Sapphire’s Overclocked to the Max HD 7770 GHz Edition

Two and one-half years ago, AMD released the Radeon HD 5770 graphics card. This “Juniper” GPU was released on 40nm and it featured AMD’s Eyefinity Technology and they were among the first cards to have Direct 11 compatibility and Shader Model 5 support. The Radeon HD 5770 had extraordinary performance for its price point and it has been one of the most successful products in the AMD lineup. Last year, AMD continued the Radeon HD 5770 legacy by adding some features and rebranding it as the HD 6770 GPU.

Fast forward to now, and AMD has released the new HD 7770 on 28nm featuring their new GCN architecture complete with Eyefinity Technology 2.0 and DX11.1. It’s based on AMD’s GPU named “Cape Verde” and its stock core clock is now 1GHz which is is clocked +15% higher than Juniper’s HD 5770/6770 but a little slower on the memory, both of which use 1GB GDDR5 memory on a 128bit memory bus. The HD 7770 has less Shader Processors (SPs) than the HD 5770’s although they are more advanced.

Sapphire has taken the basic HD 7770 1GHz core GPU, added custom cooling and overclocked it another +150Mhz to bring it as far as it can realistically go for a fully warrantied production model, and they sell it for $169 as an OC (overclocked) edition – about ten dollars more than the standard HD 7770. We are going to run our 20-plus game benchmark suite and determine if it is a good value as we will compare it to the HD 6770/5770, the HD 6870, the GTX 560, and the GTX 550 Ti to see where this card sits in regard to performance for an entry level mainstream gaming card.

We are going to save the architectural discussion of this card for a later article as we continue to benchmark AMD’s HD 7000 series, and instead focus on the performance of this particular Sapphire GHz Overclocked edition of the HD 7770. We shall also compare it with stock HD 7770 performance. To fully round out this performance evaluation, we shall also attempt to overclock it further to see if additional gains are possible or if they will even continue to be linear from overclocking to beyond Sapphire’s factory overclock.

Is the Sapphire HD 7770 GHz SuperOverclock Edition, the HD 6870, and the GTX 560 worth about the same price? 

–Performance vs. Pricing

The feature set of Sapphire’s HD 7770 GHz OverClock Edition is very impressive as listed on Sapphire’s chart at the bottom of this page.  However, we also need to compare its $169 pricing versus performance.  At the lower end of performance and price are the HD 6770s which sell for about $99 on Newegg and are being replaced by the HD 7770 series.   The least expensive versions of the GTX 550 Ti start at about $109 after rebate while the GTX 560’s rock-bottom pricing starts at $159 after rebate at Newegg.

However, to complicate matters, higher performing cards such as AMD’s HD 6870 have reached end of life and are being discounted to chear the retail channels.  Still current are the similarly-priced/performing GTX 560 and more expensive GTX 560 Ti.  At $169 the Sapphire HD 7770 GHz OverClock edition is currently $20 more expensive than the XFX HD 6870 at Newegg after mail-in-rebate and promo code.  What we are going to do today is to give you a snapshot of todays market and where the Sapphire HD 7770 GHz OverClock edition sits in regards to performance and value.

We put our Sapphire HD 7770 GHz OverClock editon through its paces this week with the very latest Catalyst 12.2 drivers. This driver brought some minor performance increases over the last WHQL Catalyst driver set. We also used the 295.73 WHQL drivers for the GeForce cards that were released last month and which also brought small performance increases over the last GeForce drivers.

We now bench with 21 modern games and with 3 synthetic benchmarks, and generally use 1920×1200 and 1680×1050 resolutions and with an emphasis on DX11 games – 1 open GL, 4 DX9, 5 DX10, and 11 DX11 games.  Since we are using entry to mid-level enthusiast GPU video cards, it makes sense to test them at their highest playable resolutions and with the most demanding playable settings that they can handle. And of course we will attempt to find playable settings bearing in mind that the cards that we are testing are aimed approximately at 1920×1080 resolution and are priced from around $100 to $180.

Features:

Here are the Sapphire HD 7770 GHz OverClock Edition’s features as found on Sapphire’s web site:

Dual-Link DVI Equipped with the most popular Dual Link DVI (Digital Visual Interface), this card is able to display ultra high resolutions of up to 2560 x 1600 at 60Hz.

	HDMI (with 3D) Support for Deep Color, 7.1 High Bitrate Audio, and 3D Stereoscopic, ensuring the highest quality Blu-ray and video experience possible from your PC.

	Mini-DisplayPort Enjoy the benefits of the latest generation display interface, DisplayPort. With the ultra high HD resolution, the graphics card ensures that you are able to support the latest generation of LCD monitors.

	Advanced GDDR5 Memory Technology GDDR5 memory provides twice the bandwidth per pin of GDDR3 memory, delivering more speed and higher bandwidth.

	AMD CrossFireX™ Multi-GPU Technology Triple or Quadruple gaming power with AMD CrossFireX™ Multi-GPU Technology.  AMD CrossFireX technology supports up to four graphics cards to be used in a single system.

	AMD HD3D TechnologyEnjoy the most immersive experience possible with full support for High Definition Stereoscopic 3D, a technique that presents 2D images (movies, games, photos) in a format that creates the illusion of three-dimensional depth when using compatible 3D displays / glasses / software.

28 nm GCN (Graphic Core Next) Architecture.  The new and 28nm GCN Architecture with more efficient process technology puts more transistors in less space, enabling a dramatic increase in Processing Power. Crank the settings, devastate your enemies and bear witness to absurdly high frame rates with AMD Radeon HD7000 series graphics card-DirectX 11 has never looked this good. Maximum setting and crazy performance shouldn’t be a compromise. The AMD Radeon HD7900 Series with the new 28 nm GCN Architecture assures that it’s not.

	PCI Express 3.0PCI-Express 3.0 delivers double the bandwidth per lane of PCIe Gen 2 for faster GPU (GPU communication-up to 16GB/sec in each direction), maximizing the performance from your GPU when paired with the latest platforms.

AMD Eyefinity 2.0The next generation of AMD Eyefinity technology is here, featuring all-new support for stereo 3D, universal bezel compensation and brand new display configurations. Face it: the best just got better: The enhancements for AMD Radeon HD7000 series include: Stereo 3D-multi-display stereoscopic 3D support via DisplayPort 16K X 16K maximum display group resolution-output up to 268 megapixels per GPU.  *To support 3 displays, one of the monitors has to support DisplayPort **When running Microsoft Windows XP, Eyefinity technlogy supports a maximum of 2 displays.

	GHz Edition  The gigahertz barrier has been broken. Armed with a stunning 1GHz GPU based on the revolutionary GCN Architecture, the AMD Radeon™ HD 7000 GHz Edition (Selected model) is quite simply engineered to annihilate.

	Shader Model 5.0  Supports the latest Shader Model 5.0 feature set including VTF (Vertex Texture Fetch) which is a key feature used extensively in many of the games that ship today. Without support for this feature the game will fall back to a lesser shader path resulting in the loss of cool, lifelike effects made possible by Shader Model 5.0

	OpenGL 4.2  OpenGL 4.2 improves the GPU efficiency by improving the shader process operation and capturing GPU tessellated geometry. The process of modifying an arbitrary subset of compress texture is also simplified. The memory management in handling shaders is more efficient as well.

	Best Microsoft DirectX11 Support  The tessellation performance on AMD Radeon HD7000 is up to 2X faster than the previous generation, and DirectCompute performance is also faster to accelerate advanced post-processing, filtering, and anti-aliasing techniques. Direct X11 games has never looked this good.

	AMD Catalyst Control Center™  The AMD Catalyst Control Center™ software application gives you complete control over the performance and visual quality of your SAPPHIRE AMD Radeon™ based graphics card allowing for the best experience on your PC.

	Dolby® TrueHD and DTSHD Master Audio™ Support  Support for copy protected, high bandwidth, 7.1 channel surround sound over HDMI. Get a fully immersive, high definition audio experience with the latest Blu-ray movies. (Requires a DVI to HDMI dongle on some models, an HD capable monitor and a Blu-ray drive)

	AMD PowerTune™ Technology  AMD PowerTune is a breakthrough technology that sets an entirely new direction for maximum performance at TDP. It allows the GPU to be designed with higher engine clock speeds which can be applied on the broad set of applications that have thermal headroom.

	Enhanced Internet Browser Applications  Not just for video and games, the power of your GPU can now accelerate the latest versions of some Internet browsers (IE9/Mozzilla FireFox) utilising Direct 2D rendering for a faster and more responsive browsing experience including high quality image rendering and media playback.

	Microsoft Office 2010  Take advantage of improved picture and media editing capabilities in Office 2010 as well as edit and share your content in real time.See more, and get more done. Enhanced productivity with accelerated GPU processing for Office applications.

	Windows® 7 support  WHQL (Windows Hardware Quality Labs) Certified drivers and logos are available for all SAPPHIRE HD2000, HD3000, HD4000 and HD5000 series cards ensuring compatibility and reliability with Microsoft Windows 7.

	AMD PowerPlay with ZeroCore Power Technology  AMD PowerPlay is a power management technology in response to the GPU loading, AMD PowerPlay automatically manages the power consumption. AMD RADEON HD7000 Series with AMD ZeroCore Power Technology, the power consumption can be as low as less than 3 Watt when idle, making the best use of power.

	Accelerated Internet Applications   RenderingThe new AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series accelerates the rendering performance with the latest web browsers (IE10, Firefox 6) and programming interfaces (Direct2D, HTML5, WebGL, Flash 11 / Molehill).

AMD HD Media Accelerator  AMD HD Media Accelerator has been designed to help optimize and dramatically improve video playback on your computer by taking advantage of hardware video acceleration from your AMD Radeon GPU. With full 3D stereoscopic decode you can enjoy it all in 3D. AMD HD Media Accelerator speeds up the decode of one 1080p and one 1080i HD video streams simultaneously by hardware, and the new hardware encodes/transcoder processes your media content faster than ever!

Cutting-edge Quad HD display support (4K Support)  The display resolution on AMD Radeon HD7000 series is quadrupled to the resolution of 4KX2K( 4096X2160 ) from the outputs of DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI.

Here are the specifications from Sapphire’s site

Here are the system requirements from Sapphire’s site:

We see awesome features and we are eager to get to benching the Sapphire HD 7770 GHz OverClock Edition.  First, let’s unbox it.

 

–~~~~~~~~~~~~–

Unboxing the Sapphire HD 7770 GHz OC edition

The Sapphire HD 7770 GHz OverClock edition comes in a black box with a GI Jane type of picture that emphasises that Sapphire means business with this card.  1GB GGR5, high-speed HDMI and a substantial overclock stand out to catch the consumer’s eye at retail.

The other side of the box is dedicated to the rear view of Sapphire’s mascott and to the card’s features.  The potential buyer at retail can see what is included with the HD 7770 – assorted cables , the driver CD and the quickstart manual.

The end panel is pretty plain.

The specifications are on the other panel.

Opening the box we see that everything is well packed and the HD 7770 card itself comes in an anti-static foam-protected envelope.

Here is everything out of the box.

We see a single molex to 6-pin PCIe connector which suggests that this card is very light on power usage.  Included is a HDMI cable, a DVI to VGA adapter, a HDMI to mini adaptor and a CrossFire bridge for pairing up the performance of two HD 7770s.

Sapphire has created a well designed good-looking card with a large single fan in the center.  There is a single DVI connector, DisplayPort connector and two mini HDMI connectors.

Sapphire has added extra cooling to the card in the form of heatpipes to keep the overclock stable.  There is a single 6-pin PCIe connection.

Turning the card over …

And from the other angle with a good view of the PCIe connector.  This card is easy to fit into most mid tower and even smaller cases as the card is physically short at about eight and one-quarter inches long.

The card looks great!  Let’s take a look at our test system before we benchmark the Sapphire HD 7770 against the HD 6770 and the HD 6870 as well as the GeForce GTX 560, the GTX 560 Ti and the GTX 550 Ti

Our test system

Test Configuration

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i7 920 (reference 2.66 GHz and overclocked to 4,2GHz using the 21x multiplier); Turbo is off.
• Gigabyte EX58-UD3R (Intel X58 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 2.0 specification; CrossFire/SLI 16x+16x).
• 6 GB OCZ DDR3 PC 18000 Kingston RAM (3×2 GB, tri-channel at 1200MHz; 2×2 GB supplied was by Kingston)
• Sapphire HD 7770 GHz OC Edition (1 GB, 1150/1250MHz; also underclocked to reference speeds and overclocked), supplied by Sapphire
• Gigabyte HD 6770 (1GB, Reference Clocks 850/1200MHz) Supplied by AMD
• AMD HD 6870 (1GB, reference clocks, 900/1050MHz), supplied by AMD
• Galaxy GTX 560-MDT (1 GB, Galaxy reference clocks 830/2004MHz) loaned by Galaxy
• Galaxy GTX 560 Ti (1 GB, Galaxy reference clocks 835/2000MHz) supplied by Galaxy
• EVGA GTX 550 Ti (1GB EVGA factory overclocked to 951/2178MHz), supplied by EVGA
• Onboard Realtek Audio
• 500 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 hard drive
• Thermaltake ToughPower 775 W power supply unit supplied by Thermaltake
• Thermaltake Element G Case supplied by Thermaltake
• Thermaltake Frio OCK CPU Cooler
• Philips DVD SATA writer
• HP LP3065 2560×1600 thirty inch LCD

Test Configuration – Software

• NVIDIA GeForce WHQL 295.73 for the GTX 550 Ti and the the GTX 560 Ti.  WHQL 285.62 used for the GTX 560.  High Quality
• AMD Catalyst 11-2 used for all cards.
• Windows 7 64-bit; very latest updates
• DirectX July/November 2010
• All games are patched to their latest versions.
• vsync is forced off in the control panel.
• Varying AA enabled as noted on the charts; all in-game settings are specified with 16xAF always applied if possible; 16xAF forced in control panel for Crysis.
• All results show average frame rates.
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games.
• Windows 7 64, all DX9 titles were run under DX9 render paths, DX10 titles were run under DX10 render paths and DX11 titles under DX11 render paths.

The Benchmarks

As with all of our other games, in-game settings are maxed except where noted and levels of AA are noted on the performance summary charts.   Resolutions used are 1920×1200 and 1680×1050.

• Vantage
• 3DMark 11
• Batman: Arkham Asylum
• Batman: Arkham City
• Serious Sam, Second Encounter HD (2010)
• Wolfenstein
• Left 4 Dead
• Crysis
• World in Conflict
• Far Cry 2
• Just Cause 2
• Resident Evil 5
• Alien vs. Predator
• Battleforge
• STALKER, Call of Pripyat
• F1 2010
• Metro 2033
• Lost Planet 2
• H.A.W.X. 2
• Civilization 5
• Total War: Shogun II
• DiRT 3
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution
• Heaven 2.5

Let’s head to our benchmarks.

Performance Charts

Here we compare the HD 7770 at stock, at Sapphire’s GHz OverClocked edition factory speeds and also our maximum overclock at stock voltage and fan profile.

As we can see from our charts, most of our games show show the HD 7770 losing to last generation’s (and less expensive) HD 6870 and GTX 560.   The HD 7770 only comes fairly close to them performance-wise in a very few games and is playing catch-up with the rest.  We can surmise that the HD 7770 would be closer to the HD 6850 in performance but then the HD 6850 is priced to sell at considerably less.  Mostly the HD 7770 comes in ahead of HD 6770, and trades blows with the GTX 550 Ti, the Radeon winning more than it loses.  As a price comparison, the GTX 550 and the HD 6770 are considerably less expensive.  The GTX 560 Ti certainly outclasses them but then it is much more expensive.

At this moment in time, the HD 7770 is not a great value when you consider AMD’s own current midrange HD 6870 and 6850 which are less in price.  However, as a replacement for the HD 5770/HD6770, it affords a decent level of performance especially in the case of the overclocked Sapphire. Overclocking is the HD 7770’s saving grace (and this appears to be true with the entire 7000 series).  Best of all,  the Sapphire offers a guaranteed optimum overclock for $10 more than the stock HD 7770s. When the HD 68×0 series sells out, the HD 7770 will be a decent choice with the Sapphire GHz OC edition leading the way.  Of course looking a bit further into the future, we have to see what Nvidia will bring to the table with their own 28nm new architecture Kepler GPUs.

Overclocking and temperatures

The Sapphire HD 7770 GHz OverClock Edition always ran cool and quiet due to its custom cooling and superb tuning at the factory.  Even at the maximum overclock, the fan still did not ramp up loudly and one would not be irritated by even 70% if they used a manual profile.

The card sips power due to using just one 6-pin PCIe slot and takes advantage of the smaller 28nm process.  We were able to achieve only+50MHz more and no fan adjustment allowed it to go higher as it was still running cool, so we kept the stock fan profile.

 

 

Conclusion

This has been quite an enjoyable exploration for us in evaluating the Sapphire HD 7770 GHz OverClock edition and comparing it to the HD 6770 to see the generational improvement. We would always like more performance especially for DX11 gaming, but we see that these sub-$180 cards offer great features for a similar price to the HD 5770s at their own launch and we expect to see pricing adjustments.

Unfortunately, there is a problem with timing and the pricing of the HD 7770s.  And we don’t even have to look at Nvidia’s offerings as AMD is clearing out the HD 6000 series to make way for the new 28nm cards.  At $169 the Sapphire HD 7770 is $20 more expensive than the XFX HD 6870 at Newegg after mail in rebate and promo code.  Unless, you especially need a low-power 28nm card, the HD 6870 is a much stronger performer overall.  In the near future, when the older HD 6000 series stock is cleared out, this pricing will seem much more attractive.  And of course, Nvidia is launching their own 28nm Kepler-based lineup so we cannot project too far out.

We see that AMD’s partners and especially Sapphire, are working on features and unique capabilities to put cool and quiet overclocked HD 7770s on the market to give us great choice. We see quiet cards that can also play DX11.1 games at 1080 and the HD 7770 would also be a good choice for HTPC.  So let’s look at the Pros and Cons of Sapphire’s HD overclocked 7770 GHz edition:

Pros

• It is a versatile card that can be used for moderate DX11 1080p gaming or as a HTPC card – “all-in-one”
• HD 7770 offers a cooler and quieter running overclocked video card over the previous generation; it is solidly faster than the HD 6770
• Sapphire’ HD 7700 GHz OverClock edition offers a great value over stock HD 7770s as it features guaranteed and warranteed overclocking at its performance sweet spot.
• DiRT 3 is included! (at Newegg)

Cons

• Price. Performance is low compared with the now discounted and less expensive HD 6870.
• There is almost no further headroom for overclocking.

The Verdict:

• If you are buying a $170 video card right now and must have the latest DX11.1 28nm GPU, the Sapphire HD 7770 GHz OverClock Edition is the card for you.  It makes sense to get a flawlessly overclocked factory-warrantied card that will maximize every last bit of performance out of your HD 7770.

We do not know what the future will bring, but the Sapphire HD 7770 GHz OverClock edition brings top performance to the Radeon HD 7770 family. This editor believes that AMD and especially Sapphire, brings very full-featured DX11.1 videocards to the market that will find good acceptance among customers and their fans alike.  As a top performer in the HD 7770 series, the Sapphire HD 7770 GHz OverClock edition deserves our ABT Editor’s Choice Award.

If you currently game on an older generation video card, you will do yourself a big favor by upgrading. The move to a factory overclocked Sapphire HD 7770 will give you better visuals on the DX11.1 pathway and you are no doubt thinking of CrossFire-X if you want to get even higher performance. If you don’t want to bother with overclocking yourself, this is an excellent choice as Sapphire has done all of the work for you with a fully warrantied card.

The competition is hot as the prices on even the new video cards have softened and Nvidia offers their own set of features including PhysX, CUDA and 3D Vision with their GTX 550 Ti and GTX 560. Their own new 28nm line up is also due to launch soon.  Stay tuned, there is a lot coming from us at ABT including a HD 7970 evaluation and a new mystery card next week.

Mark Poppin

ABT Senior Editor

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«1. Introduction2. Unboxing3. Test configuration4. Performance Charts, Overclocking and Temps5. Conclusion6. View All»