Sapphire’s Overclocked to the Max HD 7770 GHz Edition

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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