ASUS EAH6570/DI/1GD3(LP) Radeon HD 6570 DDR3 1 GB Video Card
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- Super Alloy Power for up to 15% performance boost, 35°C cooler operation, and 2.5 times longer lifespan
- Dust-Proof Fan design increases particle resistence
- Low Profile design with included brackets
- Dust-Proof Fan design increases particle resistance
ASUS EAH6570/DI/1GD3(LP) – ASUS HD6570 low profile graphics card with DirectX®11 and HDMI support
Asus Video Cards
ASUS EAH6570/DI/1GD3(LP) Radeon HD 6570 DDR3 1 GB Video Card
List Price: $ 85.20
Price:
Compatible with Dell Optiplex 755 Desktop,
This product was bought for my Dell Optiplex 755 Desktop for use in moderate gaming (primarily Diablo 3). The Optiplex 755 family has four issues that make it difficult to find a decent gaming card for them: (1) they’re built using a BTX form factor and the first expansion slot is the PCI-E x16 slot, meaning that cards with double-wide brackets will not fit; (2) the Desktop (DT) and Small Form Factor (SFF) configurations can only utilize low-profile expansion cards; (3) roughly 1.3 cm to the right of the PCI-E x16 slot, there are several tall capacitors, meaning that video cards with wide heatsink/fan units will not work; (4) the PCI-E x16 slot will not necessarily supply 75W to a graphics card — according to Dell, it’s only specified for 25W operation. What this means for the Optiplex 755 DT is that only single-wide, low-profile, low-power graphics cards are guaranteed to work.
I bought this particular card because (a) it’s low-profile and (b) although the heatsink/fan unit is greater than single-wide, available pictures of it showed that it wasn’t that much wider. Part (b) turns out not to be true; the heatsink juts out a full 2 cm from the card, putting it in double-wide territory. Fortunately for me, because of the way that the heatsink of this card is cut on the bottom, it just *barely* fits with about 1 mm clearance between the bottom of the heatsink and the top of the capacitors. This meant that problems 1-3 were neatly dealt with. Problem 4, on the other hand — on day one of operation, this card has been flawless. There have been no failures to power on, and no crashes (in-game or otherwise). I’ll revise this review if power issues start cropping up.
Finally, on to performance. The particular Optiplex 755 that I bought happens to have a 2.33ghz Core 2 Duo and 2GB DDR2 SDRAM in it — adequate, but not exactly a powerhouse gaming build. The Radeon HD 6570 is at best a low-midrange graphics card, meaning that gaming at 1080p isn’t possible with most modern games. I am running this computer with a 900p display, so I was kind of worried about playability. As it turns out, Diablo 3 plays flawlessly at 1600×900 with all video options except shadows set to high,antialiasing off. I’ll be testing out my other games, but this was quite a pleasant surprise.
In summary, this is one of the better cards that you can buy for an Optiplex 755 DT. The next step up from here, currently, would be a Radeon HD 6670 with GDDR5, but only one manufacturer (Sapphire) makes a single-wide, low-profile variant (and it’ll cost double what I paid for this card). Newer-generation cards (at the time of this writing) like the Geforce GT 630 or the Radeon HD 7750 should end up being a large step up in performance, but the Geforce GT 630 has yet to be released and the Radeon HD 7750 only exists in full-height variants at the moment. As such, if you’re looking right now for a decent gaming card that has to work within the constraints of the Optiplex 755 DT, I heartily recommend this card.
2012/06/05 UPDATE:
The card continues to soldier on without a single problem. No power issues have cropped up, and the system remains stable even after play sessions of multiple hours’ duration. A welcome surprise is that this card can officially overclock to 800 MHz clock / 1050 MHz RAM via AMD Overdrive (an official part of the Catalyst drivers). Most 6570’s are limited to a much lower official overclock. I can confirm that when playing games on my Optiplex 755 DT, this overclock leads to a small but tangible performance benefit, and causes absolutely no system instability. The chip (1) is the same as the one used in the Radeon HD 6670, which means that it’s designed to run at up to 850 MHz, and (2) automatically adjusts its clocks downward when games (and other 3D intensive applications) are not being played. In other words, there is no reason to not enable this overclock.
The current situation for low-profile low-power gaming cards that fit in the Optiplex 755 DT has not changed since the time of my initial review. The Geforce GT 640 (with DDR3) has recently been released in low-profile format (by Afox). Unfortunately, (1) the HSF is double-wide, meaning that it may not fit in the Optiplex 755 DT, and (2) current reviews of this card indicate that it tends to perform in the neighborhood of the Radeon HD 6670 with GDDR5, and since a low-profile single-wide 6670 with GDDR5 already exists and is readily available (though not at amazon.com), there’s no benefit there. A low-profile Geforce GT 640 with GDDR5 would likely be a good deal faster, but these do not exist thus far. Low-profile Radeon HD 7750’s have not yet been released, unfortunately; otherwise one of those would be my ideal upgrade path.
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satisfied user,
Needed a low profile video card that would run 2 monitors and fit in a small case. This card fit the bill. Included the extra face plates needed to set it up in 2 slots, Windows 7 recognized it right away and installed the needed drivers. Has worked flawlessly since I installed it. Would highly recommend.
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Great for an HTPC,
Plays Blu-rays great over HDMI. Fits in low-profile case due to the extra two brackets. Gets a 6.8 on the WEI on both graphic card tests (just to give an idea of its relative performance, though WEI is not considered a meaningful benchmark). Would not suggest this card for those interested in gaming, however. It’s not really for that though reviews indicate it can play some of the less demanding games at lower resolutions.
The fan is extremely quiet. It can get warm.
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