Gigabyte claims the fastest HD5870 and GTX260

CeBIT 2010 Passive 5770s and new mobos

Mar 2, 2010 by

Gigabyte logoGIGABYTE HAS BEEN on a tear lately, releasing tons of USB3 based mobos around CES, so the new AMD 890 chipset had to hold the line. On the GPU front, things were a bit more interesting.

Gigabyte 890 board

AMD 890GX based GA-890GPA-UD3H

We told you about the 890GPA a few weeks ago, now it is official. The short story is that it has the new AMD 890 northbridge with the new SATA3 sporting SB850. Throw in an NEC USB3 chip and a HD4290 DX10.1 graphics, not DX11 as we said earlier, and you have a very tasty motherboard.

SO HD5870

Gigabyte Super Overclock HD5870

Moving on to graphics cards, there are a lot of good ones floating around. The best from Gigabyte were in the Super Overclock series, a new line of specially binned GPUs. Gigabyte calls this screening process GPU Gauntlett, and the result is a board called called GV-R587SO-1GD. It is a HD5870 card that Gigabyte claims will be the fastest on the market, period. Gigabyte will only say it is running at 950+MHz and memory is at 1250MHz, but both are still being tweaked at the lab.

The line also has the 2oz copper PCB from the desktop Ultra-Durable line, and other higher than usual spec components. Gigabyte also has a GTX260-216 in the Super Overclock line, and others are sure to follow.

A lot of people have been clamoring for passive GPUs lately, and the top of the line tends to be, well, low spec. Gigabyte had an interesting passive HD5450 on display, but it was still a HD5450. The board was a half-height PCB that used the space above the card to put in a bigger passive heatsink. The end result is a much thinner passive GPU, but nothing you would want to game on.

Passive 5770

Passive HD5770

Behind closed doors, Gigabyte was showing a passive 5770, a full 800 shader gaming card. If you are one of the HTPC junkies that wants to crank up the post-processing, or occasionally play a game at decent frame rates, this is your card. The one you see above is an early prototype, things will change before the product is finalized. The good news is passive 5770s are not only coming, but coming in the near future.S|A

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Charlie Demerjian

Roving engine of chaos and snide remarks at SemiAccurate
Charlie Demerjian is the founder of Stone Arch Networking Services and SemiAccurate.com. SemiAccurate.com is a technology news site; addressing hardware design, software selection, customization, securing and maintenance, with over one million views per month. He is a technologist and analyst specializing in semiconductors, system and network architecture. As head writer of SemiAccurate.com, he regularly advises writers, analysts, and industry executives on technical matters and long lead industry trends. Charlie is also available through Guidepoint and Mosaic. FullyAccurate