Introduction
AMD has launched a succession of high-end and mid-range graphics cards since bringing its new DX11 architecture to bear in September 2009 with the £300 Radeon HD 5870.
Since then, we've seen AMD derivate the range-topping design to the £200 Radeon HD 5850, brought in the mid-range with the £100/£125 Radeon HD 5750/5770 and then launched an assault on the ultra-high-end space with the dual-GPU Radeon HD 5970, costing a whopping £550.
AMD, however, has faced considerable difficulties in ensuring that cards have been available to the public, with the Radeon HD 58x0 range's availability being scarce to non-existent for the remainder of 2009.
As supply begins to trickle through at the start of 2010, AMD is focussed on ramming home the advantage of its DX11 cards - NVIDIA is yet to release its own set of newer GPUs - by invading the sub-£100 market with new GPUs that are also based on HD 5870, albeit trimmed to meet a much lower price point.
The physical manifestation of the cheapest DX11 card to date is the Radeon HD 5670. Set to etail from £70 for a 512MB model, it represents an outlay that's within the reach of most folk looking to upgrade an older PC.
Read on to find out if AMD has succeeded in paring its DX11 architecture well enough for a recommendation.
