The R5770 SOC from Gigabyte is a very fun card to own. It has a very decent feature set, proper monitor connectivity and most of all the baseline performance is just pretty darn okay for the mid-range segment. If priced right then we feel the SOC edition might be a very interesting purchase. Now I just checked and here in the Netherlands the price tag in e-tail is roughly 180 EUR and that might be just too steep, as on average the Radeon HD 5770 comes at a 150 EUR price tag these days.

But hey, overall we like the product very much but we do have to make two additional comments. First off, the OC Guru software remains a little icky to do your tweaking in. It's just not a great layout and it seems to have several bugs. Once you make an overclock profile and hit the save button... it doesn't save. It is stuff like that that drives you bonkers if you like to apply a continuous OC, even after a restart. If I were Gigabyte's product manager, I'd redesign the tool from the ground up to something better and more user friendly really.

The second comment I have to make is the noise level. Though the cooling performance is nothing to complain about, the sheer noise level brings back GeForce GTX 400 series memories. We measured roughly 44 dBA at 75cm distance from the product and that's a little too much for my tastes. But if you are used to a noisy environment or just don't care, then sure... don't let that bother you. The cooling performance is good though.

Overclocking wise we reached respectable levels, with decent cooling performance and voltage control at hand we reached the 1 GHz threshold, after that things got more complex real fast though.

So we do like what Gigabyte has done with the card. Most modern games can be played at very normal resolutions up to 1600x1200, and sometimes even 1920x1200. On average enabling 4xAA should not be an issue either.

Though we would have liked to have seen a less noisy cooler, we do appreciate what Gigabyte has done with the popular Radeon HD 5770. It's something refreshed, something updated and it certainly works out nicely. Priced right this might be just the product for you, but don't expect it to be silent.

** update this article was written before the GeForce GTX 460 launched. At 199 USD we do recommend you to look into that product as well and compare a little.

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