[W1zzard]

Introduction

During this fall, AMD has been releasing their new Radeon HD 5000 Series cards. Currently, the smallest model is the Radeon HD 5750, which uses the same Juniper GPU as the HD 5770, but with lesser shaders, and reduced clock speeds.

Unlike with the big Radeon HD 5870 and HD 5850 models, for the Radeon HD 5700 series, add-in-board partners are allowed to make changes to the design right from the start to ensure optimal pricing, availability or other unique selling points they may have.

Powercolor has designed their own PCB and uses a Zerotherm cooler to keep the card cool.

	GeForce 9600 GT	Radeon HD 4830	Radeon HD 4770	GeForce GTS 250	Radeon HD 4850	Radeon HD 5750	Radeon HD 4870	Radeon HD 5770
Shader units	64	640	640	128	800	720	800	800
ROPs	16	16	16	16	16	16	16	16
GPU	G94	RV770	RV740	G92	RV770	Juniper	RV770	Juniper
Transistors	505M	956M	826M	754M	956M	1040M	956M	1040M
Memory Size	512 MB	512 MB	512 MB	1024 MB	512 MB	1024 MB	512 MB	1024 MB
Memory Bus Width	256 bit	256 bit	128 bit	256 bit	256 bit	128 bit	256 bit	128 bit
Core Clock	650 MHz	575 MHz	750 MHz	738 MHz	625 MHz	700 MHz	750 MHz	850 MHz
Memory Clock	900 MHz	900 MHz	800 MHz	1100 MHz	993 MHz	1150 MHz	900 MHz	1200 MHz
Price	$80	$95	$110	$140	$100	$139	$130	$159

Packaging

Powercolor's box design is easily recognizable as such. It seems to me that the design got a slight refresh compared to previous products from the company. The back has more marketing info in multiple languages.

Contents

You will receive:

• Graphics card
• DVI to analog adapter
• Dirt 2 coupon (for Steam version)
• Driver CD + Manual

The Card

Powercolor uses a Zerotherm cooler on their card which has been in service for several years now, in a form similar to the one you see here - and it still does a great job.


Like all other HD 5000 cards, the design requires two slots in your system.


The card has two DVI ports, one HDMI port, and one DisplayPort. This is just one of many output configurations that are possible on the new cards, thanks to the overhauled display output logic. Basically the card can drive six TMDS signals that can be combined in any way (a dual-link DVI consumes two TMDS lines).

For HDMI Audio, NVIDIA requires you to feed an external audio source, for example from your motherboard's on-board audio, to the card via SPDIF cable. AMD on the other hand has integrated a sound device inside their GPUs which is the easier solution for most users. Also AMD's integrated sound device has been upgraded to support HDMI 1.3a which includes Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD, AC-3, DTS and up to 7.1 channel audio with 192 kHz / 24-bit.


Crossfire configurations are supported to improve performance even further.


Here are the front and the back of the card, high-res versions are also available (front, back). If you choose to use these images for voltmods etc, please include a link back to this site or let us post your article.

A Closer Look

Powercolor's cooler uses a design that connects a copper core to a large number of cooling fins via heatipe. As mentioned before, this design has been in service for several years and is thus well tested and mature.


Operation of the card requires one six-pin PCI-E power connector. Power consumption is low, but in the worst case slightly higher than 75W which would be allowed without power connector.


The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Hynix, and carry the model number H5GQ1H24AFR-T2C. They are specified to run at 1250 MHz (5000 MHz GDDR5 effective).


The GPU voltage is managed by a uP6201BQ voltage controller (same as on many HD 4770 designs).


This is AMD's new Juniper GPU, it comes with 1040 million transistors, and is produced on a 40 nm process at TSMC Taiwan.

Test System

Test System
CPU:	Intel Core i7 920 @ 3.8 GHz (Bloomfield, 8192 KB Cache)
Motherboard:	Gigabyte X58 Extreme Intel X58 & ICH10R
Memory:	3x 2048 MB Mushkin Redline XP3-12800 DDR3 @ 1520 MHz 8-7-7-16
Harddisk:	WD Raptor 740ADFD 74 GB
Power Supply:	BFG ES-800 800W
Software:	Windows Vista 32-bit SP2
Drivers:	NVIDIA: 186.18 ATI: Catalyst 9.6 HD 57xx/58xx: 8.66 RC6 (AMD recommended reviewer driver)
Display:	LG Flatron W3000H 30" 2560x1600

Performance of the Radeon HD 5750 was simulated by disabling a SIMD unit and reducing clocks to 700 / 1150, which delivers exactly the same performance as a real HD 5750.

• All video card results were obtained on this exact system with the exact same configuration.
• All games were set to their highest quality setting

Each benchmark was tested at the following settings and resolution:

• 1024 x 768, No Anti-aliasing. This is a standard resolution without demanding display settings.
• 1280 x 1024, 2x Anti-aliasing. Common resolution for most smaller flatscreens today (17" - 19"). A bit of eye candy turned on in the drivers.
• 1680 x 1050, 4x Anti-aliasing. Most common widescreen resolution on larger displays (19" - 22"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
• 1920 x 1200, 4x Anti-aliasing. Typical widescreen resolution for large displays (22" - 26"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
• 2560 x 1600, 4x Anti-aliasing. Highest possible resolution for commonly available displays (30"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.

BattleForge

BattleForge, a card based RTS, is developed by the German EA Phenomic Studio. A few months after launch the game was transformed into a Play 4 Free branded game. That move and the fact that it was included as game bundle with a large number of ATI cards made it one of the more well known RTS games of 2009. You as a player assemble your deck before game to select the units that will be available. Your choice can be from forces of Fire, Frost, Nature and Shadow to complement each other.
The BattleForge engine has full support for DX 9, DX 10 and DX 10.1, we used the internal benchmark tool to acquire our results.

Call of Duty 4

Call of Duty 4 is a first-person shooter that is built on the award winning Call of Duty Series. It is the first version to play in modern times. In a near-future conflict between the United States, Europe and Russia you get to play as a United States Marine and a British SAS operative. The engine is Infinity Ward's own creation and has true dynamic lighting, depth of field, dynamic shadows and HDR. Even though the game plot is scripted you will find yourself in intense battles, often working together with computer controlled team mates.

Call of Juarez 2

Call of Juarez 2: Bound in Blood is a prequel to the first Call of Juarez game which was one of the first DX10 titles available on the market. This time the plot evolves around two brothers, before each mission you may pick one to play. Your choices affect the game play since both characters have different ways of handling situations and doing combat.
Call of Juarez 2 uses Techland's Chrome Engine 4 which adds Edge Anti Aliasing as one of the first engines on the market. Edge Anti Aliasing looks similar to normal AA but comes with a considerably reduced performance drop. However, due to the deferred shading design of Edge AA, normal AA can't be used on top of it.

Company Of Heroes

The real-time strategy game Company of Heroes is set during World War II where you take two American companies through several fights all over France to liberate the country from German occupation. Company of Heroes is the first game to use Relic's next-generation engine "Essence Engine" which includes support for HDR lighting, Shader Model 3.0, normal mapping, dynamic lighting and shadows. You are able to zoom in from the tactical view of the battle field to see the individual units fighting. Often you catch yourself admiring the detailed animations of the soldiers while the fight around you is raging.

Crysis

After the tremendous success of Far Cry, the German game studio Crytek released their latest shooter Crysis in 2007. The game was by far the most hyped and anticipated game in 2007, the forums were full of "Can my system run Crysis?" threads because of the high hardware requirements of this game. Just like in Far Cry the plot evolves on a small island with a thick and richly detailed jungle world. A lot of attention has been given to small details like correct physics. For example when you fire on a tree trunk, it will shatter and the tree will fall over leaving a stump behind. Enemies in a car can be stopped by shooting the tire of the car. The game graphics are by far the best ever seen in a PC game so far, yet the game still runs well on most computers.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II by Relic Entertainment is an RTS game based on the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Unlike other Dawn of War titles there is no base-building element in the game, you simply command units on the battlefield. Due to the non-linear mission design, the choices which mission and objective you pick to pursue have considerable impact on game play and mission difficulty. A "hero" unit concept adds RPG elements to the game, allowing you to advance the unit in terms of levels and abilities. Dawn of War 2 uses the Essence Engine 2.0, version 1.0 was used in the Company of Heroes Series.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

The first-person shooter Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is set in the science-fiction universe of Quake and requires several classes to work together to achieve certain goals on a map. In the campaign mode you gain experience which you can use to buy upgrades for your class. The player gets to pick from five classes of either the Global Defense Force or the Strogg faction. As underlying game engine, the successful id Software Doom 3 engine has been licensed, but several features like MegaTextures have been added, giving the outdoor world a much more detailed appearance.

Far Cry

Far Cry was released in early 2004 by the new development studio Crytek. It quickly became a massive success because it was one of the first titles to take you in a beautiful 3D outdoor world. Far Cry was one of the most demanding games at its time. Even with today's video cards you can still see big differences in frame rates, especially at the higher resolutions.

Far Cry 2

Four years after the success of Far Cry, Ubisoft has published the sequel called Far Cry 2. While the first part was set on an island, Far Cry 2 takes you deep into Africa with game play that resembles Grand Theft Auto much more than the original Far Cry, which was a classical 3D shooter. Ubisoft engineered a completely new 3D engine called "Dunia" which offers a large amount of popular features like DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 support, destructible environments, physics and non-scripted AI while not being as much of a resource hog as Crytek's CryEngine.

FEAR

The first person shooter F.E.A.R, developed by Monolith Game Studios, was released in Fall 2005 and has a great 3D engine that uses a large number of shading and shadow effects to accurately model the game world. In addition to that it features a realistic physics engine that lets you interact with many objects in the game world. The game was voted game of the year by several publications.

Tom Clancy's HAWX

Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. is one of the very few recent flight simulator games on the market. Being a console conversion it emphasizes "flight" more than "simulator". It is set in a near future in which private military companies have begun fighting conflicts for nations with their own military gear. You are playing an elite pilot who was recruited by such a private company. During the game you get to fly over 50 different aircrafts, ranging from the MIG 21 to the mighty F22 Raptor. One notable feature of its engine is the use of GeoEye satellite imagery for terrain generation which offers one of the most realistic incarnations of battlefield terrain available today.

Prey

Prey is based on a highly modified 3D engine made by id Software. This first person shooter brought a completely new way of gaming to the genre. In many levels you find yourself walking upside down or on the walls. This adds a completely new aspect to the gaming experience in this genre.

Quake 4

The Quake titles are among the most successful first person games. Developed by id Software, the famous game studio that brought you DOOM, you find yourself in a sci-fi world that is full of aliens and shocking effects. The main focus of the game is the single player story line. Quake 4 puts you on the home planet of the Strogg. In a number of missions you and your fellow marines will encounter all sorts of enemies, including some really huge aliens.

The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena

The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena is a first person shooter game set in a far future. You are Riddick, a notorious space criminal played by Vin Diesel in the movies. Dark Athena continues where Escape from Butcher Bay ended. A major aspect of the game is its tactical use of shadows and stealth so that enemies can't detect you. Vin Diesel's voice acting also adds greatly to the game experience.
The 0.0 FPS scores for NVIDIA cards at 2560x1600 are caused by driver crashes which seem to be related to card with 512 MB memory and below. Since it works fine on ATI this is not a game problem but an NVIDIA driver issue.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

Before its release in 2007, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl was one of the most hyped games of the last years. This RPG/FPS hybrid game is set a few years in the future, after a nuclear disaster occurs at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The release of radiation causes strange things like mutations in the nearby area. You take the role of a Stalker who seeks fame and riches in the contaminated area around Chernobyl. The game engine features all the latest buzzwords like HDR, bullet physics, skeletal animation, soft shadows and weather effects. Stalker's vast outside world is richly modeled, you can interact with a large number of objects in the game thanks to the physics engine.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Clear Sky

STALKER Clear Sky is GSC Gameworld's prequel to the 2007 hit "STALKER". Just like in the first part the game is set around the Russian area of Chernobyl and Pripyat, most well known for the nuclear accident that occurred there. You play the role of a mercenary who spends his days in The Zone trying to make a living. The Zone is an area which is affected by so-called anomalies which cause mutants to appear and laws of physics to change. While you investigate these anomalies the plot leads up to the events that happened right before the first game starts. A new in-game faction system encourages you to befriend various groups in The Zone in exchange for information or items. While the graphics of Clear Sky are based on the first Stalker game engine, there are numerous improvements, including support for DirectX10 and depth-of-field/volumetric effects.

Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2 by the famous people from Valve software builds on an improved Half-Life 2 engine to deliver an action packed, team oriented, comic graphics first person shooter game. Even though the game features nice graphics, it tends to be very CPU limited, especially on lower resolutions. Players get to team up being either RED or BLU with a selection of nine classes. Each class offers a different play style, just like in the original Team Fortress games.

Unreal Tournament 3

The fourth game in Epic's highly successful Unreal Tournament Series is simply called Unreal Tournament 3. It is based on the all-new Unreal 3 engine which is a major step forward from the previous engine. The game principle is centered about an arena style gameplay where several contestants try to reach a certain kill count or capture a flag for example. As you would expect from a new 2007 title, the graphics are top notch, with large and detailed textures. One major drawback of the way the engine is designed is that there is no support for Anti-Aliasing.

World In Conflict

The realtime strategy game World In Conflict by Massive Entertainment is set in 1989 taking the player through a fictional conflict during the collapse of the Soviet Union. Unlike other RTS games, World in Conflict is not centered around building a base, you command units on the battlefield with a number of reinforcement points available to replace lost troops.
Massive's Masstech Game Engine makes heavy use of level-of-detail techniques which allow you to zoom in closely on the action displaying fights in high-fidelity with a large number of effects.

3DMark03

Futuremark Corporation is the number one player in the world of synthetic benchmarking. The 3DMark series is the most popular test suite for video card testing and is used by gamers, overclockers and manufacturers alike to determine how fast their hardware is. Even though it is a few years old, 3DMark03 can easily stress today's video cards.

3DMark05

Another benchmark from Futuremark is 3DMark05 which comes with four completely new game tests that make massive use of shaders and lighting effects. 3DMark05 is a great test for modern video card architectures - in some tests you are often close to the 30 fps mark, below which your games will feel sluggish.

3DMark06

Even though it's based on Futuremark's 3DMark05, the new 3DMark06 adds new tests for Shader Model 3.0 and HDR rendering. It is also the first 3DMark to incorporate a CPU score into the final 3DMark score. All tests have received an overhaul, for example in the Canyon Flight test you can now see beautiful sun glare effects with the help of High Dynamic Range rendering.

Power Consumption

Cooling modern video cards is becoming more and more difficult, especially when users are asking for quiet cooling solutions. That's why the engineers are now paying much more attention to power consumption of new video card designs.

For this test we measure power consumption of only the graphics card, via PCI-Express power connector(s) and PCI-Express bus slot. A Keithley Integra 2700 with 6.5 digits is used for all measurements. Again, the values here reflect card only power consumption measured at DC VGA card inputs, not the whole system.

We chose 3DMark03 Nature as a standard test representing typical 3D usage because it offers: - very high power draw - high repeatability - is a standard benchmark that is supported by all cards - drivers are actively tested and optimized for it - supports all multi-GPU configurations - easy to obtain - fairly compact in size - test runs a constant duration and renders a variable scene with variable complexity just like any normal game.

The four result values are as following:

• Idle: Windows Vista Aero sitting at the desktop (1280x1024 32-bit) all windows closed, drivers installed. Card left to warm up in idle until power draw is stable.
• Average: 3DMark03 Nature at 1280x1024, 6xAA, 16xAF. This results in the highest power consumption. Average of all readings (12 per second) while the test was rendering (no title screen).
• Peak: 3DMark03 Nature at 1280x1024, 6xAA, 16xAF. Highest single reading during the test.
• Maximum: Furmark Stability Test at 1280x1024, 0xAA. This results in a very high non-game power consumption that can typically be reached only with stress testing applications. Card left running stress test until power draw converged to a stable value.

Powercolor's HD 5750 PCS scores with low power consumption in all scenarios, except for idle. In idle the power consumption is 10W higher than other HD 5750 cards we reviewed before. Still, 23W in idle is a very good result, especially when compared to the nearly 40W of the last generation HD 4850, which offers similar 3D performance.

Fan Noise

In the past years users would accept everything just to get more performance. Nowadays this has changed with people being more aware of the fan noise and power consumption of their graphic cards.
In order to properly test the fan noise a card emits we are using a Bruel & Kjaer 2236 sound level meter (~$4,000) which has the measurement range and accuracy we are looking for.


The tested graphics card is installed in a system that is completely passively cooled. That is passive PSU, passive CPU cooler, passive cooling on the motherboard and Solid-State HDD.
This setup allows us to eliminate secondary noise sources and test only the video card. To be more compliant with standards like DIN 45635 (we are not claiming to be fully DIN 45635 certified) the measurement is conducted at 100 cm distance and 160 cm over the floor. The ambient background noise level in the room is well below 20 dbA for all measurements. Please note that the dbA scale is not linear, it is logarithmic. 40 dbA is not twice as loud as 20 dbA. A 3 dbA increase results in double the sound pressure. The human hearing is a bit different and it is generally accepted that a 10 dbA increase doubles the perceived sound level.

Powercolor's card delivers an ok fan noise experience. The fan could be a lot quieter in my opinion, there is plenty of temperature headroom for that. I suggested such a change to Powercolor but they responded that they optimized the thermals/acoustics to the balance that best matches PCS - "Professional Cooling System" to provide highest OC with lowest noise and lowest temperatures.

Performance Summary

To create this graph we took all performance results of the five resolutions we tested, threw them together and calculated the relative performance of each card, compared to our review sample. In a sixth graph we also combined all tests in all resolutions to calculate the total relative performance of the review sample.

Performance per Watt

This graph was created by taking the relative performance numbers and putting them in contrast to the average power consumption results.

Performance per Dollar

If you are looking for the best bang for the buck, then you will love this graph. We looked up the current USD price of each card on the popular online shop Newegg and used it and the relative performance numbers to calculate the Performance per Dollar Index.

Overclocking

To find the maximum overclock of our card we used a combination of GPUTool and our benchmarking suite.
The overclocks listed here were achieved with the default fan and voltage settings as defined in the VGA BIOS. Please note that every single sample overclocks differently, that's why our results here can only serve as a guideline for what you can expect from your card.



The overclocks of our card are 855 MHz core (22% overclock) and 1410 MHz Memory (23% overclock). Really nice overclocking, especially considering this is brand new 40 nm GPU technology. Essentially you can buy a HD 5750, overclock it to HD 5770 performance levels and still have some money left for other hardware.

Overclocked Performance

Using these clock frequencies, we ran a quick test of Call of Duty 4 to evaluate the gains from overclocking.


The actual 3D performance gained from overclocking is 18.3%.

Temperatures

Temperatures are very low. Even with our overclocking, the temperatures are so low that it would have been no problem to quieten down the fan a bit more.

Value and Conclusion

	Powercolor is pricing their HD 5750 PCS at around $150
	Low power consumption Good overclocking potential Reasonably priced Support for DirectX 11, DirectX 10.1 Quiet Low temperatures GDDR5 memory Dirt 2 voucher included Support for AMD EyeFinity Technology Native HDMI & DisplayPort Improvements to integrated HDMI audio device
	Not the best price/performance ratio DirectX 11 won't be relevant for quite a while Cooler not as quiet as it could be Higher idle power draw than other HD 5750 cards No support for CUDA / PhysX
9.3	Powercolor's Radeon HD 5750 PCS scores with the beauty provided by its Zerotherm cooling solution. Whereas the coolers of other HD 5750 cards look like cheap OEM heatsinks, Powercolor's cooler conveys the feeling of solid quality and cooling performance. But aren't the inner values more important? AMD's new 40 nm Juniper graphics processor can provide performance surpassing last-generation's Radeon HD 4850, yet consumes only about half of its power. It also packs all the latest features like DirectX 11 and AMD EyeFinity support. On the connectivity side, things are bright too. You have the choice between two DVI ports, an HDMI port and a DisplayPort - and you may even use them all at the same time. Our sample showed some impressive overclocking capabilities. Both core and and memory could be overclocked by over 20%. If you are willing to go this route, you could easily save some money and get performance similar to the HD 5770 or HD 4870. The only weak points of the Powercolor HD 5750 PCS are that, compared to other HD 5750 cards, the idle power consumption is slightly higher and that the fan could be quieter. Even though the fan is quiet already, running at around 60°C allows for less fan noise at the cost of slightly increased temperatures. When looking at pure performance per buck you will be disappointed however. AMD's HD 4850 can be had at substantially lower price levels (-30%) than the HD 5750 and offers similar performance (-8%). I have to admit that the new features like DirectX 11, EyeFinity, native HDMI & DisplayPort warrant a price increase, but these features are not important for everyone. So the bottom line is: if you want the best bang for the buck right now, go with the HD 4850. If you want a longer term investment in future technologies, check out the HD 5750.