hardware acceleration and CPU usage drops considerably. This is how important a discrete graphics solution can be with a low powered system such as this.
We are using Cyberlink PowerDVD 10 Ultra with the latest updates for this testing.
The Sapphire HD5670 FleX Edition really helps to improve the media experience when watching 1080p MKV content. The CPU was loaded between 60 and 100 percent with acceleration off. When enabled this load reduces to between 30-25 percent. System temperatures also drop inside the chassis by 3c.
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.