The recently released Juniper GPU (Radeon HD57XX) series of graphics cards brings a variety of innovations to the market, and is able to do so at quite an attractive price. 40nm process technology, GDDR5 memory, improved energy efficiency, and DirectX 11 support are all here... and in a card priced at less than $150. This review is going to take a closer look at an HD5750 card from
Sapphire that comes with 1GB of memory running at 1150MHz, a 700MHz GPU. While we will obviously be interested to see what this card can do on its own, while we're at it we'll run a pair of them in CrossFire to see if it plays nicely with others.
Before taking a look at the sample provided for review, let's look at some information on the Radeon HD5750 1GB graphics card as taken from the
official product page on the Sapphire website.
Features:
» Microsoft DirectX® 11 Support
» ATI Eyefinity Technology
» ATI Stream Technology
» 40 nm Process Technology
» 1.008 TeraFlops Processing Power
» 720 Stream Processing Units
» Advanced GDDR5 Memory Technology
» 2nd Generation TeraScale Engine
» Microsoft Windows 7® Support
» ATI CrossFireX™ Technology
» Enhanced Anisotropic Filtering
» Accelerated Video Transcoding
» Display Flexibility, Supports DL-DVI, DP, HDMI and D-Sub
» HDMI 1.3
» Dolby® TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio™ Support
» ATI PowerPlay™ Technology8 – Enhanced Support for GDDR5 memory
» ATI Avivo™ Technology Enhanced Unified Video Decoder 2 (UVD 2)
» Supports OpenGL 3.2
» DXVA 1.0 & 2.0 Support
Specifications:
» SKU Number: 11164-00
» I/O Output: Dual DL-DVI-I+DP+HDMI, Triple Display Support
» Core Clock: 700 MHz
» Memory Clock: Effective 4600 MHz
» PCI Express 2.1 x16 bus interface
» Dual Slot Cooler with Auto Fan Control
» On-board HDMI, supports HDMI 1.3 with High Bitrate Audio
» On-board DisplayPort
» Maximum Board Power: 108 Watt; Idle Board Power: 18 Watt
There are a bunch of new technologies being implemented with this card, one of which is "ATI Eyefinity Technology", which lets one GPU drive up to six displays [
more information]. This isn't just for a multi-display desktop, but for expanding 3D games for a more immersive experience. Another item of interest is support for Microsoft's DirectX 11, their latest graphics technology made available in Windows 7 [
more information].
