The device targets consumers looking for a silent graphics card for use in environments such as home theatres.<\/p>\n
“While the passive heatsink does add some size and weight to the card, it also keeps it cooler than some fansink solutions,” said Niel Campbell, Gigabyte Product Manager at Rectron.<\/p>\n
He believes there are very few silently\/passively cooled cards on the market, and even fewer good ones, and says Gigabyte’s solution offers the best possible cooling thanks to the large copper base of the cooler and four heatpipes, ensuring heat moves away from the major components.<\/p>\n
“This card uses the unique design of the cooler, along with natural convection from the airflow inside a chassis to draw in cool air over the fins. It also uses Gigabyte’s Ultra Durable VGA – with two-ounce copper PCB board, Tier 1 memory, Japanese solid capacitors, ferrite core chokes, and low RDS (on) MOSFET5 and high quality components – to further reduce the heat output of the card and improve the flow of electricity through the board.”<\/p>\n
Gigabyte claims its Ultra Durable VGA graphics accelerators can lower GPU temperature by between five and twenty percent, decrease power switching loss by ten to thirty percent, and increase overclocking capability by between ten and thirty percent.<\/p>\n
According to Campbell, the Gigabyte Radeon HD5770 Silent Cell GPU is now available today at a suggested retail price of between R 1,999 and R 2,199.<\/p>\n
Campbell points out that while it may not match the ultra high-speed benefits of its far more expensive high-end counterparts, it offers a good balance, with lower power consumption and the added benefit of the silent cooling solution.<\/p>\n
“Because of its passive cooling activity, this card is targeted at mainstream gamers looking for a good balance of performance and features,” explained Campbell, going on to warn that the cooler does make the card a little too large for very small HT PC cases.<\/p>\n
Technical specifications<\/strong><\/p>\n The Gigabyte Radeon HD5770 is built on the ATI Radeon HD 5770 Series GPU, which uses the 826 million transistors on 40nm fabrication process and GDDR5 memory, supports Microsoft DirectX11, ATI Eyefinity Technology, ATI Stream technology, ATI CrossFireX multi-GPU support, UVD 2 and PowerPlay.<\/p>\n The Gigabyte GV-R577SL-1GD features ATI’s latest second-generation TeraScale graphics engine, which provides power performance levels of more than two teraFLOPS, with 800 stream processors respectively.<\/p>\n