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  • ATI Radeon HD 5570 and Radeon HD 5450

    The Radeon HD 5570 and 5450

    ATI released two more budget-oriented Radeon 5000 series video cards. The Radeon HD 5570 and Radeon HD 5450 roll in at $80 to $85 and $50 to $60, respectively. You'll get all the usual Radeon HD 5000 series goodies--triple monitor support and DirectX11. Just don't count on any of the gaming horsepower to make an appearance.

    The Specs:
    Radeon HD 5570
    650MHz core
    400 stream processors
    1GB 900MHz DDR3 RAM

    Radeon HD 5450
    650MHz Core
    80 stream processors
    512MB/1GB 800MHz DDR3/DDR2 RAM

    At first glance, the Radeon HD 5570 seems like it might be a decent contender, but then we encounter the pesky DDR3 problem. The reduced memory bandwidth will nip any performance aspirations in the bud. The Radeon HD 5450, like just about any $50 GPU, gets carved down to the bone. With less than a one-fourth of the cores present on the Radeon HD 5570, it's all down hill.

    On the plus side, these lean cards draw almost no power. The Radeon HD 5570 draws 38W and idles under 10W. If that seems low, the Radeon HD 5450 uses even less: 19W under load and 7W at idle. Their miniscule power consumption is also matched by their small physical size and low noise output. Both of the cards are half height, which helps them fit into tight cases. The Radeon HD 5450 doesn't even have a fan, so it's completely silent.

    Performance Tests

    Putting the cards through the paces, we couldn't help but hope for better performance. The specs didn't inspire much, and the tests confirmed it. The 3DMark Vantage GPU score shows the Radeon HD 5670 to be five times faster than the Radeon HD 5450, and almost one-and-a-half times as fast as the Radeon HD 5570. Yes, the Radeon HD 5670 costs twice as much, but when we're down in the $50-to-$100 range, it really pays to save for an extra week or two to get something vastly better. Dirt 2 and Batman showed similar results. To even get Dirt 2 playable on the Radeon HD 5450, we had to set everything to ultra low and kick the resolution down to 1280x768. The Radeon HD 5570 fared slightly better, but it's hardly $20 away from the Radeon HD 5670 and GeForce 9800 GT. Unless your biggest concerns are power and space, do yourself a favor and move up the chain a bit.

  • ATI Radeon HD 5670 - Budget Graphics for All

    The Radeon HD 5670

    Guess what? ATI has yet another Radeon 5000 GPU up its sleeve, albeit on the budget end of the spectrum: the Radeon HD 5670. $100 buys you an almost completely silent, triple-monitor-capable budget gaming card.

    The basic specs: 775MHz core clock, 400 Stream processors, and 512MB of memory clocked at 1GHz. It's basically half of a Radeon HD 5770, but it still manages to hold its own. Like other Radeon HD 5000 series cards, the 5670 is DirectX 11 capable and has the usual suite of features you'd expect: HDMI 1.3a support, DTS Master Audio, Dolby True HD, and Eyefinity. Although, if you're going to purchase an additional two monitors and bother to build a triple monitor gaming setup, do yourself a favor and get something with a bit more oomph.

    The Radeon HD 5670 is tiny compared to the dual slot behemoth that is the Radeon HD 5970. It also doesn't need a power connector and has a maximum power consumption of 75W (minimum of 14W), so forget about having to upgrade your power supply.

    Performance Charts

    Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5670 doesn't exactly disappoint. The $100 card gets you gaming at 1920x1200 on all of the games we tested and with high-quality settings. Nvidia's direct competitor to the Radeon HD 5670 would be the GeForce GT 240, but we didn't have that on hand for testing. In its stead, we used the similarly priced GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, which comes in anywhere between $95 and $110. It outguns both the Radeon HD 5670 and the GeForce GT 240, but it's missing quite a few home-theater-oriented features, consumes more power, and generates more heat. Get the 9800 GT if all you care about is games. DirectX 11 is a nice feature for the Radeon HD 5670, but we don't consider it a must-have. However, should the home-theater features and Eyefinity support entice you, the Radeon HD 5670 is a good bet.

  • PlayStation Home gets Sodium One - the first social MMO shooter

    PlayStation Home keeps evolving. What started as a simple place to hang out and move furniture morphed into a land filled with game spaces, minigames, and much more. Now it's moving another step forward. The virtual space will get full-blown games, the first of which is Outso's Sodium One, an arcade-style shooter with massively multiplayer online and social gaming aspects all tied up into one.

    Cost factors into any game, and Sodium One is no different. The first five levels will be offered for free, and the rest of the game (an added 45 levels) is available for $4.99. The game will feature rooms you can navigate: a bar, a dance floor, a mission area, a VIP lounge (available to those who purchased the game), and even some scorpion-stomping grounds, among other areas.

    Sodium One has a few games built into it, some of which involve squishing scorpions and making virtual drinks. The core of the gameplay resides around Salt Shooter, where you're fighting off waves of enemy robots in the desert with a hovertank. You'll basically want to shoot down enemies, grab their loot, and run off to buy better weapons and upgrades for your ship.

    You'll get missions from Vickie, an odd-looking robot with one goofy leg, blue hair, and a rather skimpy outfit. As you complete more missions, which might involve shooting robots, stomping on bugs, or going to various events, you'll level up your character, get patches for your avatar's outfit, and win upgrades.

    Outso related that the game will be updated at regular intervals with new quests, added levels, and other various improvements. The developers will lean heavily on user feedback to determine which way to take the game. They indicated that cooperative modes might come in future iterations of the game.

    As for the social gaming aspect, don't expect anything like Zynga's Mafia Wars, where you're constantly bombarded with invites, requests, and anything of that nature. As far as we can tell, you'll be allowed to purchase credits for upgrades and gift items to friends.

    The game is accessible today via Home in North America and Europe and will be free for 1,050 users over the next seven days, at a rate of 105 users per day.

    Sony's Director of PlayStation Home, Jack Buser, indicated that Sodium One marks the start of a shift in PlayStation Home. Expect a whole lot more in terms of full-blown gaming experiences over the next year.

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