Quick Look: PowerColor’s Radeon HD 5770 PCS+ Vortex Edition

Final Words

When we first agreed to review PowerColor’s Radeon HD 5770 PCS+ Vortex, we weren’t quite sure what to expect. Whatever we were expecting though was that the card would be easy to evaluate in one manner or another. This didn’t turn out to be the case.

We’ll start with the Vortex’s adjustable fan, the card’s big feature. In short, the adjustable fan is a useless gimmick in our tests. Extending the fan doesn’t change the card’s temperatures and it only makes the card slightly louder. There’s no useful reason to extend the fan and hence there’s no reason to take advantage of the card’s adjustable fan. For all practical purposes, this card should be considered a double-slot 5770 with a fan that can be removed for an easy cleaning.

The 5770 is not a hot card in the first place, so the fact that an adjustable fan didn’t have a significant impact doesn’t really surprise us in the end. As we’ll see in some other triple-slot cards later this month and next month there’s definitely a point to a wider design, but it only manifests itself on larger, hotter cards that also go all the way with a triple-slot cooler rather than toying with the concept like PowerColor does here.

But while the adjustable fan is a gimmick, the overall cooler design for the Vortex is not. It’s generally as good as the reference 5770 which was already a solid design in the first place. Much more impressive is the fact that PowerColor managed to pull this off on a card over an inch shorter than the reference 5770 with no downsides to speak of. With a factory overclock it’s faster than, as cool as, and as overclockable as any reference 5770, all in a smaller package. Unlike the fan, this really is an impressive feat for the Vortex.

Finally we’re left with pricing. The 1GB 5770 market is fairly competitive, and as a semi-specialty card the 5770 Vortex is not competitively priced with the cheapest cards on the market. At $165 it’s not poorly priced but it’s also not a steal. If you need a shorter Radeon HD 5770, it’s one of only a few cards that will fit the bill, otherwise you have to look at the overclock and the included copy of Call of Duty – Modern Warfare 2.

Cards with a similar overclock – including PowerColor’s previous PCS+ 5770 based on the same PCB – can be had for as little as $140 after rebate. Since we haven’t tested the previous PCS+ so we can’t say too much about it, but ultimately the Vortex is only price competitive if you value a copy of Modern Warfare 2. Otherwise as one of the more expensive 5770s on the market, it should be possible to find a similarly performing card for less.