AMD Radeon HD 6670 Pro Reviews

Keep your PC's resolution settings modest, and the $99 AMD Radeon HD 6670 can be a good way to play 3D games without breaking the bank.

For now, the new Radeon HD 6570 and HD 6670 are evolutionary products that bring virtually all of the features of AMD’s excellent Radeon HD 6000 series down to sub-$100 price points. They’re also quite power friendly and quiet, and would make excellent cards for HTPC applications. If you’re on a budget and live-and-die by framerates though, there’s more performance to be had for similar or slightly more money.

In the end the AMD Radeon HD 6670 and HD 6570 are solid additions to an already crowded budget graphics card market. They definitely improve on the already solid performance and feature set of the Radeon HD 5600-series of cards and do so at the same launch-time price points. The problem that both of these cards have (and that many graphics releases are seeing recently) is the price merges that occur when higher performance, older GPUs go on sale or offer rebates to take a step down in market. The GTS 450 and HD 5770 both can sometime be had for under $100 and easily outperform the brand new $99 HD 6670.

The best qualities of both cards are that they’re low-profile cards that don’t need an external power source, and that this is a reference quality we should see in partner cards. With the exception of a couple of one-off non-reference designs like the much more expensive PowerColor Go Green 5750, the 6670 and 6570 are going to be the fastest cards available that don’t require external power. In the OEM market that AMD sold these cards to first, that’s a significant advantage. For the retail market however this is only of particular use for HTPC users that need a bit more gaming horsepwer. For every other use in this price segment, time will tell if it is enough. Ultimately Turks and the 6670/6570 are technically superior, but at $99 and $79 respectively they won’t have that same superior position on the open market.

The reviewed HD 6670, priced at around £75, has enough grunt to run games at medium/high settings with a 720p resolution and medium settings at 1080p. It's some 10 per cent faster than the last-gen HD 5670 but, just as importantly, up to 50 per cent slower than an HD 5770 - a GPU that costs £20 extra. Presenting a reasonable mix of gaming and multimedia performance, the HD 6670 is a solid bet if upgrading from an IGP or low-end card from, say, 2009.

AMD's new Radeon HD 6670 offers decent 3D performance for resolutions up to, including, 1280x1024. If you are willing to sacrifice some details settings or live without anti-aliasing then 1680x1050 will be possible too in many games. Even though AMD's EyeFinity support promises a better gaming experience, for this segment I think it's usefullness shows in non-3D desktop applications. Being able to use multiple monitors can be beneficial to productivity, the added screen estate really helps. For an office PC the HD 6670's low power consumption is also useful since it helps with the power bill, which can make a difference when deploying a lot of systems. For gaming we saw outstanding performance per watt scores, in 1024x768 no other card is even close to the HD 6670.