6/09/2012 12:44:00 AM
dannzfay
HTPCs are often little more than glorified media players with web browsing, but it is perfectly possible to make truly strong compact PCs. All it takes is a strong CPU and a small enough video card.
CPUs are easy to solve. As long as a micro-ATX or mini-ITX motherboard has the required socket, even high-end chips can be used. Graphics cards are trickier, since the moderately strong ones (or above) usually aren't all that small, not to mention that they have big, thick coolers. Sapphire decided to offer an exception and it chose AMD's Radeon HD 7750 card to achieve its purpose.
Normally shaped as a standard-sized, dual-slot board, the adapter was turned into a low-profile model featuring a thin, single-slot fansink. Sapphire didn't even need to sacrifice performance. The clock speeds are within reference AMD parameters (800 MHz for the Cape Verde GPU, 1,125 MHz / 4.5 GHz effective for the 1 GB GDDR5 VRAM). The only concession was to the outputs. While the dual-Link DVI was left alone, the DisplayPort and HDMI were replaced by their miniature counterparts. Fortunately, Sapphire has included adapters for them. Finally, the board has a 2+1+1 phase VRM and high-grade driver-MOSFETs on the GPU phases. It makes do with the energy provided by the PCI Express slot. Unfortunately, no price or availability date was provided.
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