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
Meet the Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition
The second card launching today is the Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition. Compared to the 7750 it’s based on a fully enabled Cape Verde GPU and features a higher core clock of 1GHz, versus 800MHz on the 7750.
Starting as always with the cooler, for the reference 7770 AMD has gone with something that is best described as half of a blower. The shroud is completely enclosed on the sides, but due to the position of the fan the card exhausts hot air out of both the front and the rear of the card, which is something that’s common for dual-GPU cards such as the 6990 but atypical for a midrange video card. Heat transfer is provided by a basic black aluminum heatsink, while the fan is embedded in the middle of the heatsink.
As for the card itself, it’s effectively an extended version of the 7750. Like the 7750 the card is equipped with 4 256MB 5GHz Hynix GDDR5 RAM chips, along with some additional VRM circuitry to handle the higher 100W power limit for this board. External power is provided by a single 6pin PCIe power socket, while at the top of the card there is a single CrossFire connector. This is actually down from 2 connectors on the 5700 series, which comes as no great surprise as virtually no one ever used tri-CF with the 5700 series in the first place. Overall the card is 8.25” long with no notable shroud overhang, making it the same length as the 5770’s PCB.
Meanwhile for display connectivity AMD is using the same configuration as we’ve seen on the 7900 series: 1 DL-DVI port, 1 HDMI port, and 2 miniDP ports. Unlike the 7900 series AMD’s not requiring their partners to include any adaptors, so buyers with 2 DVI monitors will almost always be on their own. The presence of 2 miniDP ports means that the 7770 has quite a bit of flexibility in driving various displays, however as with the 7900 series if you want to drive more than 4 displays you will need a MST hub, the release of which is still some time off.
As for partner cards, as with the 7750 all of AMD’s partners are doing their own thing. No one will be using AMD’s reference cooler, though PowerColor in particular will be using a cooler similar to it. Everyone else will be using their own double-wide coolers, most of which will be open air as we typically see in this market segment. Like the 7900 series AMD is relying on the 7770 having some degree of overclockability, so there will be a number of factory overclocked cards taking advantage of this.
Finally, I wanted to quickly touch on the naming of the 7770. The official name of the 7770 is the Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition; with the last bit being AMD’s latest marketing push. Starting with the 7770, AMD is going to be branding every card with a reference clock at or above 1GHz as a “GHz Edition” card to capitalize on the fact that they’ve hit 1GHz. Thus in spite of what the name implies there won’t be a 7770 non-GHz Edition card, as it’s a tagline rather than a true suffix necessary to differentiate cards.
With that said, while hitting 1GHz on a GPU is a notable accomplishment for AMD and should not be ignored, it’s not going to be particularly important in the grand scheme of things. The embarrassingly parallel nature of rendering means that GPU performance isn’t nearly as tied to clockspeeds as CPU performance is, as you can always lay down more functional units to improve performance. Clockspeeds do need to go up over time due to the limited parallelization of the command processor, but otherwise GPU performance has never been heavily dependent on clockspeeds.
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bazinga77 - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
here is the thing to be honest. if you complain about the price that seems like a fair complaint. however one has to wonder how much it costs amd and nvidia in losses to keep dropping prices to stay competitive. at some point it has to catch up with you. with the losses amd has suffered with bulldozer they have to be smarter with the prices. also until nvidia launches something new they can stay a little heavy handed with the prices unless nvidia forces the issue especially as we see some of the older cards go away and amd has said that the 6xxx series cards are no longer in production and haven't been for months. so right now the pricing seems a little bit off but what about once you can't get a 6850,6870, of gtx 460 ti? it will make more sense then.finally if you expected a 77xx series card to blow anything out of the water with its limited memory bandwidth of 128 bit memory then frankly you are either not very intelligent or naive. this is a lower mid ranged card that almost beats last gens upper mid range card. that is not bad. this card was never going to blow the roof off and if you thought it could will that just wasn't the best thought process you ever had.
Markstar - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
I'm sorry, but you entirely missing the point of the whole concept of the IT industry. Graphic cards are not groceries, where you are lucky if you can still buy them for the same price 18 months later. The desktop market is declining, so there are plenty of computers out there fast enough to run Firefox and Word.There HAS to be an incentive to buy new parts - and especially now that integrated graphics are fast enough for 1080p and casual games, this HAS to involve a performance gain in some form or another to get people to buy a dedicated graphic card, let alone upgrade from their existing one.
Who is going to buy this card? Seriously, who? A person who is tight on money should look on Ebay, where you get a used 5770/6770 for $60. Everyone else is bettor off buying the 6850 or going to NVidia.
Frankly, you are a bit naive if you think we will applaud AMD for releasing such an underachiever. As it stand now, AMD would have been better off with another round of rebadging (thereby saving money on R&D and freeing up 28nm wavers).
Sad, very sad. :(
bazinga77 - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
integrated graphics aren't good enough to run most games. if by casual games you mean angry birds then i guess i would agree with that.most gpu's come out higher in price initially then we expect or want especially when newer cards come out while the other vendor, in this case nvidia, is a ways away from releasing there next gen cards. sure we can bash this card but to do so we have to assume nvidia is going to blow amd out of the water. sure amd has been rebranding their cards the last two cycles but nvidia is more guilty of that then anyone. so as the current market stands the price is a little high. but lets be honest it is only looking that way because cards like the 6850 are still available, which won't be the case in the very near future.
i guess if you want to buy a used gpu off of ebay with no warranty then someone can do that and if it craps out in a month then they can deal with that as well. and if someone is tight on money and only going to spend $60 then i doubt they are on a site like this and care about benchmarks let alone at 1080p etc.
the gtx 460 is becoming harder and harder to find and the gtx 560 is over $200 so i don't see a huge issue. i expect the cards to lower in price next month when the 7850 launches and the 7770 will settle down into a more comfortable range. if you buy a gpu or cpu day one you will always pay more typically then a couple of months later.
i don't think amd should be applauded but i think people need to be realistic. when nvidia released the 550 ti it didn't even get close to the gtx 460 ti, yet that is the exact thing amd is getting bashed for. the 550 ti competes with the 6770 and 6790, while the 6850 was trying to get closer to competing with the gtx 560 and gtx 460. like i said the 550 ti didn't perform better than the gtx 460, not even close, yet you expect amd to release a card that would typically compete against a card like the 550 ti (in its respected generation, being the next nvidia card that would replace the 550 ti) and you expect it to compete at a higher class than it is released. sure the price isn't perfect but you are expecting a civic released to compete with a corolla to actually compete with bmw 1 series.
bhima - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
Uhh... its really not hard to find a GTX560 for under $200.$170 : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
$175: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
$185: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
We expect the card to compete with this because its priced a bit higher than this old tech:
HIS ICEQ 6870 $170: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
chizow - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
Great points Markstar, I'm glad there's others who understand the issus with the 7-series pricing many people have.TerdFerguson - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
Thanks for the honest review. AMD deserves to be dragged through the coals for trying to sell us something that costs more and performs worse than a two-year-old card. This constitutes an epic failure in the world of consumer electronics. The more you stress it, the more it feels like you're an advocate of the consumer and not the greedy corporate suits.Bull Dog - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
On VCE and the Test page, "7700 series launch is a bit more unsettling. These are cards that are going to be paired with slower GPUs, where having a high speed H.264 encoder is going to be all the more important."I believe it should be CPU and not GPU there.
pandemonium - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
I think it's pretty obvious that AMD is milking what they can while the buzz of the architecture and die size is fresh - primary opponent being absent in their next series release and all. In a month it'll be a different story. Prices will have settled in to where they belong after all the manufacturer's have their versions readily available. I don't really see how this is a big deal. Has any card released been placed appropriately immediately at debut?kevith - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
I am the lucky owner of a XFX HD4770.It´s fairly ok for my use, music production and occasional gaming.
I would like something a bit newer though, that can handle new games in full HD.
And now I have witnessed the launch of 5750/70, 6750/70 and now 7750/70. The 5770 being "the peoples champ" for quite a while, as my 4770 could and would have been in its time, if it wasn´t for availability problems. (Probably created by AMD on purpose, realizing, that the card was to cheap.)
But as far as I can read everywhere, the 6770 is simply another 5770. And the 5770 wouldn´t really give me a significant improvement over my 4770. Never mind DX11 and Eyefinity and all that jazz.
SO. Where should I go for a difference I can feel and see right away? 6870? Prices doesn´t give ANY clue anymore, as Anandtech pointed out with this - and previous articles.
I look at Tom´s "Best card for the money..." round-ups, but I don´t get much wiser.
It sure is a jungle out there...
silverblue - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
The 4770 was far too similar in performance to the 4830 it was replacing. The 4770 was more of a test for 40nm manufacturing than anything else.The 6850 and 6870 are definitely worthy of the cash.