14 DAY TRIAL // Hong Kong company Hightech Information System Limited has reportedly presented the custom-designed, pre-overclocked HIS Radeon HD 7770 IceQX silent video card.
The card is built around AMD’s “Cape Verde XT” graphics processing unit that comes with a minuscule 123 square millimeters die size, containing 1.5 billion transistors. The default GPU frequency is 1 GHz when working in 3D mode, but HIS’s implementation comes pre-overclocked to a high 1170 MHz GPU speed.
In 2D mode, the frequency of the GPU will drop to a low 300 MHz.
The 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory is clocked at a high 5000 MHz when in 3D mode, but drops to 600 MHz when switched in 2D. This is higher than the reference’s default memory frequency of 4500 MHz.
It works on a tight 128 bit BUS so the performance expectations should be adjusted accordingly, despite the factory overclock.
The “Cape Verde XT” GPU is part of AMD’s GCN architecture and comes with much improved GPU compute performance.
The GPU has 640 unified shader processors, 40 texturing units and 16 ROPs.
On the connectivity side, the HIS Radeon HD 7770 IceQX video card comes with two mini DisplayPort connectors, a HDMI interface along with DVI.
The custom designed HIS IceQX cooling system has two copper heatpipes that are cooled by a 9 centimeters cooling fan. This is enough to satisfy the cooling requirements of the “Cape Verde” GPU, as it will draw a maximum of around 80 watts when in full 3D mode. When idling, the “Caper Verde XT” will consume a meager 3 watts.
The card also uses solid capacitors and a special power design.
The iTurbo software will assist the amateur overclockers towards getting some more frames per second out of their favorite 3D game.
