Passively cooled video cards have always been somewhere on the limit between usable and unusable. Their all-time distinctive feature was 64bit bus width and therefore low price. Until recent times they also only had DDR2 video memory at best. But things have changed. First, there appeared some DDR3 DirectX 11 models. Then SAPPHIRE HD 5550 came along with its 128bit bus and still no fan. Now though meet the new SAPPHIRE HD 5670 ULTIMATE.As you have already understood, SAPPHIRE HD 5670 ULTIMATE has a passively cooled heatsink. But it is not an underclocked HD 5670. Specs have remained the same, so all the features have remained as well: DirectX 11 goodies, CrossFire support, inbuilt Unified Video decoder, three displays support under Eyefinity, etc. Official press release doesn’t state the price but I don’t see any reasons for it to grow over $100.
- SAPPHIRE HD 5670 ULTIMATE specifications:
- GPU: 400 Stream Processors @ 775MHz
- VRAM: 1GB DDR5 @ 1000MHz, 128bit interface
- Output: Dual-link DVI, HDMI, VGA
