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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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.