14 DAY TRIAL // There is around half a day left until Advanced Micro Devices formally launches the Hawaii 28nm graphics processing unit, and the Radeon R9-290X graphics card based on it, but if anyone thought that meant a lull in video board releases, they've just been proven wrong.
It so happens that AMD's OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) aren't content with just sitting by and doing nothing. HIS is the most current example.
The company has introduced the Radeon HD 7730 iSilence 5 video board. No doubt it is meant as a way to digest the remaining stockpiles of Cape Verde graphics processors.
Normally, we'd be hesitant to call a Radeon HD 7700-series graphics adapter “low end” but in this case, it is justified, because while there are 2 GB of memory available, they are DDR3, not GDDR5.
Then again, at this point, what passes for “low end” is really the middle range in terms of graphics prowess.
The only reason true entry-level video controllers don't get sold anymore is because Intel has decent iGPs in its CPUs now, and AMD has mainstream-level Kepler support in its APUs. But I digress.
The HIS Radeon HD 7730 iSilence 5 graphics card runs the 28nm Cape Verde GPU (384 Graphics CoreNext stream processors, 24 TMUs, and 8 ROPs) at 800 MHz, and the DDR3 memory at 1.6 GHz.
Those are reference specifications really, which is odd, because HIS definitely didn't refrain from equipping the product with a huge, blocky cooler, with an aluminum fin stack heatsink (colored blue) and four nickel-plated copper heat pipes.
Then again, that blocky cooler happens to be completely fanless. Passive as it were. Which means not only a complete and utter lack of noise, but also that the energy requirements of the video board are low. The HIS 7730 iSilence 5 product page, oddly enough, doesn't say what the TDP is, exactly, but it does mention that it can settle for a PC power supply of just 400W.
Sadly, the price, as you may have surmised, is still under wraps.