XFX Radeon HD 6570 - Good Value for Money

The third of the XFX cards in the entry-level graphics card that we’re reviewing is the HD6570. We recently reviewed the HD6670, HD6570 and the passive cooled HD6450. The HD 6670 was the fastest of the three cards and the HD 6450 turned out to be the perfect HTPC graphics solution.

Can fit in a single PCIe slot

Today, we look at the Radeon HD 6570 (HD-657X-ZAF3), a card that is designed for casual gaming, watching HD movies and can also be configured to be used in an HTPC. It’s positioned right in between the HD6450 and the HD6670.

Design and Features
Like all of the Radeon cards from XFX, the HD6570 too uses a custom cooler design. The graphics card use 1 GB of DDR5 Hynix memory. There are four RAM modules used and the heatsink doesn’t make contact with any of them. The Radeon 6670 GPU is clocked at 650 MHz and the memory operates at 1600 MHz. The fan and the heatsink on the card are fully exposed. This card, like all of the entry-level cards is slim and takes up a single expansion slot. Unlike the HD6450, however, it’s not a low profile card, so you won’t be able to use this card on a really slim cabinet. In terms of design and size, the HD 6570 looks exactly the same as the HD 6670.

Eyefinty support up to four monitors using the HDMI, D-Sub and DVI ports

There are connectivity options for HDMI, D-Sub, as well as DVI. This HD 6670 supports AMD’s CrossfireX and also Eyefinity, which allows up to four monitors to be connected to a single card.

Test Rig Specifications

• Processor: Intel Core i7-2600K CPU @ 3.40 GHz
• Motherboard: GIGABYTE P67A-UD3R
• Memory: Corsair Dominator GT 6 GB DDR3 (3 x 2 GB)
• Hard drive: WD Velociraptor  300 GB
• GPU: XFX HD6570 (HD-657X-ZAF3)
• PSU: Cooler Master Silent Pro 1000W

Performance
Not only is the XFX HD 6570 identical in terms of design to the HD 6670, but its also identical in terms of specifications. Other than the clock speed of the GPU, the 6570 has the same number of stream processors, memory and speed as well. The GPU is the only component clocked to 650MHz, which is technically, a big drop from the HD6670.

XFX HD 6570 showed consistant performances

We ran the same set of benchmarks that we did on the HD6670 and the HD6450. The resolution that we used for these benchmarks was 1680x1050, again targeting users with smaller displays. The image quality was also lowered by turning all anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering and tessellation features for the games.

Scores across all benchmarks were almost identical. To start with 3D Mark Vantage, we got a  d score of 5201 points for the HD6570 and a GPU score of 4129. The faster HD6670 scores an overall score of 5635 points and a GPU score of 4496 in comparison. This might sound like a lot more, but real world game benchmarks are where the difference can be easily made out.

In games based on the Source Engine, such as Left 4 Dead 2, we saw average frame rates of 104.85 fps, which is just 10 fps lower than the HD6670. The same trend could be noticed across all of the other game benchmarks. For example, Just Cause 2, Mafia 2 and even Crysis 2 only saw a drop of rougly 2 fps each. While playing games, you’re bound to decrease the quality settings even more to make some of these games playable, but even then, the difference between the cards isn’t going to increase by a large margin. These small variations in frame rates are hardly noticeable. So it’s clear that the HD6570 is a slower GPU, it doesn’t affect the overall performance of the card by a lot.

Identical in design to the XFX Radeon HD 6670

Verdict
The XFX HD6570 is consistently slower than the XFX HD6670, but only by the tiniest of differences. We thought the XFX HD6670, although slower than the ASUS HD6670, was good value for money. The HD6570 is even more impressive in that aspect. The MRP stated by XFX is Rs. 7,000 but the card sells for approximately Rs. 3,950 in the market. This makes the HD6570, Rs.400 cheaper than the HD6670. The performance increase you get by buying a HD6670 is proportional to the price. If you’re looking for that tiny boost in performance, go get yourself a 6670, if you’re tight on cash, the HD6570 will do just fine.