Introduction

All AMD Radeon HD 5000 cards exhibit excellent power consumption numbers and better performance/Watt scores than any previous generation product from any company so far. So it is not surprising that the green folks have noticed these cards and started using them to keep their power usage down. Especially idle power consumption is important when a PC is running the whole day - usually sitting at the desktop or being used for desktop applications.

Now PowerColor has released their HD 5750 Go! Green Edition, which does not use any active cooling (not sure why that is green, but I like it) and manages without an extra PCI-Express power connector. No external power available limits the card to a maximum power draw of 75W, which we will definitely check and try to surpass in our testing. Due to the completely passive design, PowerColor recommends that the card be installed only in a case where there is some airflow to supply the card with fresh air.

Packaging

The green package definitely looks green, even though it is certainly as non-green as any other video card package out there. Maybe a cardboard box from recycled paper would have been a better choice here. The back goes into more detail why it's good to be green and the usage models this card is designed for.

Contents

You will receive:

• Graphics card
• Driver CD + Quick Install Guide
• DVI to VGA adapter

The Card

PowerColor has placed a really big heatsink on their card which could potentially make the card not fit your case. To save you some drama, double check before purchase please. From PCIe connector (including) to top edge of fan the distance is 13.2 cm.


Just like the reference design, the card occupies two slots in the system.


The card has two DVI ports, one HDMI port, and one DisplayPort. This is just one of many output configurations that are possible on the new cards, thanks to the overhauled display output logic. Basically the card can drive six TMDS signals that can be combined in any way (a dual-link DVI consumes two TMDS lines).

For HDMI Audio, NVIDIA requires you to feed an external audio source, for example from your motherboard's on-board audio, to the card via SPDIF cable. AMD on the other hand has integrated a sound device inside their GPUs which is the easier solution for most users. Also AMD's integrated sound device has been upgraded to support HDMI 1.3a which includes Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD, AC-3, DTS and up to 7.1 channel audio with 192 kHz / 24-bit.


Crossfire configurations are supported to improve performance even further, even though I'm not sure how much sense it makes to have two of these cards dump their heat into a closed case.


Here are the front and the back of the card, high-res versions are also available (front, back). If you choose to use these images for voltmods etc, please include a link back to this site or let us post your article.