As you can see from the picture, Sapphire HD 5570 1GB DDR3 PCI-E VGA/DVI/DP, SKU: 11167-04-40R is a low profile card but with active cooling. The card is 16.8cm long and is single slot by design. Unlike the passively cooled HD 5450, whose cooler exceeds the width of the card, the HD 5570’s cooling is flush with the PCB and won’t get in the way of equipment above it.



Sapphire HD 5570 card features a Redwood GPU built in 40nm and doesn’t consume much, so there’s no need for external power connectors. The card’s TDP stands at 42.7W whereas minimum consumption in idle mode is at 9.69W.



If you’re worried that Sapphire’s HD 5570 I/O panel is too high and that it might not fit into your mini-ITX or SFF (small form factor) case, it’s time to stop as Sapphire anticipated the issue and ships two additional low profile panels, which you can see below. One of them is for the VGA connector and is placed into a neighboring slot on the case. Naturally, the VGA connector is connected to the card with a cable that will easily reach the graphics card in the next slot.



The cooler has a small fan which isn’t very quiet in 3D, although it’s not too loud either. You’ll hear it in idle mode as well, but it’s nothing that we’d call irritating. Intensive 3D can push the card up to about 75°C, whereas in idle mode temperatures duck to about 37°C. Good thing about this cooling is that the fan can be controlled from ATI’s Catalyst Control Center Overdrive tool.

The I/O panel features dual-link DVI, VGA and DisplayPort outs, meaning the card is capable of ATI Eyefinity support of up to three monitors. If ATI Eyefinity is what you’re looking for, then you’ll have to purchase an HD 5570 card with DisplayPort connector, otherwise you’ll be limited to two monitor setups. Unfortunately, if you don’t have a DisplayPort monitor, you’ll have to purchase an active DisplayPort-to-DVI/VGA/HDMI that’s priced at around €100 (not to be confused with ordinary passive dongles which are cheap and often shipped with cards). Passive converters are much cheaper and will work well but in that case you can forget about Eyefinity.



Sapphire HD 5570 uses 1GB of Samsung’s DDR3 memory (K4W1G1646E-HC12) running at 900MHz (1800MHz effectively). There are four memory modules on each side of the card. The GPU runs at 650MHz.



The following picture shows Sapphire HD 5570 (left) and Sapphire HD 5450 (right). Both cards are low profile with identical set of video outs.