DXVA Media Playback
Being a Silence card, the HIS HD 6570 Silence makes for a perfect HTPC card. If you’re looking to build a quiet system for media playback with a little gaming on the side, then things are looking pretty good right now. We swapped our Core i5 system for an old Socket 939 Athlon 3800+, about as old as you can get and still have PCIe, and ran some media files to see how much the system has to deal with and how much the card will do. I used the usual tests of I, Robot at 1080i (MPEG2), a 1080p Batman Begins trailer (MP4) and Monsters Inc at 1080i to garner results. We also tried other files at 720p as well. One of the things I’ve always liked about the HD ATI cards is the Vector Deinterlacing and I still like it on this HIS card.
During Video Playback, CPU usage was (as expected) at a bare minimum. The system idles at around the 5-10% mark in Windows 7 Home Premium, and during HD Video Playback in Media Center this jumped to about 20%. Keep in mind this is an old Dual Core Athlon 3800+, so while those numbers may seem high they are pretty good for a 6-7 year old machine. I should also point out that the same HD media files are complete unwatchable via CPU playback, with frozen images and eventually stuttering sound. The system can just about do a low bitrate 720p file with the odd stutter, but pretty much anything 1080p is a no go. Using the HIS HD 6570 Silence we didn’t find anything we couldn’t play perfectly.
Temperatures
With a card like this, one thing that is important is the temperature of the GPU. Idle temperature was averaged at 44C, although we saw as low as 41C on a cooler day. The highest recorded Load temperature reached was 72C, but the average over a few days of use gaming was 69C. These temperatures, whilst quite high for a low card, are really good for a card with no moving parts. There is little point in commenting on the noise level; there isn’t one.
Final Words
The has shown itself to be a great little card. It does rather well in games, despite not being what most would call a gamers card. It’s not a powerhouse, but you can certainly play on the big screen if you’re willing to sacrifice a few bits of eye candy and graphic details here and there. Depending on the game, you may not even have to do that.
Media playback is handled by the Eyepseed feature list, which the supports, giving you the ability to playback many different media files. With 7.1 surround (including Dolby HD and DTS HD sound) sound via it’s HDMI interface, you have a complete card for HTPC duties.
Speaking of HTPC, if you’re going to have a PC sitting under your TV, you’ll likely want to keep the noise to a minimum, which is the whole point of this card. The has no active cooling whatsoever. have used a solid black heat-sink which spreads it’s wings over the card and provides ample cooling for the GPU.
I can’t see many folks using it, but the does support Eyefinity, and even CrossfireX, but I think the main appeal here is going to be the silent media playback with a little gaming. At this, the excels.
I’ve not been able to find a price for the , but assuming it’s comparable to other 6570′s, then this would be the one to get, purely for the silence.
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