Sapphire Radeon HD 5750 review

The HD 5750 is the least expensive of the three new ATI cards we review this month, and currently the cheapest DirectX 11-compatible card on the market.

It also includes all the fancy features of the more powerful models, such as HD audio over HDMI and triple-monitor support for games.

Not surprisingly, there’s little architectural difference between the HD 5750 and the HD 5770. The HD 5750 card has 720 stream processors – just 80 fewer than the HD 5770 – and slightly slower memory – 1.15GHz rather than 1.2GHz. The key difference is the slower core clock speed of 700MHz rather than 850MHz.

Despite these differences, the HD 5750’s benchmark scores were remarkably similar to those of its more expensive sibling. A Crysis score of 29.2fps means you may have to sacrifice some detail to get demanding games running at higher resolutions, but it’s only 4fps slower than the HD 5770.

This isn’t surprising, as the two cards are close in price, with only £15 between them. Both cards provide two DVI ports plus DisplayPort and HDMI outputs. We’ve reviewed the Sapphire version here, which has a custom cooler on it, but it’s not significantly different to the reference card we received from ATI. All the HD 5750s we’ve seen have fans that blow warm air into your case rather than through the exhaust port on the rear, which isn’t ideal for keeping the rest of your components cool.

If you’re after a specific 5000-series feature, such as HD audio over HDMI, the HD 5750 is a good buy, although you might want to hold off for the almost inevitable 5500- and 5300-series cards. However, gamers might as well spend the extra £15 and buy the slightly more powerful HD 5770.