Sapphire Unveils Passively Cooled Radeon HD 7770 Card

By Douglas Perry
published

Sapphire demonstrates its new, passively cooled HD 7770 Ultimate graphics card at Computex.

The card follows the previously released HD 7750 Ultimate. The new card runs at spec speeds with a 1000 MHz engine clock and 1125 MHz memory clock, up from the 7750's 900 MHz engine clock.

Compared to the 7750, this card comes with two DisplayPort interfaces instead of just one and carries over the single HDMI and DVI ports. What makes it special is that it does not use a fan, but dissipates all heat via a massive heatspreader. The downside of this design is that the heatspreader increases the length of the reference design card by about 25 percent.

There was no price provided by Sapphire. AMD's suggested price for the 7770 is $159, but it is likely that the initial retail prices for this card will be closer to $200. The 7750 Silent Edition currently sells for street prices in the $140 to $160 range, about $40 to $50 above the typical $110 7750 card. Expect a similar premium for the 7770.

 

Douglas Perry
29 Comments Comment from the forums
  • amuffin
    40-50 above regular price is kind of bloated, don't you think!?
    Reply
  • kcorp2003
    did anyone read "Earth's Collapse is Imminent" below this one? makes me wonder if i would recycle all these GPUs i have in collection.
    Reply
  • blazorthon
    It's silent, doesn't need a PCIe power connector, and has two Displayports, meaning that it supports up to 4 displays at once. It probably won't overclock well, but it's stock value is actually superb IMO.
    Reply
  • theuniquegamer
    I would rather go for normal reference cards instead of giving a $50 premium on a $110/$150 cards for only passive cooling block.
    If its an oc 7970/680 like cards with passive cooling then i may give $50 more for that
    Reply
  • blazorthon
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102980

    This is the 7750 Ultimate with a passive cooler. It is $125 without the MIR and is $115 with the MIR and it has $5 shipping. Where is the $40 to $50 premium?
    Reply
  • joytech22
    kcorp2003did anyone read "Earth's Collapse is Imminent" below this one? makes me wonder if i would recycle all these GPUs i have in collection.
    I read it, but nothing can be done. Us Humans are too stupid and lazy to do anything significant and we take much too long. If the world is to change then we will adapt, but in doing so we will still be as destructive as we have always been.

    Anyway... This card would go well in my HTPC. I just wish AMD released a single-slot solution for their 7870 or something.
    Reply
  • blazorthon
    joytech22I read it, but nothing can be done. Us Humans are too stupid and lazy to do anything significant and we take much too long. If the world is to change then we will adapt, but in doing so we will still be as destructive as we have always been.Anyway... This card would go well in my HTPC. I just wish AMD released a single-slot solution for their 7870 or something.
    A single-slot 7850 is on the way from AMD. I don't think that a single slot 7870 is coming, except maybe a water cooled 7870. However, I might be a little worried about airflow and noise with a single slot 7850 in an HTPC case. They probably aren't too quiet and I prefer silent HTPCs.
    Reply
  • unksol
    9374094 said:
    doesn't need a PCIe power connector

    Where did you see that? all the 7770s require a pcie connector afaik and its running at stock clocks. I suppose they could be doing some very aggressive binning to get low power/heat chips for this (which would explain the cost). Which would be something special. I'm just not seeing that stated or a tdp
    Reply
  • blazorthon
    9374099 said:
    Where did you see that? all the 7770s require a pcie connector afaik and its running at stock clocks. I suppose they could be doing some very aggressive binning to get low power/heat chips for this (which would explain the cost). Which would be something special. I'm just not seeing that stated or a tdp

    I was talking about the 7750 model there, but W/E. Besides, 7770s are barely over the 75 TDP mark, so simply dropping voltage on them (admittedly sharply reducing overclocking potential) would let them be used without a PCIe power connector. They wouldn't need extreme binning. Heck, an improved PCB design could be more than enough to ditch the PCIe connector.

    However, I don't see a PCIe connector on the 7770 in this article either, although that doesn't mean that there isn't one. This 7770 probably has one because there's no way that Tom's would not have said something about it not needing aux power if it didn't need a PCIe power connector.
    Reply
  • kcorp2003
    joytech22I read it, but nothing can be done. Us Humans are too stupid and lazy to do anything significant and we take much too long. If the world is to change then we will adapt, but in doing so we will still be as destructive as we have always been.
    yeah sounds about right. i still do what i can and afford to help on my part.
    Reply