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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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Advanced GDDR5 Memory Technology GDDR5 memory provides twice the bandwidth per pin of GDDR3 memory, delivering more speed and higher bandwidth. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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 |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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) |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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). |
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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! |
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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.
Loved the banner slogan!! Top-notch review covering dozens of games with perfectly valid numbers, as well!