AMD Radeon HD 6730M vs ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 vs ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730

AMD Radeon HD 6730M

  The AMD Radeon HD 6730M (sometimes also called ATI Mobility Radeon HD 6730 or similar) is a fast middle class graphics card for laptops. It supports DirectX11, is the successor of the HD 5730, and features higher clock rates, 80 more shaders, Eyefinity+ and the new UVD3 video decoder. However, it is still produced in 40nm and based on the same Whister chip as the whole 6700M and 6600M series. First informations also suggest, that the HD 6730M is a 6770M with slow DDR3 memory.

The 480 Stream processors should be still based on the "old" 5D architecture similar to the 5000 series. Therefore, the number of shaders is not comparable to the 1D cores of current Nvidia GPUs. The Tessellation performance should be improved (like the desktop 6800 series) with the new cards. The Stream processors can be used with DirectX 11, OpenGL 4.1, DirectCompute 11 and OpenCL. With the later two the cores can also be used for general computations like transcoding videos.

The 3D performance should be a bit above the old Radeon HD 5730 due to the larger amount of shaders. Therefore, current and demanding games should run fluently in 1366x768 and medium to high details. Less demanding games like Sims 3 or Fifa 11 should run in high details and resolutions.

The new UVD3 video decoder supports the decoding of MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, VC-1, MPEG-2, Flash and now also Multi-View Codec (MVC) and MPEG-4 part 2 (DivX, xVid) HD videos on the graphics card.

Furthermore, the HD 6700M series integrates a HD audio controller to transmit HD Audio (TrueHD or DTS Master Audio) over HDMI and DisplayPort (e.g. for Blu-Ray videos).

The AMD HD3D Technology offers support for Blu-Ray 3D and 3D displays (integrated and external). However, the solution is not as mature as Nvidias 3D Vision.

Thanks to Eyefinity the graphics chip is able to theoretically drive up to 5 monitors simultaneously. However, this only works if the laptop features enough DisplayPort outputs.

The power consumption of the chip should be similar to the Mobility Radeon HD 5730 and therefore suited for 15" laptops and up.

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650

The AMD ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 is a middle class DirectX 11 graphics card for laptops. Its based on the Madison (LE, LP or Pro) chip and is produced in 40nm. Like its predecessor, the Mobility Radeon 4650, the HD 5650 features a 128 Bit memory bus for dedicated DDR3 and GDDR3 memory chips. GDDR5 is  not supported on the HD 5650 (only in the higher clocked versions like the 5750 or 5770 cards based on the same chip).

In our benchmarks with the HD 5650, the GPU is performing on a level with the previous Mobility Radeon HD 4670 or the Nvidia GeForce GTS 250M (with DDR3 graphics memory). This means the performance is sufficient for high details in nearly all DirectX 10 games (only Crysis and GTA4 are not fluently playable in high details - see gaming list below). Upcoming and current DirectX 11 games (like DIRT2) may not run in full detail settings. That means some of the new DirectX 11 features (Tesselation e.g.) may not run fluently on this gaming graphics adapter. Currently the HD 5650 is a good gaming pick for well priced laptops with a 15 inch screen and a resolution of about 1366x768.

The Mobility HD 5650 supports Avivo HD to accelerate HD videos using the graphics card. The improved UVD2 processor in the DirectX11 models of the Radeon HD 5000 series is able to decode up to two streams in parallel (if the card offers enough memory bandwidth). It is not clear if the HD 5650 using (G)DDR3 offers enough bandwidth for this task. 

Another novelty of the HD 5650 is the possibility to transport HD Audio formats (8-channel Dolby True HD, DTS Master) over the HDMI port.

Thanks to Eyevision, up to 6 monitors can be used with the HD 5650 in 3D and 2D applications (if the laptop features DisplayPort outputs). In most laptops this is not the case, and therefore only 2 monitors are supported at a time.

The power consumption should be (due to the modern 40nm process in 2009) relatively low and according to rumors about 10-15 Watt.

Compared to desktop graphics cards, the Mobilty 5650 is similar to a ATI Radeon 5570 with lower core clock speeds and slower memory speeds (the desktop 5570 is similar to the Mobility 5770).

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730

The ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730 is a mobile performance class graphic card for laptops with native DirectX 11 support. Despite the name, the HD chip does not stem from the desktop HD 5700 series but is just a faster Mobility Radeon HD 5650 with 400 shader cores. Compared to the Mobility HD 5750, the 5730 has no GDDR5 support, but a higher core speed.

As the other HD 5600/5700 cards, the HD 5730 offers Avivo HD for HD video acceleration, 8-channel HD audio output over HDMI 1.3, Eyefinity for up to 6 monitors (if the laptop features DisplayPorts) and Direct Compute 11 support.

The performance should be a bit better than a GeForce GTS 250M in the middle-performance class. This means all modern games (of 2009) should run fluently on this graphics card in medium to high detail settings with lower resolution settings (e.g. 1366x768).

Compared to desktop graphics cards, the HD 5730 should be similar to a Radeon 5570 (except the desktop version uses faster GDDR5).