MSI launches low-profile Radeon HD 5670

Unusual card with peculiar features

LOW-PROFILE  GRAPHICS CARDS are usually based on entry level GPU’s, but there are exceptions from this rule of course. MSI has launched its latest low-profile card today and it is a peculiar beast that doesn’t seem to fit in. The idea of a low-profile card is usually that they take up less space, but this card appears to take up more space.

For such a tiny card it’s strange to see a dual fan cooler and the heatsink actually looks rather bulky considering the size of the card itself. The Radeon HD 5670 is far from the hottest running GPU on the market, although with a max board power of 64W a decent cooler is still needed. MSI has gone for stock clock speeds of 775MHz for the core and 4040MHz for the 512MB of GDDR5 memory. The card measures 195x69x34mm (LxWxD) which means that it won’t fit in small mini-ITX cases as the card is too wide.

One would think that MSI is targeting HTPC users to a degree with this card, but with D-sub, DVI and DisplayPort connectivity, it looks like the R5670-PD512 is more of a solution for a business PC than an HTPC. On the other hand, MSI is supplying a DVI to HDMI dongle in the box. The card also comes with MSI’s Afterburner overclocking utility which allows you not only to overclock the card, but also to increase the Voltage to the GPU.

We can’t quite figure out what MSI was thinking when they came up with the R5670-PD512, as it doesn’t fit into any single category. It’s possible that MSI is just trying to save on production costs by using a smaller PCB, but the larger cooler seems to negate this. We’re sure there’s a target market for this card, we just haven’t managed to figure it out.S|A

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