Jun 4, 2010 08:39 GMT  ·  By

The interesting bit about electronic shows is that all attending companies are so eager to show off their inventions that practically every possible official announcement happens in the first couple of days, or even prior to the actual start of the event. Of course, certain players leave some of the more highly-anticipated devices for later, to increase hype, but these mostly act as the exceptions that confirm the rule.

The immediate effect of this phenomenon is that a large part of the products on display end up overshadowed by a small number of more highly-anticipated ones. At this year's ongoing Computex, tablets definitely stole the spotlight for the first couple of days, after which motherboards, laptops and graphics cards took their turn. This led to certain devices being taken notice of much later than they would have been otherwise.

The HIS HD 5570 Silent is one such product. Though obviously not a match for all the enthusiast-grade video boards that have shown up so far, the HD 5570, as an entry level/mainstream offer, is quite likely to account for a significant part of ATI's/AMD's final income, perhaps even more so than the more expensive, albeit stronger, models.

This new model from HIS may even prove especially popular because it has a passive cooling solution, which implies both utter silence and a higher power efficiency. No doubt budget-conscious consumers will find these benefits intriguing, especially considering the specs of the card.

The device uses the 40nm Redwood GPU, 512MB or 1GB of GDDR3 memory, a 128-bit interface and 320 stream processors. Direct X 11 support is, of course, present, as are a DVI-D, an HDMI and a DisplayPort output. As for the cooler itself, it is a dual-slot heatsink composed of ridged aluminum fins for increased surface area. Nothing is known about pricing or availability.