Search  
 

Sapphire first with passive Radeon HD 5670

Fully featured card without a fan

by Lars-Göran Nilsson at Taipei

June 4, 2010

PASSIVELY COOLED GRAPHCIS cards are underrated in our opinion and we'd like to see more fanless graphics cards. Mostly low-end cards are passively cooled and others are down clocked and use slower, cheaper memory. Not so with Sapphire's latest addition which is a passively cooled Radeon HD 5670.

The Radeon HD 5670 might not be a high-end card, but it still offers decent enough performance for most users. The new card from Sapphire comes with a core clock of 775MHz and it has 512MB of 128-bit GDDR5 memory clocked at 1GHz for an effective speed of 4GHz. The card features DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort connectivity so no corners have been cut.

Interestingly, the passive cooling solution means that this is Sapphire's first single slot Radeon HD 5670 card. It has a rather beefy heatpipe and there's a heatsink above the card which means that it's not suitable for narrow cases. We don't know what the pricing will be but expect this model to cost a little bit more than the fan cooled versions when it launches.S|A

Discuss this in our forums

File under Graphics and Gaming

Slashdot del.icio.us Technorati Reddit Digg YCombinator TwitThis

5 Comments

  1. Brother Michigan June 4, 2010, 7:41 a.m.

    Wow, does the heatsink really only extend above the PCB and not around the back of it? I've got a passively cooled 4670 from Sapphire and the heatsink covers the entire back of the card.


  2. Marcusklaas June 4, 2010, 9:24 a.m.

    Why did it take so long for passive HD5670? There has been a passive HD5750 for quite some time now..


  3. Worminator June 6, 2010, 7:59 a.m.

    Lars, those passive cards are over-rated and not worth the extra money. The fans on most active cooled mid-range graphics cards run very quietly most of the time, and give you the peace of mind knowing that under heavy load they can increase the airflow to cool the GPU. With passive cards you've really got to be careful with the case cooling overall or the card overheats. This is a real problem in
    in SFF or HTPC cases... the typical applications where you might want a silent card like this.


  4. Tony June 24, 2010, 1:44 p.m.

    I don't believe Sapphire is first with the passive HD5670. Powercolor has had one out for a few months now: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product....


  5. dd August 26, 2010, 9:04 a.m.

    Worminator, some of us want a PC as quiet as possible. I know that I'm never buying a graphic card with a fan again. But then, I'm not really much into gaming, so..

    Also, fans can stop working or wear out and become noisier.


Add your comment





Comments are un-moderated except for automatic spam-reduction services, these services are not related to liposuction or any other dieting method. Hitting the [POST] button here is the legal equivalent to self-publishing. This means that you are liable and therefore RESPONSIBLE for all consequences of what you are writing and publishing. S|A is not and will not be held liable for your publications using our platform. We will happily turn over your IP address to any legal authority with a valid search warrant.

Comments are un-moderated except for automatic spam-reduction services, these services are not related to liposuction or any other dieting method. Hitting the [POST] button here is the legal equivalent to self-publishing. This means that you are liable and therefore RESPONSIBLE for all consequences of what you are writing and publishing. S|A is not and will not be held liable for your publications using our platform. We will happily turn over your IP address to any legal authority with a valid search warrant.