Tuesday, June 1st 2010
PowerColor Sniper HD 5770 + Killer NIC Up Close
Call it the admin's graphics card or the gamer's network card, but PowerColor seems to have come up with an unusual combination of a graphics processor (ATI Radeon HD 5770) with a hardware-accelerated network processor (Bigfoot Killer), which are seated on the same board, and share the system bus using a PCI-Express bridge chip. The GPU is a fairly standard HD 5770 that packs DirectX 11 support, 800 stream processors, and 1 GB of GDDR5 memory across a 128-bit wide interface, while the NPU is an ARM-derived system-on-chip (SoC) which offloads network stack processing completely from the host in a bid to cut system latencies. The inclusion of a PCI-Express bridge chip and the NPU significantly increased the size of PCB, yet the card seems to make do with just a single 6-pin power input. Given that a standalone PCI-E Killer NIC easily costs over $120 and the HD 5770 around the $150 mark, with the $10-odd PCI-E bridge chip, one can expect this product to easily cost over $250.
28 Comments on PowerColor Sniper HD 5770 + Killer NIC Up Close
i guess ATI started it with the realtek HD audio, but i never expected it to go further than that.
I dont think Creative would be willing to partner with ATi or Nvidia for an innovative combo product like this 5770 here. Asus on the other hand might as they dont seem that anal about their soundcards like creative are
Ignoring the fact that the Killer NIC has been shown time and time again to not actually do anything there are some other glaringly stupid things here.
What engineer said "Hey lets make it so that when you upgrade your GPU, you loose the Killer NIC"? And what second idiotic engineer said "that sounds great, but lets make it even better by putting it on a GPU that is already a generation behind in performance"?
I mean, come on, if your going to do something like this, do it on something that isn't already performance outdated.
Not to mention the bridge chip I spy under that heatsink probably means the GPU runs at PCI-E x8 and the NIC uses the other x8.
Yeah, you can get one of these and a standard HD5770 for crossfire. However, at the price point this will probably be at, $250+, and the $150 price tag on a second HD5770 we are up to $400. You can get an HD5870 for $390... Yes, two HD5770s heavily overclocked will outperform an HD5870 in some tests, but not in most, and a mildly overclocked HD5870 will outperform two heavily overclocked HD5770 almost always. Yes, with the HD5870 you don't get the "benefits" of the Killer NIC, but the thing doesn't do anything. If you really must have the plecebo effect, buy a $20 PCI-E 10/100/1000 NIC.
5770 = bang for buck
5770 + K.N = Price Premium (1st gen Killer Nics are still about £100ish here in the UK)
For that extra £100 you'd get more result spending the cash on a better graphics card. 5770s are good. but they aint great. they dont have what it takes to go toe to toe with 4870s due to their 128mb memory bus.
Oh wait, 5770 and killer NIC and dual parallel printer ports on AGP-PCIe bridge-chip might be novel. :banghead:
I think - if the GPU is dead - the whole card would also be dead but again it depends on the level of integration the NIC has with the GPU (viceversa) theres too many anomalies in the equation to give a solid yes/no answer & due to this I think it would be correct to assume that in the event of shit happening when shit happens that both the GPU & NIC will be out of service requiring a lengthly trip back to manufacturer