Rage3D's ATI Radeon HD5570 Video Card Review

[Lupine]

Last week saw the entry-level ATI Radeon HD 5450 based on AMD's Cedar core, with the ATI Radeon HD 5670 introducing Redwood a couple of weeks prior to that. The HD 5570 slots in between the HD 5670 and the HD 5450 in terms of price, but not in terms of performance. The Redwood architecture is pruned to allow big features in small form factor (SFF) or Home Theater PC (HTPC). Join us as we take a look at AMD's latest video card, the HD 5570.

ATI Radeon HD5570 Video Card Review

[Dr. Zhivago]

Good review as always Jimbo! Can you elaborate on what Power Plan you had enabled in Windows 7? As I pointed out here in this thread, it affects how the "Smooth Video Playback" function seems to operate. I am wondering if you can replicate my findings by not having to toggle the "SVP" button for the Deinterlacing Options to work.

[caveman-jim]

I had the Performance power plan enabled. SVP enforced uses bob or weave Deinterlacing only. Disabling SVP allows you to select Vector Adaptive. IIRC Automatic used Vector Adaptive when SVP was disabled, too.

[Dr. Zhivago]

m'kay. I wonder why they're forcing that behavior. You'd think the detection algorithm would be better.

EDIT: Okay, so I just did a test with the Cheese Slices video. Toggling SVP to "Off" changes the playback from Smooth to "Stuttery". However, it does NOT affect Deinterlacing quality. Manually setting Deinterlacing to Weave shows the jagged lines on the green/white area. If I rebooted with the Power Plan set to Balanced, I bet I would see the difference between SVP On and the Deinterlacing options disabled and SVP Off and the Deinterlacing features enabled, since that was my past experience. Nothing that has happened in the last 2 months has shown me any different.

So, from my perspective, SVP affects the smooth pleyback of HD content without disabling Vector Adaptive Deinterlacing as long as I boot with the Power Plan set to High Performance. For me, it's a win-win. I get smooth HD content playback AND Vector Adaptive Deinterlacing at the same time. Imma poke Spyre one more time about this.

[caveman-jim]

Adaptive Vector Deinterlacing is done on the shaders, so you need a little bit of horsepower to do it. Like if you have AVD enabled, you don't have enough left over for other features perhaps, on the Vision Basic cards. The Vision Premium should be able to do a little better, at least at the low end like the HD 5570.

[Dr. Zhivago]

So, my HD3300 IGP is more powerful than a dedicated 5xxx series low end card?

[Dr. Zhivago]

Okay, after READING the directions for the Cheese Slcies Test Video, and looking at the resulting patterns when running said video, my HTPC can only do up to MA Deinterlacing. Turning off SVP, allows it to try to run VA Deinterlacing and that's why it gets stuttery.

What I still don't get is why it works better when I boot with it set to High Performance. Deinterlacing clearly works better when the system boots in this mode. It allows Deinterlacing up to MA to work, otherwise, it turns all Deinterlacing options off.

Sorry for all the confusion.

[caveman-jim]

Talked to AMD today, the drivers sent out with the sample HD 5570 were not quite finalized and so the AVD actually wasn't detecting the cards performance properly. I've been given access to updated ones and will retest AVD and let you know.

[Dr. Zhivago]

Sweet! Thanks for the update, Cavedude.

[Lupine]

We've posted a new article, investigating the deinterlacing performance issues - ATI Radeon HD5450 & 5570 HTPC Addendum: Deinterlacing Performance