GIGABYTE HD6770 Silent Cell CFX Video Card Review

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

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GIGABYTE HD6770 Silent Cell CFX Video Card Review - Today we'll find out if two of GIGABYTE's HD6770 Silent Cell cards can match the performance of a Radeon HD 6950. We were impressed with how this no-fan silent configuration CrossFireX setup performed. However, is it worth $280 against the falling prices of the Radeon HD 6950?
 
I didn't 'get' why these cards didn't work at 1440p. Were they memory-limited? What if you turned AA off?

I suppose I'm really asking you to invert your testing: given a resolution, what - if any - is the best playable quality you can get?
 
Just read here about a HD 6570 having 2GB of DDR3 memory on it so was wondering if having that same amount of ram would have helped the GIGABYTE HD6770 any.

BTW, I like reading reviews of silent components.. hope more are on the way.

silence+is+golden.jpg
 
I love reading about passively cooled stuff, but the days are long gone where enthusiast class parts can be passively cooled like back during the Voodoo, Voodoo 2, and Voodoo 3 3500 days. This wouldn't be a bad card for a person who mainly does other stuff and casually games and needs a low noise rig.

This review kind of surprised me as I figured they would have been just a little more competitive considering how well crossfire scales these days. Of course it is understandable though considering what kind of parts we are dealing with.
 
I totally understand the reasoning behind using a silent xfire/SLI setup. Several years ago I was using a pair of Asus 7600GS Silents in my backup EQ2 system, and they worked just fine for my needs at that time.(Very CPU dependant game at the time only running on a 22" LCD)

For me, though, these 6770s are nothing more than rebadged 5770s with different Firmware and (maybe) a few architectural changes so I don't consider this particular card as a gaming card.

I believe the allure of this particular video card is its capabilities in the role of a HTPC. I have had one of these in my main HTPC almost since the card was first released and I'm loving it.

It's fast, silent, more than capable (even when seriously underclocked) and pushes my Dell 2408FWP and Samsung 42" LED LCD TV easily.

The HDMI Audio through the card is excellent. The color and clarity of video and text on my TV and monitor are great.

I never see temps reach 40°C and the only fans in the case are in the PSU, and the one blowing on the HDDs (since I have 6 installed)

It's probably the best performing card I've ever used in the HTPC role.

The only thing I can't speak to is long-term reliability since I've only owned it since 8/2/2011. So far, though, it's been nothing short of stellar.
 
Impressive stuff for passive crossfire. All told though it's a shame it's 5770s and not 6850s, as the difference in performance is considerable for a minor increase in power/heat, the heatsinks would of course need to be a bit bigger to do that.
 
why were the pictures of the product low quality? it appears that they were taken with a cell phone camera (very skillfully). I was looking forward to less grain and distortion in the pictures as I sometimes make sketchup models with help from your photos, but these are subpar to your normal standards.

Other than that, thanks for the heads up on this card. I have been thinking about converting my wife's system to a silent configuration running eyefinity, and this gives me something to contemplate and swap maybe without her noticing, heh.
 
can you do any non-crossfirex reviews of this card?

i've heard its really only a 5770, which is still decent but much slower than a 6850 (by about 30% or more).

i'm debating on waiting for the 7770 or whatever comes out in fall/winter (hopefully) to see if there is a bigger performance boost for us poor single card users.

i miss the old giveaway contests i never use to win on hypothermia!
 
First where these in a case? if soo what kind of air flow?. Second 20F temp increase in a room from one computer how small is the room?
 
I wish GigaByte or other 3rd party would do this for the 6850 or 6870. Its good to see them starting somewhere. Definately a solid choice for slient video card options.
 
Nice review. I can see using these in a few different applications where audio level is key.
 
Edit: Misread it. Not a bad value if you are looking for fanless.
 
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I was especially interested as I own a factory passive-cooled 5750. It works great at 1680x1050 but no, I wouldn't use it all by its lonesome at 2560x1440. As with any card that deposits a lot of heat inside the case, good airflow is a must! Following those dumb Corsair H50 instructions to pull air into the case over the radiator resulted in a very toasty enclosure and didn't do the 5750 any favors. Pushing and pulling the air out lets me get to a 100% stable 3.8 on an i5-750, don't need any more power than that right now...
 
its not the price of a 6950. its two 6770 for the price of a 6950 and its silent.
powercolor makes a fanless 6850
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131442&Tpk=6850

if you have a nice case with 120 fans it works nice. otherwise on previous gen nvidia and ati cards i would always have green dots when they overheat.

the 6850 is probably not worth the extra 40$ for the fanless unless you really need fanless at 200$.

the 6770 is about 10-30$ more than a fanned version.

hkcavalier: from what I have read the 5770=6770 and isn't worth the upgrade at this time. less than 1% difference in game performance and even benchmarks. i'm hoping the 7770 is a better card if one ever exists.

if you were going to spend the $$ might want a 6850 but its about 25-30% speed boost which again might be better off waiting until winter.

if your on a budget sunbeam often has nice cases. i'm bummed they went from 120mm to 80mm but the post might be wrong:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811166054
 
I was in the airport when I wrote my earlier comment, so I'll just now add that I very much enjoyed and appreciated the review as noise - or rather the lack thereof - is of particular importance to me.

BTW IIRC the fanless 6850 cannot be Crossfired.

Do I remember correctly that the old silent 5770 had a much smaller heatsink? It might be interesting to compare temperatures.

Can I be really cheeky and ask the [H] team to try a pair of these in a Nofen for the ultimate in silent gaming? An i7 would be too much but an i3 or i5 should put the whole within the Nofen's limits.
 
How long this card is?

Also why are you wasting time with poorly optimised consolized trash like Dragon Age II where you could easily replace it with a more proper PC game like Witcher 2 which actually really pushes hardware?

And finally it really helped me to drop the thoughts about crossfire seeing how badly it performs vs single GPU solutions ;)
 
I was disappointed that you didn't attach a low speed fan to the cards to see what temps would be, better overclock, etc.
 
The CFX configuration was not able to mimic the performance of the more powerful Radeon HD 6950 or GeForce GTX 570.
Click to expand...

And... that's disappointing, but I doubt that's it's intended purpose anyway.

The question is though, is "well enough" something to settle on
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Not for gaming, really. If your intended use is a silent system running a few monitors these would be really nice.
 
"With our system running for 6 hours, the room temperature was 22.2 degrees Celsius (72 degrees Fahrenheit). After turning on our system and letting it idle for one hour room temperature was up to 29 degrees Celsius (84.2 degrees Fahrenheit). After an hour of testing in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, F.E.A.R. 3 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 room temperature increased to 33 degrees Celsius (91.4 degrees Fahrenheit). It was very clear that having Silent Cooling was going to mean higher temperatures."

This is the first time I've seen HardOCP address room temperatures, and I haven't seen any other place commenting on this. The temperature readings for the video card tell us how well the card's cooling system removes heat from the video card, but tells us nothing about how much heat the video card generates. It would be good to know what video cards (and other components too, like the PSU) heat up the room less than others. If one video card performs the same as another, yet generates less heat, that's better engineering, right?

What I mean is that if someone asks how to build a system that can play at 1080 while making as little noise as possible, there are lots of answers for that, but if someone asks how to build a system that can play at 1080 while heating the room as little as possible, I don't know if there are any answers. This summer's ridiculous heat wave in the US has given this new relevance.
 
A watt is a watt, you are dumping between 374 to 467watts into your room depending on which of the three setups they used in this review.
 
Omegas said:
A watt is a watt, you are dumping between 374 to 467watts into your room depending on which of the three setups they used in this review.
Click to expand...

So an Nvidia 570 consuming 350W and an ATI 6950 consuming 350W will heat up a room equally? Is it that simple?
 
Yeah it is that simple, as far as the room is concerned. Not sure what point they're trying to make with heat here, that's far more an issue with top-end QuadCF systems that use 1KW than intermediate ones like this. My room used to get unbearably hot with a pair of 4870X2s, so I bought a portable A/C unit. I don't even live in a hot part of the world (England).
 
Well, too add to the the original review: The silent cell technology is great when it works. Also, related to this, the the heavy duty 3 fan versions of this same technology.

The one thing I've noticed is that all of the Gigabyte cards from this same time frame seem to use glue to hold those heatsinks on!

This morning, I came into use my gaming systems, only to smell the infamous "burnt resistor" smell... and got 1-Long, 3-Short beeps when I restarted the computer.

The heatsink had falled off of my video card during the night, landed on top of the $500.00 LSI SAS controller, the video card overheated and BURNT, and then the computer crashed.

I've filed a request for an RMA with Gigabyte, and I'm now waiting for a reply. Since it appears that multiple video cards are affected in so far as a glued on heatsink... I suspect people should be carefuly about horizon mounting in tower cases.

I've got pictures, which I think were required, so that we can deal with the vendor should they not warranty the product. (Doubtful) However, I should note that several of the various cards of the period quickly disappeared. (Similiar to the Gigabyte Assassin2 v1.0 motherboard I have...) ...and that's indicative of something wrong and the vendor not wishing to continue to the product as a result.

Anyway... I'd attach a picture, but it doesn't seem to be possible, and I've no place to host it. My version is a GV-R697OC2-2GD which I was running at NORMAL clock speeds to ensure stability.
 
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