The half-height graphics card segment doesn’t get much respect. It has to toil away with rather weak GPU offerings because space issues make decent cooling solutions pretty much impossible and the power supplies in such PCs are generally underpowered anyway.

The HIS Radeon HD 5570 brings impressive graphics performance to the form factor allowing for some decent gaming to be done. Hardware Secrets has the review:

HIS Radeon HD 5570 Fan, part number H557F1G, runs at the default clock rates set by AMD. As you can see on the pictures below it is a half-height video card. You can transform it into a “slim” (“half-height”) video card to be installed in small form factor (SFF) cases using the I/O brackets that come with the product.

A nice solution if you’re stuck in the restrictive confines many PC manufacturers impose on unwitting buyers.

There’s something to be said about custom cooling configurations. The base models most chip manufacturers ship with their creations do the minimum amount of work with the maximum amount of noise output imaginable.

MSI’s HD 5870 Lightning graphics card does away with the reference cooler in favor of a dual fan design that looks more than up to the task of cooling the Radeon HD 5870 it houses. techPowerUp has the review:

When looking at the PCB design, it becomes clear that MSI has gone long ways to improve the AMD reference design for extra overclocking potential. The included SSC coils work without emitting any coil noise, and the added number of PWM phases will help in situations that require large amounts of power fed to the GPU. But it seems to me that during normal use and during overclocking with the stock cooler, these features seem to make little difference.

A performance tailored card with plenty of features enthusiasts are looking for and a hefty amount of cooling performance.

The majority of graphics chips tend to go from cradle to grave housed in the same PCB design the chip manufacturer created for it. There’s very little incentive to create something new unless there are obvious cost or performance benefits.

The Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 Toxic Edition fancies itself a performance option with its new fangled cooling and new PCB design. AnandTech has the review:

With that in mind, we were able to use the AMD GPU Clock Tool to push our card by a further 130MHz on the core to 895MHz, and an additional 50MHz on the memory to 1175MHz. This is 17% core overclock and 4% memory overclock respectively. Thus unlike the already overclocked Toxic card, the games that will respond the best here are those that are GPU limited instead of memory bandwidth limited.

A good nudge on the overclocking front and it helps you get away from the pervasive red and black coolers the Radeon HD 5000 lineup is known for.

While we’d like to think chip manufacturers are only around for us consumers to enjoy, they’ve also got a good side business going on with other affiliated companies. Case in point is VIA’s new S3 Graphics Chrome 5400E x2 graphics card which is designed specifically for digital sign creators.

What’s so impressive? Well the board sports two of their GPUs to push pixels at up to 8 displays making for some massive sign possibilities.

Hit the break for the full details. Read more…

When a new GPU lineup is rolled out you can expect to see quite a few variations on the design over the coming months as the chip designer wants to maximize their earning potentials, which also means you’re likely to find something within your budget as well.

AMD’s Radeon HD 5570 sports the same great core features the rest of the 5000 lineup is endowed with but its slimmed down processing capabilities means you won’t be paying as much for the advanced features.

Here’s a roundup of reviews from around the web:

• AMD’s Radeon HD 5570: Low Profile, Higher Performance – AnandTech
• AMD’s ATI Radeon HD 5570 Video Card Review – HardOCP
• ATI Radeon HD 5570: Affordable DX11 GPU – Hot Hardware
• ATI Radeon HD 5450 & HD 5570 Graphics Cards – SilentPCReview
• ATI Radeon HD 5570 Review – TechSpot

When most enthusiasts think of a dual-GPU graphics card thoughts of insane frame rates and GPGPU crunching power come to mind, for some daring graphics card manufacturers it’s a chance to take a daring step into PhysX accelerated gaming.

Benchmark Reviews has a look at the EVGA GeForce GTX275 CO-OP PhysX Edition graphics card and its dual role as a 3D and PhysX accelerator:

The EVGA GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX Edition is the first dual GPU video card to use different GPUs: there’s a GTX 275 and a GTS 250. You cannot connect a monitor to the GTS 250; in fact, you can’t use the GTS 250 for rendering at all. Both of the DVI connectors on the rear of the card are connected to the GTX 275. The GTS 250 is only available for CUDA work.

An interesting proposal for those with an extensive library of physics demanding titles.

Running multi-GPU setups that feature low-end graphics cards has been, in the past, a good way to spend a decent chunk of money for a very low performance benefit. AMD’s latest chips flip that around a bit.

The AMD Radeon HD 5670 slots into the low-end of the 3D performance market but when it’s set up in CrossFire it can improve into a solid mid-range solution. TweakTown has the review:

Now, before you say that two HD 5670s are more expensive than a single HD 5770, let me stop you and say; I know. HD 5670s can be had for under $100, though; closer to the $95 mark. And again, while that setup is slightly more expensive than a single HD 5770, it’s also slightly faster across the board.

Performance that scales with the amount you pay…how intriguing!

There are two tiers of graphics cards out there, those that are worthy of overclocking and those that aren’t. Architecture differences, namely memory bandwidth, are the biggest roadblock to overclocking effectiveness.

TweakTown has a look at how well the Sapphire Radeon HD 5670 handles some increased clock speeds and it’s not looking so hot:

You’re not going to get a game changing experience with the extra clocks on offer and when you look through the graphs you see that the performance increase is only a couple of FPS here and there, which doesn’t sound all that impressive.

If you intend on grabbing a Radeon HD 5670 with some tweaking on your mind you might just want to save up and go for something with a wider memory bus width otherwise appreciate it for what it is as a media accelerating, low-power using, mid-range card.

Intel’s GMA integrated graphics lineup has never really mustered much on the performance front making it better suited to business-class computers or for users that don’t need much in the way of pixel-crunching power.

bit-tech has decided to test out how the latest Intel GMA HD, integrated on the new Core i3 and Core i5 processors, does against other IGPs:

Intel’s newly launched Clarkdale CPUs – the Core i3 and lower end Core i5 models – feature integrated Intel graphics, branded GMA HD. The graphics chip is architecturally interesting; it’s actually a 45nm chip which contains, along with the graphics, the memory controller, PCI-Express and DMI link to the PCH too. It connects to the 32nm CPU die directly via an internal QPI link, precisely the kind of modular design Intel (and AMD) have been talking about.

Its performance has improved enough that it’ll do fine for some light gaming but you’re still going to want a dedicated graphics card for more demanding titles.

While there’s a huge benefit to the top-end of the market once a new GPU hits the street there’s an equally large performance boost to the mid-range and low-end graphics cards based on the newest cores.

Testseek Labs has a look at the AMD Radeon HD 5670 graphics card which promises a good performance jump over last generation and an especially interesting feature set for the HTPC crowd:

The Radeon HD 5670 actually turns out to be even more powerful in the first batch of games that I had expected based on the results achieved in the benchmarking tests. I was actually somewhat surprised that this medium range card, at a price level below $100, could move these games with great fluidity.

A solid upgrade for those old power-hungry graphics cards.