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
Miscellaneous HTPC Aspects
One of the nice aspects of the Radeon HD 7750 is the fact that AMD's excellent video post processing capabilities with respect to deinterlacing, cadence detection and noise reduction are carried over from the previous efforts without the introduction of any bugs. As such, deinterlacing is of the same quality as before, and we felt that there was no necessity to repeat screenshots very similar to what we already provided in our previous Llano HTPC review.
3D works very well, and is even more seamless compared to NVIDIA's implementation. I don't play 3D games, and my only interest from a HTPC perspective is playing back 3D Blu-rays. I found that simply clicking on the 3D icon in PowerDVD shifted my VSC-32 / Sony KDL46EX720 into 3D mode. There was no need to explicitly set up the 3D display as I had to do with the NVIDIA cards. This might be a drawback for people doing 3D gaming, but for 3D media watching this is as simple as it could be.
It is not that the 7750 is without its faults. For all practical open source software purposes, MPEG-4 decode acceleration is absent even though it is a feature of UVD3. The Catalyst 10.4 release notes promised support for H.264 L5.1 stream decoding. However, consumers soon discovered that enabling DXVA decode for 4K clips often ended up in a BSOD. AMD has quietly slipped this under the radar, and now officially states that 4K decode is not officially supported for the time being, however this appears to be a matter of validation rather than hardware limitations. That said, we did see that trying to decode a 4K clip now no longer results in a hard BSOD.
The 7750 also has support for HDMI 1.4a's full specifications. This means that the GPU can drive resolutions of up to 4096x2160 at 24 fps and 3840x2160 at 30 fps over a single HDMI port! I am currently aware of only one HDMI sink supporting this over a single HDMI link, namely, the Sony VPL-VW1000ES projector. Users on AVSForum are already reporting success with driving 4K over a single HDMI link using the Radeon HD 7970, and I expect the 7750 to have no issues either. That said, if we do get access to this projector system, the 7750 will be one of the first HDMI sources to get connected to it.
I recently set up a 2x2 Eyefinity system using the 7950 to drive QFHD videos onto the displays. I was very impressed with the quality and ease of setup. Frankly, I am more excited about 4K compared to what I felt about 3D when manufacturers were trying to push that down the throat of the consumers. In my opinion, 4K (QFHD) with 2x2 23" 1080p thin bezel monitors will become a very cost effective solution for those looking at 4K for the desktop. In that respect, it is a bit disappointing that the 7750 we tested today can't drive four displays without a DisplayPort MST hub.
It is a little bit interesting to compare the GT 520 with the AMD 7750 with respect to readiness for 4K. While the GT 520 has full hardware decode acceleration for 4K videos, it is unable to push out the 4K material to the display(s). The HDMI 1.4a PHY in the GT 520 can drive only 1080p monitors and there is no way to drive four displays with it. The 7750, on the other hand, can drive 4K displays through HDMI right now (and to four monitors using an MST hub down the road), but it is unable to accelerate the decode of those videos. It will be interesting to see what NVIDIA has in store for the HTPC fans down the road. Can they deliver working cards and drivers before AMD fixes its driver issues? It is going to be a very interesting year ahead.
As a summary for our HTPC section, we have to say that the Radeon HD 7750 is an excellent addition to our HTPC testbed. It will definitely be the one to compare against when the new cards from NVIDIA and Intel's Ivy Bridge CPU come out over the next few months. We just hope that AMD will be able to get its driver act together before then.
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KaDomoT - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
Soemthing went very wrong during your Skyrim testing. I ran a 6870 in a similar rig (X4 955 @ 3.5ghz, 4gb ram, no ssd) @ 1920x1080 with 4x AA / 16x AF and A LOT of texture mods and my fps was MUCH higher than that. Not only that, but this was before the big performance boost in patch 1.4 / before I had even heard of SkyBoost!Admittedly my card was overclocked a good chunk (955 core / small mem oc) and my cpu had 600mhz on yours but no way that accounts for some massive 35+ fps difference especially when you guys have the performance patch and no mods.
takeship - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
I think what everyone is missing here is that neither the 7750 or 7700 is really a card for builders, but for the OEM system builders, local shops, etc. For that segment, these cards are fastastic. Just look at the power and thermal loads - if you're HP, now you know you can sell the end customer a 7750 "HD Video" build for cheap, or a push the upgrade to 7770 based "HD Gaming" system without changing the power supply or cooling! That's huge for those guys. Simplification of the assembly line, part variety, etc etc. Same thing with Dad at home. Kid wants to play Battlefield? Buck at the shop around the corner knows that 7770 will get him there and then some playing on their "old" 1080p monitor without worrying that he'll see them back in 4 months when the system melts.CknSalad - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
I think it's best to wait for kepler. There's really no point to be an early adopter of ati's 28nm cards. I'm sure the price will be fixed as the way it should comparable to nvidia's offerings. I just hope that nvidia is really taking the time to actually make quality gpus that are fairly mature. I wonder when there will be stable, legitimate drivers for ATI's 28nm cards. Hopefully that will give a decent boost in performance.haukionkannel - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
Well this seems to be the trend. Older cards allways seems to better in bang for the buck department.It has been very slow time in GPU selling, so there are a lot of those old 5xx and 6xxx cards, so they have to sell those out before they can recure the prices for these new... Or nobody would buy those older allready produced cards. It is pity to us consumers, but a must to GPU manufacturers.
At this moment there is allmot none reason for AMD to make old 6xxx series cheaper, because the Nvidia is not making enough pressure. So they release new cards at extreme prices and sell those old card first.
Nogib - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
I have been looking for an upgrade for my 4850 512MB card with a similar great bang for the buck that this card has given me all these years. Guess I'm still going to be looking. 7770 is close, but not enough of a leap to be honest. And while I'm sure the 78xx series will be great, I'm guessing it will be at a $250-$299 price range which is far beyond what I would ever consider spending on a video card. Sigh.Mathos - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
You're right about the price/performance thing for a release.But, you also have to take some things into consideration. Some of the performance difference is likely due to the 6800 cards having a 256bit memory bus, as opposed to 128bit. Even with that standing I'm amazed the 7770 gets as close as it does. The main reason the 7770 is more expensive, I'm thinking is more likely so they can cease production on the 6800 series and dump inventory. The 68xx cards have been out for a while, and have benefited from many driver optimizations, but, you're not likely to see any more performance out of them from driver updates than what they already have. The 77xx cards are still based on a new core, which through driver updates will likely get much better performance over time.
Bottom line for me though, is, does it perform better than the 5770 that I currently have. Which, it does so considerably. More than could be said for the 6770. It also makes me wonder if they aren't gonna end up doing a 7790, basically a cut down pitcairn with a 256bit bus, like they did with the 6790.
chizow - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
lol Hi rarson. :)Looks like you almost get it. Don't worry once the 7800 parts launch it'll fill in the blanks for you. The entire 7-series product stack pricing fails, top to bottom.
marc1000 - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
actually the 7850 is the real star here. a board that does not require pci-e power and is able to almost match the 5770 in performance on most of the games. that was a 100w card.in the other hand, this makes me a little worried about the power requirements of 7800 series. i am hoping that both 7850 and 7870 will require only 1 pci-e power plug. my case is not big enough to handle more heat than that, and this is why i dont upgrade to a GTX560 (2x power connectors).
mczak - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - link
I think for the 7850 there is a possibility it would only have 1 power connector.The expectation is that Pitcairn is roughly "2xCape Verde", which means it should have roughly twice the power draw too. Twice the 7750 power draw is easily under 150W, whereas twice the 7770 power draw is not (well close actually according to measurements, but clearly these cards want to allow powertune +20% settings and overclocking).
That would be similar to HD6850/HD6870 where the 6850 only has one pcie power connector but the 6870 has two.
marc1000 - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - link
i meant 7750 is the star here.