Verdict and Conclusion
I sound like the Mob lol!… but can money buy silence? In this case, yes it can! With no fans, the card is totally silent. But what about the excess heat? Well luckily, Gigabyte’s innovative Silent Cell cooling technology proved to be a great feature. During our tests, we measured the GPU temperature at full load, and after several hours of heavy DX11 gaming, the GPU temperature reached approximately 49-52 degrees Celsius. Idle temperatures were also very respectable at 40 degrees Celsius.
As far as 3D/gaming performance is concerned, the Gigabyte Radeon HD 5770 Silent Cell matched the HIS Radeon HD 5770 IceQ5 in all of our benchmarks. Mind you, this was expected as both cards used the same Radeon HD 5770 GPU clocked at 875Mhz. However, for some reason the Gigabyte Radeon HD 5770 Silent Cell performed slightly better during our AvP (DX11) benchmark.
The Gigabyte Radeon HD 5770 Silent Cell may not be the first choice for the hardcore gamer, but it’s definitely well worth considering if you’re a mainstream user who wants a silent graphics card. Currently, this is the ONLY silent solution for HD 5770 in the market. So, what do you get for your money? Well for starters, you get 1Gb of GDDR5 ram, an overclocked GPU, Gigabyte’s Silent Cell cooling with Ultra Durable VGA technology, support for DX11 and CrossfireX, as well as ATI’s Eyefinity. All this on a mainstream card … now that’s pretty good! The only negative I can see, is the size of the Silent Cell cooler. There’s an extra little bit of heatsink that protruded out, and might not fit all ATX chassis. I would recommend you double check your chassis before you make the purchase.
Connectivity is good. You get all 3 connection types including DVI, Displayport and a gold-plated HDMI port. The package comes with all the necessay bits … you’ll find the usual driver CD, instructional manual, a Crossfire interconnect cable and a spare 6-pin PCIe power cable. However, there are no DX11 games included.
As I’ve mentioned before, the Radeon HD 5770 isn’t the fastest GPU available on the market, but it’s great for the mainstream user. However, it’s been seriously affected by Nvidia’s recent launch of their Geforce GTX 460, which many believe offers the best price/performance ratio right now. Having said that, AMD haven’t been laying idle. Several websites have already reported leaked info on AMD’s up-and-coming “South Islands” Radeon 6xxx GPU. Could this be the answer that Radeon fans have been waiting for.
We’ve checked the internet and could not find a current price for the Gigabyte Radeon HD 5770 Silent Cell (1Gb GDDR5), but we expect it to cost somewhere in the region of USD $200.00 (GBP 130.00). At this price, it’s pretty attractive for what you get … a totally silent graphics card that offers decent peformance using the Radeon 5770 GPU.
Final words. Being the ONLY silent solution for HD 5770 in the market, the Gigabyte Radeon HD 5770 Silent Cell (1Gb GDDR5) offers decent performance and features. It’s definitely well worth considering if you’re after a silent graphics card that’s packed with great features. It may not be a Geforce GTX 4xx killer, but I’ll trade any day that for total slient bliss …
SCORE
8/10
“Silent Approved”
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