AMD's final HD 5000 product splits the price difference between entry level and mainstream perfectly. It doesn't split the performance evenly, though; at almost 5 times the compute performance of the HD 5450 it is a great value for the small bump in price. The HD 5500 completes the top to bottom execution of the DirectX 11 sweet spot strategy to deliver four GPU cores in less than 6 months - before the competition has shipped any.

AMD ATi Radeon HD 5500 Series

AMD Vision Premium branded graphics cards can be expected to deliver top quality visuals and smooth gaming performance. AMD's new anisotropic filtering algorithm increases graphical fidelity, and DirectX 11 specific High Definition Ambient Occlusion is a great boon for lighting and effects. DirectX 11 is being adopted at twice the rate of DirectX 10, and with more than 2 million DirectX 11 GPUs already shipped, that rate is going to increase.

AMD ATi Radeon HD 5570

Designed to be a small form factor card, it compromises gaming performance to offer a great all round package. An office productivity workstation, home theater, online gaming or educational title user will enjoy the class leading performance per watt offered by the AMD ATI Radeon HD 5570.

Slimline desktop and nettop form factors are becoming increasingly popular, and the half-height option given by the HD 5570 grants a lot of flexibility to the OEM/System Builder, or enthusiast self-builders out there.

AMD ATi Radeon HD 5570

As always, this price points newest generation faces the problem of competition from last generations higher performing products being price discounted. If you are an FPS gamer needing to replace an existing or upgrade an older machine for a LAN party spare, you're better off watching the forum deals and etailer specials to catch a last gen performance card at entry level/mainstream pricing. The reasons to buy the HD 5570 is for the complete package - you need the small form factor, no external power supply requirement, support for DirectX 11 and ATI STREAM, OpenCL, and ATI Eyefinity, and the best Home Theater features.

We'd like to thank AMD for providing us with the review hardware, and to Dave Hoff and Jan Vlietinck for sharing their expertise with us. Click HERE to discuss our ATI Radeon HD5570 article in the Rage3D Forums!