Monday, March 29th 2010
PowerColor Readies Overclocker-Friendly Radeon HD 5770 PCS++ Graphics Card
PowerColor is working on a new Radeon HD 5770 graphics card that's geared for overclocking, the HD 5770 PCS++. The new model, while retains the same out of the box clock speeds and cooling as the HD 5770 PCS+, uses a redesigned PCB with high-grade VRM for higher overclocking potential. It has out of the box clock speeds of 875/1225 MHz (core/memory), against reference speeds of 850/1200 MHz. The ATI Radeon HD 5770 GPU packs 800 stream processors, and connects to 1 GB of GDDR5 memory across a 128-bit wide memory interface.
The PowerColor HD 5770 PCS++ borrows its PCB design from the PowerColor HD 5750 Go! Green, (HD 5750 and HD 5770 are based on the same Juniper GPU and are hence pin-compatible) which we recently reviewed. To do away with the 6-pin auxiliary power connector, the Go! Green card relied on a high-efficiency digital PWM circuit with three vGPU and two vMem phases, driven by a Volterra VT1165 voltage controller which supports software voltage control. From the looks of it, the PCS++ reuses the same PCB, but with the 6-pin power connector in place for added power. Despite the lack of this connector, and having passive cooling, the Go! Green card managed GPU and memory overclocks of 10% and 25%, making us expect even higher with this card. Its cooling system includes a GPU cooler made by Arctic Cooling, with independent heatsinks over the memory and VRM chips. It is expected that PowerColor prices the HD 5770 PCS++ at 10 EUR / 15 USD higher than the HD 5770 PCS+, which is around US $170.
The PowerColor HD 5770 PCS++ borrows its PCB design from the PowerColor HD 5750 Go! Green, (HD 5750 and HD 5770 are based on the same Juniper GPU and are hence pin-compatible) which we recently reviewed. To do away with the 6-pin auxiliary power connector, the Go! Green card relied on a high-efficiency digital PWM circuit with three vGPU and two vMem phases, driven by a Volterra VT1165 voltage controller which supports software voltage control. From the looks of it, the PCS++ reuses the same PCB, but with the 6-pin power connector in place for added power. Despite the lack of this connector, and having passive cooling, the Go! Green card managed GPU and memory overclocks of 10% and 25%, making us expect even higher with this card. Its cooling system includes a GPU cooler made by Arctic Cooling, with independent heatsinks over the memory and VRM chips. It is expected that PowerColor prices the HD 5770 PCS++ at 10 EUR / 15 USD higher than the HD 5770 PCS+, which is around US $170.