Hardware Crazy New Graphics Cards from PowerColor

Last week out at Computex we saw plenty of graphics card makers, but one that particularly impressed us was PowerColor, who unveiled a new range of ATI Radeon HD 5770s unlike any we've seen before...

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2010/06/07/crazy-new-graphics-cards-from-powercolor/1

 

Holy S*.

I don't suppose the Hydra card would theoretically work as the secondary card in a setup? (say a GTX495 as the primary)

 

Wow, PowerColor were always good in my book, but this pushes them almost to the top of my list of card designers.

 

I love the idea behind the Sniper. They're aren't just pushing any old tech onto the most expensive card, to try and tempt the biggest spenders, they've given it some THOUGHT, and come up with a specific, completely plausible market segment.

 

I think those ideas might just be crazy enough to work!

 

I can't help but think the integrated NIC is a stupid idea. What if I want to upgrade my video card at a later date?

I do however, like the half height 5770 though.

 

Let's see if you still feel like that when you have to deal with their RMA procedures....which is virtually non existent in the UK.

 

Mixed bag there, but it's good to see at least company willing to risk doing something different!

 

Isn't your retailer the one who has to deal with them?

Like the half heigt card...shame it exhausts against a backplate.

 

Beyond insane - the 12 screen 5970 is WTF worthy.

 

so with a graphics card with hydra on board I could drop one in to my existing pc and get dual card lovelyness?

that'd be an immediate buy

 

That's the theory, although the drivers haven't proven to be up to scratch thus far...

That said, with a second motherboard manufacturer looking at using the chip, there must be potential in there that we've not yet seen.

 

All sorts of possibilities spring to mind with that half height 5770. It's got enough performance for a respectable LAN box so team that with a mini ITX and you could be looking at a seriously small system. I'm not keen on the idea of 40 mm fans but a custom water block could fix that...

 

Wow, that 5970 looks good

 

the integrated Killer NIC 5770 is old news - TPU had it on their frontpage last week

 

I think the most exciting thing is if the lucid chip can be delivered on a graphics card... I love 3d vision and physx but ati cards are better value this gen and have eyefinity.

I'd drop a couple of hundred on a card that'd give me the best of both worlds even if there was only a 30% bump in performance overall.

 

Put the Sniper in a secondary PCI-E slot and use the new card's GPU for gaming? You might have driver hiccups, but that should work...

 

IIRC at that time it wasn't launched under PC name yet.

 

I believe the Lucid Hydra drivers replace both the AMD and Nvidia drivers, so you probably wouldn't get either 3DVision, Eyefinity or PhysX. At least that's what I believe to be the situation. If anyone can confirm/deny, go for it!

 

Nope, Eyefinity does work and can be boosted (admitedly only ~30% at present) by an nvidia card.
Not sure about other technologys such as using eyefinty that is boosted by an nvidia card, with the nvidia card providing physx at the same time, or if physx would work at all.

Here is a link to a review testing this out
http://www.pcper.com/comments.php?nid=8505

Howevwer looking at that ATI card with hydra, it appears to only sport 1 dvi, 1display port, and 1 svideo out connectors?
So 3 screen eyefinty may not be supported on this card.

Currently trying to find more info about it.

EDIT: looks like it sports 1x HDMI, 1x DVI, 1x DP
link