AMD Radeon HD 7750 & Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition Review: Evading The Price/Performance Curve
by Ryan Smith & Ganesh T S on February 15, 2012 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- HTPC
- GCN
- Radeon HD 7000
Final Words
Wrapping things up, I once had someone comment to me that they can gauge my opinion of a product based solely on the first paragraph of the final page. If I say “there’s no such thing as a bad card, only bad prices” then it’s likely not a favorable review. That statement is once more being validated today, if only in a meta context.
To be clear, we’ve been waiting for some time to see GCN filter down to lower priced cards, and even longer to see PowerTune in particular make it down here. The fact that we now have reliable power throttling and solid compute performance is not lost on us. It’s a welcome advancement.
However our expectation with a new manufacturing process – and perhaps we’re being greedy here – is that we’ll see cards become cheaper and we’ll see power consumption come down. AMD has achieved the second item in spades, and as a result both the Radeon HD 7750 and Radeon HD 7770 are well ahead of any competing 75W and 100W cards respectively. The 7750 in particular is a standout thanks to the fact that it generally offers 5700 series performance on a sub-75W card, and even at $109 it clearly offers a great deal of value as an HTPC video card. All of this will be an even more welcome change when Cape Verde filters down to laptops in the coming months.
The problem for AMD today isn’t the power/performance curve, it’s the price/performance curve. 16 months ago AMD launched the Radeon HD 6850 at $179 amidst fierce competition from NVIDIA. Ignoring the current price of the 6850 for the moment, on average the 7770 delivers 90% of the 6850’s gaming performance for 90% of the 6850’s launch price. In other words in 16 months AMD has moved nowhere along the price/performance curve – if you go by launch prices you’re getting the same amount of performance per dollar today as you did in October of 2010. In reality the 6850 is much cheaper than that, with a number of cards selling for $159 before a rebate, while several more 6870s sell for $159 after rebate. The 7770 is so far off the price/performance curve that you have to believe that this is either a pricing error or AMD is planning on quickly halting 6800 series production.
Now to be fair there’s more to consider than just performance in existing games. The 7770 supports DX11.1, VCE, PowerTune, Fast HDMI, and other features the 6800 series doesn’t have, and it does all of this while consuming around 25W less than the 6850. But that’s just not enough. DX11.1 is a point update that’s still the better part of a year away and will only offer a tiny number of new features, while VCE is AWOL and cannot be evaluated, and Fast HDMI will be a niche feature for use with extremely expensive TVs for some time to come. This is not like the 4000/5000 series gap – today and tomorrow the 7000 series will only offer marginal feature benefits. The best argument for the 7770 is the power difference, but considering that both the 6850 and 7770 require external power anyhow that 25W difference is unlikely to matter.
The 7700 series is a fine lineup of cards, but AMD has finally shot itself in the foot with its conservative pricing. The 7750 can ride on the sub-75W niche for now, but the only way the 7770 will make any sense is if it comes down in price. Until then AMD’s worst competition for the 7700 series is not NVIDIA, it’s their 6850.
With that said, the 7700 series clearly has potential. XFX’s R7770 Black Edition S Double Dissipation does a great job demonstrating this with its virtually silent operation, while the card’s factory overclock largely closes the performance gap with the 6850. With its combination of performance and power consumption the 7700 series will be AMD’s midrange workhorse for 2012, of that there is no question. Now it’s simply up to AMD to make it so. After all there’s no such thing as a bad card, only bad prices.
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Dug - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
For the cost of one game you could just get the nvidia 560. In fact you could of gotten it a long time ago and still be way ahead.beginner99 - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
Well seeing this makes me feel a little less bad on how much a paid for my 5850 1.75 years ago. Absolutely 0 reason to upgrade...However now it seems AMD GPU division is starting to blunder too...
solarTermination - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
I really don't understand what AMD is thinking here. The 7770 is preposterous at this performance/price level, and it boggles the mind that they designed it this way. I'm really stumped here, it's like they're spitting in all of our faces to release a card that has less performance and costs more than a widely available 2 year old part.They must take us for fools. Nothing else could explain this. Technology is supposed to improve as the years go by, not tread water, and certainly not get worse. You see this kind of bs and the revolving door of talent at AMD starts to make more sense. There must be some real pieces of work running that place.
I think it's finally time to join them. Nvidia, here i come.
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link
It's obvious isn't it ? They are a collapsing wreck that have culled with the ax their dwindling workforce as they've sold off assets to leave them with nothing but ip.Now after striking away Bain Capital style at the failing red bottom line - in the deep debt for endless years under the tightwad whining fan base and OCD focused complaint review sites meshing pennies and fps to an insane nuovo art form that should embarrass it's fans rather than fill them with false self esteem and self congratulating "I'm brilliant" mirror apprasials, they must further the save their life goal and actually ask their tenderly coddled and deceived rabid fan base to cough up some survival dollars...
Unfortunately, the years of low price bragging filled with lies albeit effectiveness as an ignorant fool lives in bliss, has come to backfire on them at the worst time possible, the end of the line.
As Mr. Smith said, it was inevitable.
Now amd needs a hero to save it's collapse and absorption into the wider market matrix.
shin0bi272 - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
I have a gts250 and I get about the same fps as the 7750. I paid just over 100 bucks (109 IIRC) for it and its almost 3 years old and keeps up with these brand new cards. I cant decide if that's funny or sad.Menoetios - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
While these cards definitely deserve flak for their starting prices, I'm not nearly as disappointed overall as many here seem to be. I have no doubt that their prices will come down in time. Consider that the 7750 is the absolute slowest GCN card. I fully expect to see a tastey sub-$90 price for the 7750s by the time Nvidia gets their 28nm line out. The 28nm process is still extremely supply constrained; it wouldn't make sense to price the cards out any lower to increase sales when there simply aren't any to sell. Whether Kepler trounces GCN or equals it, its introduction will be when the real shift in the price/performance shift occurs, both from competitive pricing as well as the 28nm ramp up.kmmatney - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
Well, I'm glad I was able to pickup an HD6850 for $139 shipped (no rebates). I can see why the 7750 would be great for notebooks, but I don't see much point in this card for the desktop.CknSalad - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
I think it's safe to say that ever since the release of bulldozer, AMD has been hit hard financially. They spent a lot of R&D and probably put all their eggs in one basket in that project. As much as their efforts can be admired, it seems that this has taken so much of AMD R&D money that now they don't have much to offer for even their gpu lineup.I understand that there is little competition and that this is the 'first gen' of 28nm cards, but there should seriously be at least 10-15% performance boost for the whole lineup. Going from 40nm to a 28nm process is a big jump. The 'there is little competition' so these cards are priced this way is still unacceptable. I'm starting to be wary of the 7800 series cards as I'm looking forward to buying a card no more than the low $300 range.
Hopefully Nvidia has something up their sleeves and can give us true 28nm performance we should be seeing. I am in no way an nvidia fanboy as I have had both ati and nvidia cards. The only thing i worry for nvidia's kepler cards is the power consumption. However, if the performance gain more than makes up for the minor increases in power consumption, then it will be more than worth it.
Sttm - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
Yes they are price gouging for the next 3 months because they can. Also the 7700 series is complete shit performance wise and will only find its home in the hands of the uninformed and the low power systems built by Dell and HP.Nvidia is the only hope of seeing a good price/performance boost now.
Sttm - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
"and at that point, this card at 159$ would make sense."No it wouldn't actually, since with the move to 28nm you should be seeing a performance increase per dollar not the same. The performance of a 6850 should be around $79 this generation, with the $160 cards offering almost 6950/560ti level of performance.
This is what Nvidia will most probably be offering with their next gen parts, and what AMD will have to lower their costs to if they expect anyone outside of the fanboys to but them.