Back in September last year, Sunnyvale, California-based Advanced Micro Devices did what most of the industry was already prepared for, namely the introduction of its first series of graphics processing units with support for DirectX 11. The chip maker did so by announcing their fastest cards yet, the Radeon HD 5800 series, which also brought forth a series of other new features, such as the Eyefinity technology. Following said release, AMD continued to update its line of Radeon GPUs with fresh series, including the high-end 5900 and the 5700 series.

Today, we're going to talk about the mainstream-focused Radeon HD 5670 graphics processing unit, a product that AMD formerly announced on January 14 this year. Designed to enable the same features that the company's other cards would provide consumers with, the new Radeon HD 5670 offered a DirectX 11-compatible GPU for a US$100. Touted as its best value for money solution, the 40nm-based GPU was integrated on a card that could be featured with a single-slot cooling solution, a low-profile PCB and no external power connector.

Considering its pricing, the HD 5670 was expected to compete with GeForce GT240 from NVIDIA, a card designed for mainstream customers and that was made available in both GDDR5 and GDDR3 versions. When the GT240 was released, AMD's only US$100 offering was the HD 4670, which failed to deliver the same level of performance as NVIDIA's card. This is where the 5670 comes into play, providing AMD with the necessary tools to reclaim the lead in the mainstream desktop graphics market.

The card we have here today comes from HIS, one of the world's leading vendors of custom Radeon-based graphics card builders. Unlike other models you'll find on the market, the HIS version has been featured with a custom, dual-slot cooling solution, which should effectively provide the card with a better cooling factor, compared to the factory model. With that in mind, we went on and prepared our system for this mainstream card.