ATi Radeon 5770 Performance Test
Other Topics
Now I’d like to talk about my personal experiences with the 5770 based on the last few days I’ve spent gaming on it. Firstly, in terms of design it’s mostly excellent. The card is actually quite short and even with the shroud adding an inch or so of needless length from overhang, it’s still significantly shorter than even a 4850. The dual-slot cooler is probably overkill for the low thermal requirements of the card, but I still prefer overkill if it means heat is being evicted out of the case. In my experience, the more heat a card dumps outside your case, the quieter the whole system is overall, even with big cases with a lot of airflow.
Subjectively speaking I do however find the cooler to be more irritating than the GTX285’s. Both cards are clearly audible during gaming, but the 285 sounds smoother while the 5770 has more of a whine to it. I game with headphones so it’s not a huge deal, but I feel it’s still important to mention this. Also the 6-pin connector goes inside the shroud to be connected, so it can be quite hard to pull out. ATi needs to put the connectors on the top of their cards, regardless of their length.
On the topic of ATi’s Catalyst Control Center compared to nVidia’s control panel, I prefer ATi’s layout and design, but nVidia’s control panel opens a bit faster and doesn’t add the small pause when Windows is starting up the desktop. In practice I use third party utilities for both cards, but many use the stock tools. I’m also disappointed that ATi hasn’t yet added automatic profile support at the driver level because this is a big boon to someone like me that has a large library of games running at different settings.
I’ve also run into a few driver issues with some legacy games which prevented me from putting up more results today (e.g. Quake 3 soft crashes with a black screen at 2560×1600 with 24xAA). I really do feel that at this time nVidia’s drivers are a bit more robust than ATi’s when presented with a large selection of games
Lastly, I’ve been testing super-sampling on the ATi card, and so far I like what I see. Even 2xSS significantly reduces texture and shader aliasing without significant blurring, and the performance hit is very reasonable, especially compared to nVidia’s 8xS mode. I tested a few sections of Doom 3 with 2560×1600, 16xAF and 2xSS, and it looked gorgeous. I’ll be covering super-sampling image quality and performance in a future article.
When i had a 5870, I would always leave the fan speed at 45% and i never touched it after that. temperature would never go above sixty degrees celscius despite being overclocked beyond 1 ghz, i dont know if the 5770 is any different. apparently, my other friend who got an xfx 5870 (i had sapphire) was getting temperatures of 70 degrees on load with 100% fan, no over clock.
In my opinion, every heatsink is diffent in a way, it might be the thermal paste.
still, its a nice review to have a whole variety of games. this makes choosing a graphics card much easier for people.
Yes, I like testing a lot of different games (especially older titles) using a mixture of different settings. This gives a more accurate representation of how the cards behave in gaming.
This review was very helpful and informative, thank you very much.
Very helpful review, thank you very much. I was looking to change my old GTS 250 (512MB) and I think the HD 5770 (probably a Sapphire Vapor-X edition) would still be a little good upgrade with DX11 support and Eyefinity support (I actually need a 8400GS that I use for PhysX to plug in a 3rd monitor). Moreover, my board doesn’t support SLI but does support Crossfire (P45 chipset).
Outliers are the problem here, when comparing the HD 5770 and the GTX 260. There are some massive outliers i can see straight off like Ut 2004 and Fear 2 for the HD 5770. I thought both of those games were terrible, so i wont be playing them. The would drag the average down to a more (for me) comparable level.
Gernads and Strife, that’s exactly why I like testing a lot of games. The more games that are tested, the more readers can pick and choose based on what titles they’re interested in.
Also UT2004 doesn’t influence the ranking against nVidia because that game was only tested against a 4850 using 24xAA.
Your results are skewed and there is a large amount of abnormality for your Older OpenGL game results.
A GTX 275 is capable of running Quake 2 at at 1920×1200 80FPS WITH 8xSQ Hybrid AA enabled.
The wolfenstien scores are also questionably, as are doom and prey.
I expect the configuration was incorrect and you were infact benching the games in 16bpp, which will infact be much slower on new hardware, then if you were to use 32bpp.
Squall:
I’m not running Quake 2, I’m running a source port. There’s a big chunk of text pointing that out, right above the results.
As for the rest of the OpenGL benchmarks, there’s nothing questionable about them. ATi’s exceptional performance with the Doom 3 engine is a known fact, dating back to the X1950 XTX days. Also known is nVidia’s large performance hit with 8xAA on G80 parts (and later) in said engine.
one of the best reviews i have seen for this card but the results would vary. it depends on what model of card you get eg. evga 260 or msi twin frozer 260 (big difference) the overclocked vapour x version of the card over clocks alot better than the ati 5770 and mine runs at 28 idle and 46- 58 full load and i got for $15 less only games i have come along that i cant max at playable frame rates are crysis and gta iv but awsome review anyways. thanks also 2 2 vapour x are running the same as a stock gtx295 so i recomend it.
Please Help me i am not using more than one monitor so which is BEST for GAMEs ? which is more powerful
4890 has 256 bit but 5770 has 128 so why 5770 should be a better VGA ?
Sam,
Just read the comments above and you will see what card is best. They are situational. It depends on what you are using your Video Card for primarily. If you want more indepth information email me at nicholas.seigel@yahoo.com
Thanks,
Nic
MCSE
PC GAMER
High Performance PC Enthusiast
Tehnology Nutcase
Thnx, those numbers were very helpful !!
“Also given the retail price of a GTX260+ is only about $20 USD more than a 5770.”
Closer to $50 nowadays. Just bought a Sapphire 5770 1GB for $155. I’d say the 260 would retail at $205 atm.
The article is a year old. Things change.
Just read the comments above and you will see what card is best. They are situational. It depends on what you are using your Video Card for primarily. If you want more indepth information email me at nicholas.seigel@yahoo.com
Thanks,
Nic
MCSE
PC GAMER
High Performance PC Enthusiast
Tehnology Nutcase
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