14 DAY TRIAL // Home Theater Personal Computers may not normally benefit from as much attention from the media as gaming desktops or enthusiast hardware, but they are still quite widespread. This is because they can deliver a high-quality multimedia experience in a small form and, usually, an aesthetically-pleasing packaging that fits into living rooms. In turn, this requires that the internal components be significantly undersized as well, which is why the low profile form factor came to be.
All end-users must know by now that ATI is the only one currently offering DirectX 11 cards for the mainstream and entry-level markets. Granted, at present, there really isn't any video format that can actually benefit overmuch from DirectX 11, since its main two components (DirectCompute and Tessellation) are actually meant for games and next-generation 3D designing applications. Still, it never hurts to be future-proof, which is why PowerColor put together a special HD 5770.
The Radeon HD 5770 Low Profile Edition is, obviously, a smaller version of the original, with half the height, in order to fit into the small enclosures that HTPCs have. The adapter has a GPU clock of 850 MHz, 1GB of GDDR5 VRAM clocked at 4,800 MHz, a memory interface of 128 bits, 800 stream processors and DVI and HDMI outputs. The only noticeable 'drawback' is lack of CrossFire support, though this can't really be seen as an issue since HTPC motherboards don't usually have more than one graphics slot. Finally, an Arctic Cooling dual-fan cooler makes sure that temperatures stay low and harmless.
The low profile HD 5770 is currently on display at PowerColor's booth in Taipei, alongside a variety of other electronics, as reported by PCGH. Unfortunately, though not unexpected, no information exists on when this device will come to market, or which regions it will first make it to.