KitGuru KitGuru.net – Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards
To overclock the card we used MSI Afterburner as we didn’t want to be limited by the ATI Catalyst Control Center ‘overdrive’ solution.
Considering this is a passively cooled solution we weren't expecting such positive results of 100mhz on the core and 70mhz on the memory giving an effective 4280mhz of bandwidth.
We wanted to recheck temperatures to see how the overclock affected cooler performance.
Only a 4c increase with the overclocked settings. Obviously the Raven 02 chassis is helping with the massive vertical airflow, but even in a lesser chassis would wouldn't imagine these exceeding 70c. Well within safety parameters.
We wanted to see how the overclocked speeds would assist with a demanding engine, so we fired up Crysis again.
Nothing dramatic, but a couple of FPS with this engine really helps, especially with minimum frame rates hovering between 25 and 30.
Shit I cant believe they didnt reduce the clocks, thats mega, man.
I have been waiting on a review of this for a while when I saw the press release was out last week. Great review and holy shit what a great produce for under £100!
what a fucking brilliant little card that is. love the heatsink dual style design with two tier heatpipe design.
Two of these in Crossfire would be a dream system, it would give much needed extra horsepower, with NO power connectors needed, but I bet 1920×1200 would be smooth as a babies arse. Im getting myself excited 🙂
Sapphire really release some fab boards, no arguments here. I will have to check this card out when I see it up for sale soon. What a stunning product, and yes I agree Crossfire with this. under £200, no power connectors, little power drain, no noise and stellar frame rates? yes please.
oh yes. ill have two of these, please.
Now this is impressive. good temps, low power drain, decent performance, no noise and good overclocking abilities.
Might get one of these for my media center in the living room, the GTS250 makes some noise now.
I am sold, completely. I dont need one as I have a 5770, but this is just brilliant.
If I was buying an ATI card it would be either Sapphire or XFX, but Sapphire seem to release faster and have slightly better concepts.
lol quite the fan club in here 🙂 Yeah im impressed too, its hard not to be. Hope they release it at £80 !
id buy one, seems a solid product all round.
Any ideas of the price in the USA? cant see it anywhere
Canada stores have this? no one listing it even 🙁
Always good to see high IQ, that HQV test seems really useful, might have to invest in the bluray.
Wonder how they will price it against the fan version at the same clocks
I am sick of my video card to be honest, I use it as a media system and the fan is f*cked. not sure I can afford £100 right now, but will bear this in mind.
this doesnt need any PCI power connectors, right?
@ sexy – its self powered from the slot, no leads required.
I find these boards more impressive than the 400w power sucking beasts in the high end that are only good for gaming and little else.
power drain is low, and no noise. thats enough to sell me on the product> i need a card for media, almost went for the 5770 but its too much for what I need.want.
Come on Sapphire – buy links!
The card takes its power from the mainboard
:stunned:
What a lovely little board that is,
Interested to see the price when it hits retail. hopefully its no more than the fan version.
It will cost more, I would think. seems logical
Eric, why would you say that? the clocks are the same etc? same GDDR5 ?
a cheap fan costs a few dollars, if even that. That heatsink would cost substantially more to manufacture. Thats my take on it anyway,.
Im going for £99 in the UK, if the fan version is £92. I think they will aim to keep it under £100. looks good in pricing lists.
I wish KitGuru would review two of them in Crossfire. im sick of noise and would like to see how it handles in CF at 1920×1200. A silent, yet strong gaming solution would be wicked. £200 is more than a 5770 but not as much as a 5850. would be an interesting compare.
They are also good as they don’t need any PCI power cables, they get enough power from the slot. if they can churn out decent frame rates in CF at 1920 it would sell a lot of cards I think.
There have been a lot of 5670 crossfire reviews posted online already, they scale well and can deliver good rates with most engines at 1920. The fact these are the same clocks but silent is such a strong reason for buying them IMO. After all in theory two 5670’s in CF would be roughly equivalent to a 5850, but without any noise or the requirement for power connectors. £50 less too.
I just don’t get it. Lots of people seem to be very excited about this card, but why, when there has bee a couple passive HD5750s available for some time. There’s the GoGreen by Powercolor and one by Gigabyte as well. What makes this card special ?
Sapphire’s web site http://www.sapphiretech.com has been down for a couple days….hope this is not serious.
On another note, the using the power supply connector as a metric of low power cards is not too wise. This card is capable of dissipating over 60Watts and pulling that power through the bus is just not a great idea. Personally I’d opt for the dedicated power supply connection.
I just connected to Sapphire web site through a different ISP and all was well. Funny I am getting server timeouts from a broadband cable based ISP.