ATI Mobility Radeo? HD 3600 Series - Overview
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470
The ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470 is an entry-level / lower middle class DirectX 11 graphics card for laptops. It is manufactured in 40nm and is based on the Park (XT) architecture of entry level graphic chips (dedicated). It supports GDDR5, but due to cost savings, the card may often be outfitted with slower DDR3 memory.
Due to the higher clock rate (and GDDR5 support), the 3D gaming performance should be above the HD 4570 (predecessor with same TDP range). Therefore, all current games should be playable in low-medium details. Demanding games, like Crysis, NFS Shift, or Modern Warfare ran on the HD 4570 for example only in low detail settings fluently. Less demanding games like Left 4 Dead should run in high detail settings.
The memory interface of the Mobility 5470 is composed out of one 64 bit wide controller that can access DDR3 or GDDR5 memory. If GDDR5 is used by the laptop vendor the performance should be noticeably better.
The HD5470 offers only 80 MADD cores (called Stream Processors) which are grouped in 16 5-dimensional groups. The cores support DirectX 11 functions in hardware (Tessellation, OIT, Post-Processing, Shadows, HDR Texture Compression). Compared to the HD 5600/5700 series which feature 400 cores, the core count of the HD5400 series is clearly cut down leading to a reduced computation power of 120 versus 360-520 (HD 5650) GigaFLOPs. Due to the high clock speed of the chip, the gap is not that big.
According to A MD, the HD 5000 series was also improved regarding general computing (as the HD4000 series was not optimized for this). Therefore, the performance of ATI stream, OpenCL, and DirectCompute 11 applications should be noticable better.
The Mobility Radeon HD 5000 series includes an improved video processor (UVD2) to decode HD videos with the graphic card. The new version is able to decode two HD streams simultaneously (e.g., for Blu-Ray picture in picture) if the graphic card offers enough memory bandwidth (its not sure if the HD 5470 offers enough performance, perhaps versions with GDDR5). Since the Flash 10.1 Beta, the 5000 series is also able to help accelerate Flash HD videos (like YouTube).
A special feature of the HD 5000 series is its ability to transmit HD audio formats (like Dolby True HD or DTS HD Master Audio) with up to 8 channels and 192 KHz / 24 Bit over HDMI 1.3a.
As the desktop HD 5000 series, the Mobility HD 5470 also supports Eyefinity to connect up to 4 monitors to the graphics chip. Of course, this depends on how many monitor outputs the laptop vendor adds to the laptop (and how they are wired). Most laptops will support three screens simultaneously (internal and two external).
The power consumption of the HD 5470 is in the same range as the older HD 4750 (12-15 Watt depending on the used memory). Therefore, the GPU will mostly be used in 13-17" laptops. According to A MD, the performance per watt ratio (same power consumption, better performance) and the Idle power consumption were improved (thanks to Memory Clock Scaling and Clock Gating). Furthermore, the chip does support PowerXpress (with A MD chipset) and Switchable Graphics (Intel) to switch between the dedicated and chipset / CPU graphics card (with improved switching times).
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