ATI Radeon HD 5570 gets a GDDR5 makeover

The idea that you needed to spend big bucks on a graphics card if you wanted to use it for gaming was shattered when AMD/ATI earlier this year released the Radeon HD 5570 - a card that packed a punch well above its $79 price range weight. Sure, you had to make compromises and pull down the resolution and detail sliders a bit, but for the price it was an excellent card.

Now the Radeon HD 5570 just got better.

Basically, AMD has taken the same HD 5570 card and given it 1GB of GDDR5 RAM as opposed to the slower DDR3 on the older model. Extra charge to the consumer - $0.

The Radeon HD 5570 basically wipes the floor with NVIDIA at that price range. The HD 5570 offers support for DirectX 11 and Eyefinity triple-monitor support. If you want the lowest-priced latest generation card from NVIDIA, the GeForce GTX 465, then that'll set you back $280.

With the HD 5570 GDDR5 model what you get is a HD 5570 with GDDR5, so you can't expect miracles when it comes to a performance boost. However, benchmarks to suggest that this upgrade puts the HD 5570 GDDR5 between the HD 5570 DDR3 and the HD 5670, a card which retails for around $89.

So, should you buy the HD 5570 GDDR5 or the HD 5670? Depends on what you want. If you're looking for the cheapest GPU possible to allow you to fire up the odd game, then the HD 5570 GDDR5 represents a excellent deal. If you're likely to want to do more gaming, and you've got $10 to spare, I'd go for the HD 5670.