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Best PCIe Card: Entry-level

Best Graphics Cards For The Money: January 2012
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Best PCI Express (PCIe) Card For £45:

Radeon HD 5670

Exceptional 1680x1050 performance in most games, 1920x1200 in most games with lowered detail

Radeon HD 5670
Codename: RV830
Process: 40 nm
Universal Shaders: 400
Texture Units: 20
ROPs: 8
Memory Bus: 128-bit
Core Speed MHz: 775
Memory Speed MHz: 1000 (4000 effective)
DirectX/Shader Model: DX 11/SM 5.0
Max TDP:61 W

The Radeon HD 5670 offers best-in-class performance and DirectX 11 compatibility, along with all of the other Radeon HD 5000-series features, such as multi-display support and high-def audio bitstreaming.

The problem is, this card becoming hard to find as it is being phased out to make way for the similarly priced DDR3-equipped Radeon HD 6670. While the newer model does have a slight advantage when it comes to raw GPU capability,  the memory bandwidth is much lower. As a result, we'll recommend the Radeon HD 5670 as long as we can find it available.

Read our full review of AMD's Radeon HD 5670 for more information on the card and its underlying architecture.

Best PCIe Card For ~£65: None

Honourable Mention:
Radeon HD 6670 GDDR5

Exceptional 1680x1050 performance in most games, 1920x1200 in most games with lowered detail

Radeon HD 6670 GDDR5
Codename: Turks
Process: 40 nm
Universal Shaders: 480
Texture Units: 24
ROPs: 8
Memory Bus: 128-bit
Core Speed MHz: 800
Memory Speed MHz: 1000 (4000 effective)
DirectX/Shader Model: DX 11/SM 5.0
Max TDP:66 W

The Radeon HD 6670 isn't really much of an upgrade over the Radeon HD 5670, and it's definitely slower than the similarly-priced Radeon HD 6750. However, we're going to give it an honourable mention for being the fastest card (at least compared to reference versions from AMD and Nvidia) that doesn't require an auxiliary PCIe power cable. That is to say its power requirements are entirely satisfied by a second-generation PCI Express x16 slot.

Read our full review of AMD's Radeon HD 6670 for more information on the card and its underlying architecture.

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  • 0 Hide
    wildpluckings , 5 January 2012 03:02
    I use SLI GTX 560 ti and game at 2560x1440. A significant factor is that games like Battlefield 3 or Crysis 2 with the very highest texture settings will stutter under this configuration due to the GPU memory usage being maxed out (1GB per card). Usually it is only a case of reverting to the second from top texture quality setting in order to achieve extremely smooth motion and high framerates.
  • 0 Hide
    fuggles , 5 January 2012 08:02
    where can you get the 6670 for 65 pounds ??? you can't

    this article is a lie
  • -1 Hide
    mikesk , 6 January 2012 00:14
    Oh yes you cannnn.....

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Asus-Graphics-PCI-Express-CrossFireX-Technology/dp/B004XANOCO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1325786997&sr=8-2
  • 0 Hide
    Mousemonkey , 7 January 2012 15:51
    Quote:
    where can you get the 6670 for 65 pounds ??? you can't

    this article is a lie

    http://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-hardware/all/gpu-amd/radeon-hd6670-pci-e-%28480-cores%29
  • -1 Hide
    tulx , 8 January 2012 20:24
    fuggleswhere can you get the 6670 for 65 pounds ??? you can'tthis article is a lie


    owned
  • 0 Hide
    fuggles , 15 January 2012 20:49
    the over clocked 460 is basically a 470 which is basically a 560