Conclusion

Starting with the Gigabyte 5750 Silent Cell we have a card which greatly impressed us. It is no secret that we are big fans of Gigabytes Ultra Durable series motherboards and to see the same great build quality here is great. We have yet to have an Ultra Durable product fail on us and do not expect this to change with the 5750 Silent Cell.

Design wise there is little to fault on this product. Gigabyte have maximised the surface area of their passive cooler and it looks great with the blue PCB. A good selection of outputs is provided and had the card featured some ramsinks it would have been flawless in this respect.

Performance of the 5750 Silent Cell was also good, allowing gamers the ability to play at 1680x1050 with few compromises. For media enthusiasts it offers all of the key HTPC features such as Blu-Ray and MKV acceleration with 7.1 audio over HDMI and silent operation.

PowerColor take a slightly different approach to Gigabyte, changing the 5750 design in a more subtle but no less effective way. The result is a card which performs identically in gaming/media tasks and excels in efficiency, running cooler than the Gigabyte model while using 20w less power at full load. Some users may also prefer the inclusion of DisplayPort on the PowerColor card.

Overall we feel PowerColor have achieved their objective of making a "green" card however we do feel that they could go a little further by using a more compact box and bundling their drivers and manual on a re-usable USB stick rather than including a CD and paper manual.

That leaves the value comparison, currently Gigabyte sell their card for $149 and PowerColor $169, compared to standard models which start at $135. It really is a case of weighing up the key features of each card and then deciding which is best suited to each individual... for Gigabyte we are paying for significantly enhanced build quality. For PowerColor it is reduced energy bills over time.

Summary
Two similar but very different approaches to the 5750 which are impressive in their own ways.