Hardware AMD Radeon HD 7770 1GB Review

AMD finally replaces the HD 5770 with its new 28nm GPU. We find out how it fares.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2012/02/15/amd-radeon-hd-7770-1gb-review/1

 

''Pushing up the resolution to 2,560 x 1,600 saw it hold on to its place in the graphs, again with a slight but noticeable lead over the Radeon HD 6850 1GB. At both resolutions, the GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1GB is the first option that offers any kind of real benefit, with the Radeon HD 6870 1GB not offering much of an upgrade.''- lol how much is a 560ti?

 

These cards are a fail, I hoped at least the performance of an HD6850 in the 100$ mark... But the performance is even lower... Never thought of saying this, but... "nVidia we need you"...

 

With a business hat on: can you blame them though? AMD needs the cash to stay solvent plus the HD 6870 is still a good card - like said you don't need a 7 series yet, you're not missing out on that much.

 

I know that they have to win money, even to compensate the cpu's division, but I just expected more performance/$...

 

And how many people are going to be using this card at this res?

 

Reading this makes me feel all warm and fuzzy thinking about my pair of 6870's.

 

surprised it doesn't save much on the power end of things.. bet it overclocks like crazy though

been happy with the 6970 with the aftermarket cooling that came with it.. use it mainly for pyrit nowdays though- runs linux.. can't even look at nvidia anymore when you go that route =p amd blows them out the water, it's almost silly

it's kind of like folding vs amd.. only the coders aren't paid off sitting in a building built by huang himself =p wood screws

 

IMHO the 7000 series is overpriced for what is trying to be; a next generation from the 6000 series. I hope this doesn't lead to Nvidia to have similar Bang 2 buck to the 7000 when kepler comes out and hope that the Gk104 is at 299 USD and performs near the 7900 if true and causes a price drop.

 

Why not skip testing every card above the 560/6950 and test more games instead?

 

This. Why would you have a GTX 590 in the same set of results as a low/mid range card.

 

Series fail on AMD's part, especially as overclockers has a OC 6850 for £90 (preorder) at the moment.

 

OP

Cost on these inc VAT is higher than what you have quoted.

Review sites need to get on the ball a little more... professional reviewers quoting original pricing that was set as an ex vat cost to suppliers? Come on! You can do better than that, asking the question "how much will this be to the customer" when AMD give you the card would help no end.

 

We don't retest every card for every test; these are results carried over from the last review. We've simply included them for reference purposes. We have tried testing more games in the past, but the amount of extra work vs useful information and extra page views simply wasn't worth it. You don't need 10 games to tell you the HD 7770 isn't as quick as an HD 6850 in most tests.

Additionally, we run the exact same set of tests for every GPU, regardless of its place in the roster. Do we expect people to play with a £130 card @ 2560 x 1600? Of course not, but its still a representative comparison of performance, which is what we're looking for.

 

We're updating the article to reflect retail pricing now. Needless to say £130 for the HD 7770 is rubbish.

 

Only reason i said that is because i remember a while back you guys saying you retest every time...that was a few months ago though.

 

Indeed! I know there are many suppliers out there looking to lower order qtys and in some cases cancel all together. Its a poor show from AMD on this card.. a 7670 and 7650 title would have been much better with 7770 and 7750 harnessing perhaps 960 and 800 SPs instead.

I think the issue here is that the market is still flooded with the last Gen cards. As such AMD have made a bit of a mistake bringing a card to market when there are current lines that are quicker and better value currently still in the channel.

 

This. The cards feel and perform more like we'd expect HD 7670 and HD 7650's to. As I said in the other comment thread, this leaves a HUGE £220 price gap in AMD's range for the HD 7800 series (Pitcairn) to fill. AT this rate it'll need to launch with HD 7890, 7870, 7850 and 7830 to fill that void.

 

I said essentially the same thing on a different forum. 960sp would have been the sweet spot for what should be the mid range performance part (x7xx). At 1Ghz core this would of thoroughly trounched the HD6870 yet could have costed between £125 and £150.

640SP is a bizarre number of units for a "mid range" card considering the top level one has 2048.

I would have preffered to see some 1680x1050 results for this level of card as 2560x1600 is a complete waste of time. Perhaps the reviews should be better tailored to the review unit in question rather than overly generic - test everything at 1080p/1600p and report the results?

 

You're all missing the point! Business hat says AMD priced it deliberately because a) I expect it wants to shift existing 5000 and 6000 stock first (dunno how much there is) - so now everyone who was waiting to see 7000 series will grab one instead. Frankly 5000/6000 are still a decent DX11 cards with mostly latest features b) 28nm process will be higher cost, lower yield than the mature 40nm, so having demand hugely outstrip supply is not the best option (see 7970 and every other high-end card launch in the last 10 years). c) Enough people will still buy 7770s simply because 7 is more than 6 and 5 and the fastest PCIe socket power only card on the market is now the 7750.

Andrew can probably comment on the channel situation as it's not something I'm privy to.