HD 5770 cards with non-stock cooling

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tvih

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Since I've been planning on a bit of an upgrade for my graphics card, I was wondering if there's any consensus as to which HD 5770 model would be the "best" as far as low noise (this being the primary consideration) and preferably also low temps (important secondary consideration, since I have an SFF case) go. This, to me, would mean one with non-stock cooling.

From what I've gathered, the Sapphire Vapor-X variant should be quite cool and silent compared to stock models. Any other contestants? I spotted a Vertex 3D-branded card that seems to have a "big" non-stock cooler fan, but I'm not familiar with the brand and couldn't find any proper reviews/comments about this specific card. The thing is, it's 30 euros cheaper than the Vapor-X, the latter being a whopping 173 euros. Though it does seem to only have 1xHDMI,1xDVI and 1xVGA as far as outputs go, rather than the 2xDVI+1xHDMI+1xDisplayPort of the Sapphire.
 
Since you mentioned Euros, I guess you aren't in North America. Do any European vendors offer lifetime warranties? I would personally suggest getting a card from a manufacturer with a better warranty and one that accepts aftermarket cooling and just installing that.

The vertex 3D cooler is a stock cooler used by many manufacturers that has appeared in previous cards as well. Powercolor has it too.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131328&cm_re=5770-_-14-131-328-_-Product

This is probably the best cooling for a 5770 that comes from the factory.
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127490&cm_re=5770-_-14-127-490-_-Product
 
Yeah, I'm from Europe. Finland, to be more specific. No lifetime warranties around here that I've noticed, as far as GPUs go. Not sure which manufacturers allow aftermarket cooling either. Anyway, that MSI seems like an interesting card, but can't seem to find that exact model for sale here.

Also worth noting is that originally I was supposed to buy a 5850, but aside from budget concerns (damned price hike!) those are still very very hard to find around here, and haven't spotted any models in the stores here that would have good coolers by default. Aftermarket cooling would solve that too, of course, but the good aftermarket solutions cost quite a bit, as well. But a stock-cooled XFX 5850 costs 100 euros more than the 5770 Vapor-X, and has DiRT 2 in addition to additional performance. Bah.
 
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Hope you can find the MSI. Just got my MSI Hawk HD 5770 1GB the other day and finally had a chance to play with the new card over the weekend. :) Rockin' good card. Install went well, using ATI 10.3 Preview Drivers. Installed MSI Afterburner which was obviously designed by Alexey Nicolaychuk the maker of Rivatuner. Also installed MSI Kombuster which is really an MSI stamped version of FurMark, the GPU stabilty tester. Started cranking up the clocks and so far I'm stable at a 1,010 Core and 1,300 on the memory. I needed to use MSI Afterburner to up the voltage to 1.312 to get it stable however. Default voltage is 1.2 and max is 1.35. Might be able to push the memory further, but so far I'm pretty satisfied. Sweet card, had the GSOD issue with my old XFX HD 5750 which I sent back to Newegg. There also was a price hike, just bought mine for $175 from Newegg with a $rebate down to $159.00, now it's $189.
.
http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/msi_hd5770_hawk_1gb/17.htm

Conclusion:

The results of the MSI HD R5770 Hawk are outstanding and, even though this card is considered a mid-range product, it offers performance and quality that are well beyond its price range. Let's face it, the HD 57XX series performance is about as good as it gets when it comes to a sub $200 dollar graphics card at the moment. Being that ATI is the only graphics card company with DX 11 support, it makes sense that this series has become an extremely popular choice for many PC gamers. So, with performance and technology support not being the question here, let's have a look at what makes the MSI HD R5770 Hawk a real stand-out from the other cards based on the ATI Radeon HD 5770 GPU. The first feature that really makes it surpass the other models is the use of military class components. These parts are found throughout the card and are used in the highly-conductive capacitors that have a rare metal (tantalum) core that is extremely conductive, to the solid caps that are very durable and have a 10 year life span. These high class components also consist of Solid State Chokes that create no buzz noise and a 7+1 phase PWM design that will supply better current throughout the GPU. The use of all these high quality parts will not only add extra stability and value to the card, but will greatly raise the overclocking potential as well. Also, fitting in with the use of quality components is MSI's multiple heatpipe Twin Frozr II GPU cooler. This heatsink uses a Nickel-plated copper base with three heatpipes to transfer heat and has a large cooling area with dual 80mm PWM fans. The Twin Frozr II worked exceptionally well and was able to keep the core under 70c, even with the GPU voltage adjusted up to 1.3V. The best part of this cooler though, is how silent it operates. In both normal and demanding situations, the fan was hardly audible and it wasn't until the fan rotation was around 82% that the noise started to get loud. With all of these high quality parts, one thing about the HD R5770 Hawk didn't make sense to me and that was the use of only one DVI-I port. Most HD 5570 graphics cards utilize a dual port configuration that makes setting up ATI's Eyefinity a breeze, but with only one DVI-I port it could make set up more complicated.

Now, after talking up the overclocking potential of the military class components and great cooling capabilities of the MSI HD R5770 Hawk, did it live up to it's overclocking hype? The answer to that question is a resounding, yes! During overclocking the Hawk's GPU core maxed out at 1025Mhz, which is roughly a 17% overclock and the memory was extremely overclockable as well, reaching a final frequency of 1410MHz before running into any stability issues. These clocks will make this card an absolute value to the overclocking community, but the MSI Hawk isn't done yet. For the extreme enthusiasts of the world, MSI has also added a software
based voltage regulator that allows the voltage to be manually adjusted from a overclocking program such as MSI Afterburner and V-Check points that, when connected to a Multimeter, can get on-the-fly voltage readings for both the GPU and memory. Even though the memory clocked extremely well, it would have been a nice touch to see some sort of cooling solution for the GDDR5 chips on the HD R5770 Hawk, which could have raised the overclocking potential to an even higher level.

What you have with the MSI HD R5770 Hawk is a extremely powerful, high quality product that comes at a great price and adds all the little extras that make it stand out from the crowd. Even though the card has its eyes on the overclockers in the room, there is no need to worry if adjusting clock speeds is not your thing, as the Hawk comes clocked 25MHz faster than other HD 5770 graphics cards giving you a little extra boost of performance right out of the box. So, if you find yourself in the market for an HD 5770 graphics card, the HD R5770 Hawk is definitely a few steps up from the reference design and one that I highly recommend.
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Thanks for the comment. I did in fact find one single store that sells the Hawk here. Seems to be priced at 171 euros there, so it's in fact slightly cheaper than the Vapor-X. It would certainly seem to be pretty much I'm looking for as far as HD 5770s go. Too bad there isn't a similarly cooled 5850. But in the meanwhile, gotta try to find a place in my budget for even the 5770!
 
honestjohn said:
Hope you can find the MSI. Just got my MSI Hawk HD 5770 1GB the other day and finally had a chance to play with the new card over the weekend. :) Rockin' good card. Install went well, using ATI 10.3 Preview Drivers. Installed MSI Afterburner which was obviously designed by Alexey Nicolaychuk the maker of Rivatuner. Also installed MSI Kombuster which is really an MSI stamped version of FurMark, the GPU stabilty tester. Started cranking up the clocks and so far I'm stable at a 1,010 Core and 1,300 on the memory. I needed to use MSI Afterburner to up the voltage to 1.312 to get it stable however. Default voltage is 1.2 and max is 1.35. Might be able to push the memory further, but so far I'm pretty satisfied. Sweet card, had the GSOD issue with my old XFX HD 5750 which I sent back to Newegg. There also was a price hike, just bought mine for $175 from Newegg with a $rebate down to $159.00, now it's $189.
Click to expand...

FWIW using the same 1.312v I can run my XFX 5770 with the stock Phoenix cooler at 1100Core and 1455 Memory. Im not convinced there are substantial improvements between card desgins. Some cards are just better OC'ers than others and I think I lucked out and got a gem
 
GonzoP said:
FWIW using the same 1.312v I can run my XFX 5770 with the stock Phoenix cooler at 1100Core and 1455 Memory. Im not convinced there are substantial improvements between card desgins. Some cards are just better OC'ers than others and I think I lucked out and got a gem
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That's great, glad to hear you got a good card. :) As far as design differences go, I previously had the GSOD (grey-screen of death) issue on my system with a reference design XFX card. Using the MSI Hawk, I've experienced no GSOD issues at all and the card coincidentally does not use the reference design. This is one of the reasons I threw the dice and gambled on picking up another 57xx series card. I was confident my results would be different using this card from what I read.

Are some cards naturally better at overclocking than others? Of course, absolutely, kind of goes without saying doesn't it? Will purchasing an MSI Hawk increase the odds that you will be getting a card which is a good OC'er? Substantially in my opinion, which is based on the information I obtained from several sites with opinions I respect. That and nearly two decades of buying video cards Sonny .... :p
 
GonzoP said:
FWIW using the same 1.312v I can run my XFX 5770 with the stock Phoenix cooler at 1100Core and 1455 Memory. Im not convinced there are substantial improvements between card desgins. Some cards are just better OC'ers than others and I think I lucked out and got a gem
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IMO, another consideration is that the hawk should run quieter and cooler than the reference design.
 
Personally I just primarily want it to be quiet. I probably won't be overclocking it. At least not right away.
 
tvih said:
Personally I just primarily want it to be quiet. I probably won't be overclocking it. At least not right away.
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Ohh don't worry about overclocking... ;) The hawk has the voltage up at 1.2 as default instead of the 1.125 that the reference card uses. You will probably be able to get close to 1 ghz without changing the voltage and still run nice and cool.

Here's what I mean:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/HD_5770_HAWK/33.html
 
I know. But chances are I'll lower the voltage to "minimum" to minimize power drain and temperature.
 
Indeed, but the lower the merrier :) My CPU is undervolted as well, from 1.125v to 1.05v. The drop in power use is... considerable. Not sure how much effect the slight undervolt (minimum was 1.1v?) would have on the Hawk, but better than nothing regardless. At the moment my system draws well under 80W (excluding monitor and speakers, of course, but including USB peripherals that draw power via USB) when idle or doing light tasks such as browsing. The HD 4670 uses very little power. It's nice that the HD 5xx0 cards do as well, especially seeing as the upcoming Fermi doesn't exactly seem conservative with its power requirements...
 
tvih said:
Indeed, but the lower the merrier :) My CPU is undervolted as well, from 1.125v to 1.05v. The drop in power use is... considerable. Not sure how much effect the slight undervolt (minimum was 1.1v?) would have on the Hawk, but better than nothing regardless. At the moment my system draws well under 80W (excluding monitor and speakers, of course, but including USB peripherals that draw power via USB) when idle or doing light tasks such as browsing. The HD 4670 uses very little power. It's nice that the HD 5xx0 cards do as well, especially seeing as the upcoming Fermi doesn't exactly seem conservative with its power requirements...
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I understand. If you're not going to use that gpu power you might as well save on power consumption. I'm sure you can undervolt or put the hawk back to reference specs with afterburner, which probably means you would even be using less power than reference...
 
QuadMe said:
I understand. If you're not going to use that gpu power you might as well save on power consumption. I'm sure you can undervolt or put the hawk back to reference specs with afterburner, which probably means you would even be using less power than reference...
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Yup, most of the time I don't need high performance. Though I don't underclock, but undervolt as applicable. But for example at the moment I only have a couple of games, with a couple more on the horizon, that would benefit noticeably from the 5770 over the 4670. Many of the games I play currently are older titles. So, stock frequencies should be ok most of the time, and if I ever do need higher performance, it'd be just a few clicks away :)
 
i just got the msi hawk today myself.i can say it is a very nice video card.runs super cool,and so quiet u would never know it was running.so far ive only tried 2 games on it both run smooth as silk.the games i have tried are l4d2 and avp.avp i used all the dx11 enhancements to see how it would look,and run.i must say for a sub 200$ card i love this thing.
 
MSI is a really awesome AIB, considering that we live in a world where literally everyone else seeks to cut costs and introduce lower-quality components even in their premium products.
 
How long is the 5770 Hawk, my Asus CuCore is obnoxiously loud and I might swap it if the Hawk is not over 9"?
 
It is about 8,2". Manufacturer's site among other sources can tell you as much ;)
 
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