The Passive Gigabyte & Overclocked HIS HD 6770 meet the EVGA GTX 550 Ti
Our Featured Cards – the passively-cooled and the overclocked HD 6770 vs. the overclocked GTX 550 Ti
The passively-cooled Gigabyte HD 6770
This is an interesting card with a massive heatsink that is cooled without an attached VGA fan. It requires that your case have at least decent cooling and that you also make sure that it will fit in your case before you buy it. What is interesting is that this card is clocked at the reference clocks of the HD 6770 (850/1200MHz) and appears to be able to overclock further! We definitely will test this out and we are also quite tempted to strap some fans on this massive heatsink; of course, it would then become a three-slot solution. You can see how far the heatsink overhangs the PCB!
Make sure that it can fit into your case before buying it. Dimensions are 42 x 278 x 172 mm. The Gigabyte box shows off the massive heatsink awaiting inside as they tout their Silent Cell technology. The packing is anti-static, so there is no anti-static “bag” per se; you must still use caution installing your hardware.
The Gigabyte GV-R677SL-1GD Silent Series is aimed at users who prefer a completely quiet system as the HD 6770 is mounted with an extra-large heat sink and yet there is no cooling fan attached. This is “passive cooling” which relies on your case’s airflow to remove the heat from the GPU transferred by the 3 heatpipes and the aluminum fins.
Inside we see a driver CD, manual, DVI to VGA connector and dual Molex to 6-Pin PCI-E power connector.
Gigabyte used their patented Silent-Cell Passive Thermal Design to cool this graphics card without a VGA fan. They used layered fins with aluminum nodes to lower the GPU’s operating temperature. They also increased the cooling surface area by over 600% and claim the GV-R677SL-1GD can be over clocked by up to 30%. We shall see.
Of course this video card is DirectX-11 compliant and also supports AMD Eyefinity, CrossFireX, and Avivo HD. It has one of each – a Dual-Link DVI, DisplayPort and a (gold plated) HDMI port. In the image below, you can see the single 6-pin PCIe connector required to power this card.
Unfortunately, unless you own a native DisplayPort display, you will need two adapters if you want to run 3-panel Eyefinity; the HIS HD 6770 has two DVI connectors, so only needs one DP adapter to run 3-panel Eyefinity. From Gigabyte’s website:
GIGABYTE Silent Series
- GIGABYTE Silent Series
- Powered by AMD Radeon HD 6770 GPU
- Integrated with the first 1GB GDDR5 memory and 128-bit memory interface
- Features Dual-link DVI-I / HDMI / Displayport
- GIGABYTE Silent-cell passive thermal design
- Support AMD Eyefinity™ & CrossFireX™ & Avivo™HD
- System power supply requirement: 450W (one 75W 6-pin PCI Express® connector recommended)
Ultra Durable VGA™
Features & Benefits
GPU Temperature 5%~10% down
Ultra Durable VGA board provides dramatic cooling effect on lowering both GPU and memory temperature by doubling the copper inner layer of PCB. GIGABYTE Ultra Durable VGA can lower GPU temperature by 5% to 10%.
Overclocking Capability 10%~30% Up
Ultra Durable VGA board reduces voltage ripples in normal and transient state, thus effectively lowers noises and ensures higher overclocking capability. GIGABYTE Ultra Durable VGA graphic accelerators improve overclocking capability by 10% to 30%.
Power Switching Loss 10%~30% Down
Ultra Durable VGA board allows more bandwidth for electron passage and reduces circuit impedance. The less circuit impedance, the more stable flow of current and can effectively improve power efficiency. GIGABYTE Ultra Durable VGA can lower power switching loss by 10% to 30%.
Gold plated HDMI
Gold plated, durable large contact area connectors have been used for optimum signal transfer between connections
GIGABYTE rewrites the history of silent cooling to perfect the thermal performance, introducing the state-of-the-art Silent-Cell™ Cooling Technology which adopts a series of crimping layered fins with Aluminum nodes. GIGABYTE Silent-Cell™ Cooling features and Benefits as:
- Lowest Thermal Resistance between heat pipe and fins
- Surface Area 602% Upgrade!
- Cell-division Architecture amplifies natural convection
- Crimping Layered Fins with Aluminum nodes to feature the all-new zero-interval precision process
We can also see the connectors on the back of the card which allow for 3-panel Eyefinity with one DVI connector and a HDMI to DVI passive adapter plus a mini adapter if you do not have a DisplayPort-enabled LCD.
Active DisplayPort adapters can now be found for less than thirty dollars.
Passively cooled video cards such as this Gigabyte HD 6770 are in a unique league of their own. One doesn’t normally look at them in comparison to actively cooled video cards, because they are usually used for different purposes and it is very rare to find a decently powerful GPU that is passively cooled. If you are building an ultra-quiet gaming PC such as for home theater (HTPC), you must have a very quiet or a passively cooled video card. We need to find out if the Gigabyte HD 6770 can do double duty as a gaming and as a HTPC video card.
The Gigabyte GV-R677SL-1GD is cooled with Gigabyte’s “silent-cell” technology. Their description of this technology includes:
“GIGABYTE rewrites the history of silent cooling to perfect the thermal performance, introducing the state-of-the-art Silent-Cell™ Cooling Technology which adopts a series of crimping layered fins with Aluminum nodes. Thanks to proprietary cell-division thermal architecture and ultra-huge pure copper base with 3 heat pipes, Slient-Cell™ [sic] are able to cool down the GPU up to 18°C more than by using an active fan cooling design. In addition, Silent-Cell cooler module utilizes the precision process to deliver zero-interval combination between heat pipe and fins, enhancing the overall cooling capability without any compromise from its material characteristic.”
Gigabyte solves thermal issues with a relatively lightweight aluminum heatsink that won’t break your PCIe slot by optimizing for a low-airflow chassis. The aluminum fins are widely spaced and parallel to the card which allows for the slow moving air inside the PC case to penetrate and flow through the heatsink.
In contrast, Gigabyte does a great job keeping the mass of their heatsinks in check. Instead they’ve made sure the fin density and orientation are optimized for a low airflow chassis. The fin spacing is wide, allowing slow moving air to penetrate into the heatsink. The fins are parallel to the card, making it easy to cool with a slow spinning front intake fan on your chassis.
Before we test the Gigabyte HD 6770, let’s take a look at its competition, the HIS Turbo IceQ Turbo X HD 6770 and the EVGA GTX 560 Ti.
