PowerColor Getting Innovative This Computex

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While AMD has no new GPU product launches slated for this year's Computex event, its partners are letting their imagination go places. PowerColor is doing just that, with as many as five new products and technologies. To begin with, the company is working on the PowerColor HD 5770 Sniper Edition. This graphics card packs a Bigfoot Killer NIC on-board, so graphics and network processing is packaged into a single addon card. From what we can tell, the card is designed using a PCI-Express bridge which is connected to the PCI-Express x16 interface, which gives the Radeon HD 5770 GPU an x16 link and the Killer SoC an x1 link. The Killer network processor has its own dedicated memory and ROM, with which the SoC can offload network processing from Windows, in a bid to reduce latencies, even if improving performance is inconsequential with today's systems with powerful processors.

Next up, is the PowerColor HD 5770 Evolution. Again, another novelty graphics card based on the Radeon HD 5770. This one packs a Lucid Hydra Engine chip on-board, which allows it work in tandem with any other graphics card, ATI or NVIDIA, with 2-way or 3-way multi-GPU support. Third card is probably what will interest a lot more buyers, PowerColor HD 5770 Single Slot Edition. As the name suggests, the card will occupy only one expansion slot. The next card is an even more practical product in the making, a series of low-profile Radeon HD 5770 and HD 5750 cards. Lastly, PowerColor will demonstrate what it calls the Vortex Cooling technology, a unique video card cooler which allows users to adjust the fan's height from the heatsink, and vector its air-flow. Not wanting to reveal too much, PowerColor left us with tiny images, some of which are outlines of the actual images.......

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http://www.techpowerup.com/123228/Po..._Computex.html

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From what we can tell, the card is designed using a PCI-Express bridge which is connected to the PCI-Express x16 interface, which gives the Radeon HD 5770 GPU an x16 link and the Killer SoC an x1 link.

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Not x15?:shrug:

"Nothing to see here, move on folks"

the question is how efficient is hydra compared to SLI/crossfire

Haha, these are as ridiculous as the EVGA GTX 275 + 250 combo :D

The Hydra one does sound cool, though... If you have a relevantly performing card, say GTS 250 or 9800GTX, you could buy one HD5770 and get more performance...

However, in that case the "why don't you get a second GTS 250" question arises, but we suppress it cruelly, because this is novelty tech and we likey.

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Originally Posted by annihilat0r

Haha, these are as ridiculous as the EVGA GTX 275 + 250 combo :D

The Hydra one does sound cool, though... If you have a relevantly performing card, say GTS 250 or 9800GTX, you could buy one HD5770 and get more performance...

However, in that case the "why don't you get a second GTS 250" question arises, but we suppress it cruelly, because this is novelty tech and we likey.

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dx11 maybe? dont quite remember what would happen if u have one dx11 card and the other isnt

How big is the market of "hard core" gamers who are willing to shell out for a Bigfoot Nic that would also be happy with just a 5770 for graphics?

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Originally Posted by MrMojoZ

How big is the market of "hard core" gamers who are willing to shell out for a Bigfoot Nic that would also be happy with just a 5770 for graphics?

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Yeah... my thoughts exactly. OTOH Low profile and singleslot HD5770 is good news! :up:

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Originally Posted by MrMojoZ

How big is the market of "hard core" gamers who are willing to shell out for a Bigfoot Nic that would also be happy with just a 5770 for graphics?

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Well, since I already run two 5770's in my setup now, I could supposedly get one of these down the road...the chances of my actually doing that are sorta slim though.

I'd prefer to actually see a 'lack of innovation' when it comes to the 5770 now, and rather see AIB's go back to the superior reference design.

Single slot cooling is a great idea for the 5770, non reference PCBs on them however completely blow (Except for MSI / Asus voltage tweak ones).

killer nic? oh please... these guys still exist?

hydra on a vga with a single gpu? why? 0_o

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Originally Posted by saaya

hydra on a vga with a single gpu? why? 0_o

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because you get 64 PCIe lanes for one GPU?

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Originally Posted by Helloworld_98

because you get 64 PCIe lanes for one GPU?

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lol WHAT? whos spreading nonsense like this? :rofl: :ROTF:
it plugs into a single x16 slot, hows it going to provide more than x16 bandwidth to the gpu?

EDIT: oh wait... your kidding right? :D

Yo Dawg
I herd you liek kards so

What I'd really want to know is what use could the Hydra chip onboard the 5770 possibly have when it comes to multi-GPU. :confused: How can it do load-balancing from aboard one card and with no connection to the other?? :confused: I'd really like to see them pull it off though, then other vendors will follow if the concept is good and we'll be able to mix and match all cards with more flexibility than SLI/CF. :)

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Originally Posted by rado992

What I'd really want to know is what use could the Hydra chip onboard the 5770 possibly have when it comes to multi-GPU. :confused: How can it do load-balancing from aboard one card and with no connection to the other?? :confused: I'd really like to see them pull it off though, then other vendors will follow if the concept is good and we'll be able to mix and match all cards with more flexibility than SLI/CF. :)

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The RV840 chip probably sits on the Hydra chip, don't you think? Therefore the Hydra is connected to PCIe x16 and RV840 core to Hydra. Another core could be connected to hydra through second PCIe slot.

yes, thats the only way it could work, BUT that would mean that the hydra chip actually has to steal some bandwidth from the first gpu it shares the card with, to connect to the cpu/chipset and then to the second gpu in another pciE slot...
that sounds like a terrible idea imo...

The VGA has no bandwith at all. How I understand it the Hydra chip communicates with CPU as it was VGA. Only change is the Hydra is not VGA at all, it sends packets of work to real GPU's, then collect results and somehow makes image from it using one of the VGA. In this case the problem is the Hydra communicates with CPU and other adapters on the same 16 PCIe lines, normally it is connected to CPU by some 16 lines and has another lines for communication with the video cards.

But it does not matter so much considering what the bandwith of card like HD 5770 is. Even combining it with HD 5870 should bring major improvenemts since we know from tests that HD 5870 on PCIe 2.0 ×8 has 98 % the performance on PCIe 2.0 ×16. What I am actually interested in is whether it's possible to make Hybrid Crossfire/SLI with integrated VGA? It could bring few % for free, right? Maybe I'll even buy this one, it should still be much cheaper than HD 58x0 and I can use my HD 3200 or HD 3870 or both:hump:

we put kard in a kard so you can

sorry but this makes very little sense...
xfire scales the same or better than hydra and works on ANY platform... so why would you equip an ati card with a hydra chip to begin with?
only if you want to mix it with an nvidia card... but perf scaling of ati plus nvidia is bad...
and you could either mix a 5770 with an older nvidia card and lose dx11 support, or mix it with a 480 or 470, which doesnt really make sense as those cards are fast enough as is... and if you want more performance than a single 470 or 480 your def not going to mix it with a 5770...

tbh, running a 5770 in dual gpu mode with ANY other vga makes no sense at all...
if its an older card you lose dx11 support, and why would you run 5770 xfire if it costs the same as a 5850 and performs about the same as a 5850?

a dual gts250 would make sense with hydra, or a dual gtx460 maybe...
the hydra chip would act as a dumb pciE switch on sli supported platforms and as a smart switch on non supported platforms and give people "quasi" sli on non sli supported platforms...
and an amd am3+ or intel 775 mainboard with hydra would make sense cause those platforms dont have sli support...

but an ati card with hydra?
especially one with a single gpu?
thats a really weird design... worse than the gts250 gtx260 coop card from evga imo...

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Originally Posted by saaya

lol WHAT? whos spreading nonsense like this? :rofl: :ROTF:
it plugs into a single x16 slot, hows it going to provide more than x16 bandwidth to the gpu?

EDIT: oh wait... your kidding right? :D

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I wish I was, but HYDRA has 48 PCIe lanes, 48 + 16 = 64

play games with ati while u play games with nvidia

More info:

5770 + NIC http://www.techpowerup.com/123633/Po..._Up_Close.html

5770 + Hydra http://www.techpowerup.com/123613/Po...ther_Card.html

5770 low profile http://www.techpowerup.com/123610/Po...s_Spotted.html

5770 single slot picture
http://www.techpowerup.com/live/imag...l_img_7337.jpg

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Originally Posted by Mats

More info:

5770 + NIC http://www.techpowerup.com/123633/Po..._Up_Close.html

5770 + Hydra http://www.techpowerup.com/123613/Po...ther_Card.html

5770 low profile http://www.techpowerup.com/123610/Po...s_Spotted.html

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Those are interesting to say the least. I think the NIC card/Video card combo is especially cool as I have to use another spot on my especially crammed HTPC for an Intel NIC card as the onboard NIC is terrible. I just don't know about the NIC they choose to use :(.

I can see the 5770 low profile/single slot also becoming a HTPC hit with the smaller cases.

unlimited amount of cards ? instead of 4 card cap.
yeah i know you all think it's pointless,