In mid-February of this year, AMD released the 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 1GHz. We evaluated the Sapphire HD 7770 GHz Overclocked edition a month later and the Sapphire Vapor-X HD 7770 GHZ Edition OC in May. Both cards performed very well for their class in light DX11 gaming especially when overclocked.
Sapphire Technology has just announced the Sapphire HD 7770 Flex GHz Edition, bringing together the features of AMD’s 28nm GCN architecture with Sapphire’s unique FleX solution for multi-screen graphics in an affordable solution for the mainstream. No longer do you have to buy at least one expensive adapter to run 3-panel Eyefinity out of the box and there is also an additional DisplayPort for a fourth display. In fact, Sapphire includes a HDMI cable and a HDMI to DVI adapter in the box!
Enter the new Sapphire HD 7770 GHz FleX Edition with 1GB GDDR5 at $149
The Sapphire HD 7770 FleX brings easily configured multi-display Eyefinity graphics to the mainstream. The FleX feature enables users to connect low-cost DVI monitors for the first three screens in landscape or portrait mode providing a very cost-effective solution for increased productivity as well as for display systems or multi-screen gaming. By also using the DisplayPort output, the Sapphire HD 7770 FleX can support a fourth screen in Eyefinity.
The Sapphire HD 7770 FleX is a member of the Sapphire GHz series and it ships with clock speeds of 1000MHz for the core and 1125Mhz for the 1GB of on board high speed DDR5 memory. FleX is in the same performance class and comparable to the Sapphire GHz OC editon (1150MHz/1250MHz) and also versus the Sapphire Vapor-X (1150/1250MHz) through further overclocking.
To maximize performance, a new version of the Sapphire’s overclocking tool, TriXX is available free to download from their website. TriXX allows tuning of GPU voltage as well as core and memory clocks adjustments, and it is very similar to other vendors’ perhaps more well-known overclocking tools. We have been using and recommending TriXX since March as it is fully-featured, stable, and easy to use.
We are going to focus on the performance of this HD 7770 FleX edition agaist the Sapphire GHz OverClocked edition of the HD 7770. We have already compared the GHz OC edition to stock HD 7770 performance and it was significantly faster.
To fully round out this performance evaluation, we shall also attempt to overclock the FleX edition further to see if additional gains are possible.
Performance vs. Pricing
The feature set of Sapphire’s HD 7770 FleX GHz Edition is very impressive as listed on Sapphire’s chart at the bottom of this page. What really makes this bundle special is the additon of a HDMI to DVI adapter to run 3-panel Eyefinity out of the box. However, we also need to compare its $149 pricing versus performance and we shall use our last evaluation of the Sapphire GHz Overclock edition as the standard.
We put our Sapphire HD 7770 FleX editon through its paces yesterday and today with the very latest Catalyst 12.8 drivers. This driver mostly brought some minor performance increases over the last WHQL Catalyst driver set. In the past two months, we have also upgraded our Intel CPU platform from Core i7-920/X58 at 4.2GHz to Core i7-3770K/Z77 at 4.8GHz.
We now bench with 22 modern games and with 3 synthetic benchmarks, and we generally use 1920×1200 and 1680×1050 resolutions with an emphasis on DX11 games – 3 DX9, 5 DX10, and 14 DX11 games. Since we are comparing two 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. 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 around $150. We are also including the GTX 550 Ti which is in the general performance class.
System Requirements
For the HD 7770 from Sapphire’s website:
As you can see, the system requirements are modest. What is not mentioned is that a 550W PSU might be a good idea to power two HD 7770s in CrossFire.
Features:
Here are the Sapphire HD 7770 GHz Vapor-X 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. |
|
 |
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. |
|
 |
DisplayPort 1.2 Doubling the effective bandwidth of previous DisplayPort implementations, DisplayPort 1.2 now includes support for Multi-Stream, allowing you to drive up to four separate monitors from a single DisplayPort 1.2 connector (requires DP1.2 monitors or Multi-Stream compatible hub), Stereoscopic 3D monitor support and adds support for high quality, lossless, 7.1 channel audio formats. |
|
 |
Advanced GDDR5 Memory Technology GDDR5 memory provides twice the bandwidth per pin of GDDR3 memory, delivering more speed and higher bandwidth. |
|
 |
Black Diamond Choke & Full Solid Cap Design Choke is an important component of the graphics card. By working with the component engineer, Sapphire’s patent pending choke is 10% cooler and offers 25% more power efficiency than a normal choke. The graphics card will be more reliable and save energy.Improved reliability and better overclocking are possible by using only high-polymer, aluminum capacitors which posses far superior characteristics than regular aluminum capacitor for a longer product life. When operational temperatures drop by 20°C, the product life span is extended by a factor of ten, when the operational temperature increases by 20°C, the product life span only decreases by 10%. |
|
 |
AMD HD3D Technology Enjoy 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 3.0 PCI-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 2.0 The 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. **When running Microsoft Windows XP, Eyefinity technlogy supports a maximum of 2 displays. |
|
 |
Enhanced Multi-GPU Capabilities Triple or quadruple gaming power with AMD CrossFireX Multi-GPU technology. Increase your gaming performance up to 2x with AMD CrossFire technology, 2.75x for TriFire configurations, or with QuadFire configurations. With AMD ZeroCore Power Technology, the graphics card in slave modes will be switched off in idle to maximize the power saving. |
|
 |
Discrete Digital Multi-Point Audio The AMD Redeon HD 7900 Series is the first GPU that can simultaneously output multiple and discrete audio streams via HDMI and DisplayPort Output. |
|
 |
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) |
|
 |
Display Flexibility Offers an incredible choice of the latest display connectivity options natively on the board, including dual-link DVI-I, DisplayPort and HDMIalong with adapters to ensure compatibility with your legacy analogue VGA monitor. |
|
 |
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 Rendering The 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 is what stands out that may differentiate this product from the other HD 7770s and even Sapphire’s own GHz OverClock edition:
Most graphics cards based on AMD technology require the third monitor in an Eyefinity set-up to be a DisplayPort monitor, or connected with an active DisplayPort Adapter. The SAPPHIRE FleX family can support three DVI monitors in Eyefinity mode and deliver a true SLS (Single Large Surface) work area without the need for active adapters. The first two monitors are connected to the two DVI ports and the third to an HDMI to DVI cable (supplied) with no extra active hardware required. The DisplayPort outputs are still available for the connection of additional monitors
We see awesome features and we are eager to get to benching the Sapphire HD 7770 FleX GHz Edition. First, let’s unbox it.
this card does look neat