The VaporX Sapphire HD 7770 GHz OC Edition brings Quiet Overclocking to HD 7000 series

Conclusion

This has been quite an enjoyable exploration for us in evaluating the Sapphire Vapor-X OC edition versus the GHz OverClock edition. We always like more overclocked performance especially for DX11 gaming and we see that these sub-$150 cards also offer great features for a similar price to the HD 5770s at their own launch and we have already seen pricing adjustments and game bundles as incentives.

If the end user prefers a slightly quieter card with two fans, the Vapor-X card becomes their first choice.  We did not find a lot of headroom difference between either of these cards as they are already well-overclocked from Sapphire.  And when these factory-overclocked and warrantied cards are compared to reference cards selling for ten to twenty dollars less, the far more sophisticated cooling system is easily worth the difference.

The HD 7770 has become a better value recently when you consider AMD’s own current midrange HD 6870 and 6850 are much harder to find and less disconted than when we performed our original evaluation.   And as replacement for the HD 5770/HD6770, it affords a decent level of performance especially in the case of the overclocked Sapphire.   In fact, the Sapphire HD 7770 GHz OC edition also dropped $20 in price to $149 and now includes a bundled game at NewEgg.  At the time of writing, the Vapor-X edition has not yet showed up at either Amazon nor at Newegg and it’s suggested price is also $149.

Overclocking is the HD 7770’s saving grace regarding performance and this appears to be true with the entire 7000 series. Best of all, the Sapphire Vapor-X edition offers a guaranteed optimum overclock for only about $10-$20 more than the stock HD 7770s.  The HD 7770 is a decent gaming choice with the Sapphire GHz OverClock and Vapor-X OC editions leading the way at the $150 price point.

Of course looking a bit further into the future, we will have to see what Nvidia will bring to the table with their own 28nm new architecture Kepler GPUs.  At this point, the HD 7800 and HD 7700 series are unchallenged at 28nm.

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 1080P and the HD 7770 would also be a very good choice for a HTPC. So let’s look at the Pros and Cons of Sapphire’s Vapor-X HD 7770 GHz OC edition:

Pros

• The Sapphire Vapor-X HD 7770 GHz OC edition is a versatile card that can be used for moderate DX11 1080p gaming or even as a HTPC card – “all-in-one” – it is that quiet!
• The dual-fan Vapor-X HD 7770 offers a cooler and quieter running overclocked video card even over the already quiet single-fan GHz OverClock edition
• Sapphire’s Vapor-X HD 7700 GHz OC edition offers a great value over stock HD 7770s as it features guaranteed and warrantied overclocking at its performance sweet spot.

Cons

• There is almost no further headroom for overclocking and the performance of the Vapor-X editon is not higher than the OverClock editon.

The Verdict:

• If you are buying a $150 video card right now and must have a quiet-running highly overclocked card, the Sapphire Vapor-X HD 7770 GHz OC 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 Vapor-X HD 7770 GHz OC edition brings top performance to the Radeon HD 7770 family right now. This editor believes that AMD, and especially Sapphire, bring 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 Vapor-X HD 7770 GHz OC edition deserves our ABT Editor’s Innovation Award for bringing vapor chamber technology and quietness to overclocked HD 7000 series first.

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.  We will test out HD 7770 CrossFire in an upcoming evaluation.  Power draw is excellent and the card is quiet.  And if you don’t want to bother with overclocking yourself – often requiring an aftermarket cooler to maximize it – the Vapor-X OC edition 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 competing GTX 550 Ti and GTX 560. Their own new mid-range and entry-level 28nm line up is also due to launch relatively soon. Stay tuned, there is a lot coming from us at ABT including the wrap up on Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference, a Noctua NH-DH14 CPU cooler evaluation in our quest for 5GHz with Ivy Bridge, and more mobile tech evaluations.

Mark Poppin

ABT Senior Editor

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