Radeon HD 7770 Review: Bare Minimum for Serious Gamers
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By Jason Cross
PCWorld Apr 23, 2012 5:00 pm PDT
At a Glance
Expert’s Rating
Pros
- Inexpensive
- Energy-efficient
Cons
- Double-wide card not suitable for everyone
- Requires 6-pin power plug
Our Verdict
For gamers on a really tight budget, this is not a bad deal. But to get the most out of modern games, you’ll need a more powerful card.
Though the Radeon HD 7750 is meant to be an upgrade that anyone can afford, and to be a GPU that works in any PC, the faster 7770 model reviewed here has some restrictions. While it runs modern games 25 percent to 30 percent faster, it also requires enough room in your system for a double-wide card and a six-pin PCIe power plug, which not all computers have. It’s fast enough for modern games, but just barely.
Nobody likes spending more than they have to, but serious PC gamers will probably want to pony up more than the $139 asking price for the Radeon HD 7770. There’s a vast difference in performance between graphics cards priced around the $200 level and this one. The 7770 is even a fair bit slower than its closest competitor in price, the GeForce GTX 560. We can look at an individual game, like Crysis 2, and see that the Nvidia card is a good 20 percent faster.
In fact, when we average together the results from all our test games (Crysis 2, Dirt 3, Metro 2033, and Just Cause 2), we find the GeForce 560 to be over 25 percent faster. That’s a substantial difference in performance that any serious gamer would certainly take notice of.
So why would a gamer with $140 to spend choose the Radeon HD 7770 over the GeForce 560? Simply put, the AMD card is more energy-efficient. While both cards require auxiliary power, the 7750 needs only a single six-pin power plug, while the GTX 560 requires two.
Both cards are similar at idle, but when you fire up a game, the difference is remarkable.
Like the Radeon HD 7750, the 7770 is based on the low-end version of the Graphics Core Next series of GPUs from AMD. You get all the same DirectX 11 features you’ll find in the impressive Radeon HD 7970, at a much lower cost–and, correspondingly, a much lower performance. The 7770 finds itself in a bit of a tough position, though. While the 7750 could be excused for its middling performance because it requires no power plug and fits into a single slot, the 7770 requires a double-wide slot, as most of the more powerful graphics cards do. The GeForce 560 it competes with on price requires two power plugs, while the 7770 only needs one. But either way, the card is beyond the reach of all those who have PCs with no extra power plugs for graphics cards at all.
The overall performance of the Radeon HD 7770 is satisfactory for the price. You get right around 30 frames per second at 1080p resolution in modern games, with the detail settings cranked up high.
A couple of judicious choices about where to reduce quality should provide a nice experience with almost any new game. Still, it doesn’t fit into nearly every system like the 7750 does, and it’s not as fast as many other similarly priced cards. If you’re a gamer, spend just a little more and you’ll be a lot happier. If you’re not, spend less and be just as happy with a card that’s compatible with a wider range of PCs.
GeForce GT 730 GDDR5 vs Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition
-
GeForce GT 730 GDDR5
100%
-
Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition
267%
Relative performance
Reasons to consider GeForce GT 730 GDDR5 |
| 42 watts lower power draw. This might be a strong point if your current power supply is not enough to handle the Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition . |
| This is a much newer product, it might have better long term support. |
| Supports PhysX |
| Supports G-Sync |
| Supports ShadowPlay (allows game streaming/recording with minimum performance penalty) |
| Based on an outdated architecture (Nvidia Kepler), there are less performance optimizations for current games and applications |
Reasons to consider Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition |
Around 167% higher average synthetic performance. |
| Supports Direct3D 12 Async Compute |
| Supports ReLive (allows game streaming/recording with minimum performance penalty) |
| Supports Mantle |
| Based on an outdated architecture (AMD GCN), there may be no performance optimizations for current games and applications |
HWBench recommends Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition
The Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition is the better performing card based on the synthetic benchmarks used (1 benchmarks).
Core Configuration
| GeForce GT 730 GDDR5 | Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPU Name | GK208 () | vs | Cape Verde (Cape Verde XT) | |
| Fab Process | 28 nm | vs | 28 nm | |
| Die Size | 87 mm² | vs | 123 mm² | |
| Transistors | unknown | vs | 1,500 million | |
| Shaders | 384 | vs | 640 | |
| Compute Units | 2 | vs | 10 | |
| Core clock | 902 MHz | vs | 1000 MHz | |
| ROPs | 8 | vs | 16 | |
| TMUs | 16 | vs | 40 |
Memory Configuration
| GeForce GT 730 GDDR5 | Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Memory Type | GDDR5 | vs | GDDR5 | |
| Bus Width | 64 bit | vs | 128 bit | |
| Memory Speed | 1253 MHz 5012 MHz effective |
vs | 1125 MHz
4500 MHz effective |
|
| Memory Size | 1024 Mb | vs | 1024 Mb |
Additional details
| GeForce GT 730 GDDR5 | Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TDP | 38 watts | vs | 80 watts | |
| Release Date | 18 Jun 2014 | vs | 15 Feb 2012 |
-
GeForce GT 730 GDDR5
7.
22 GP/s -
Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition
16.00 GP/s
GigaPixels — higher is better
-
GeForce GT 730 GDDR5
14.43 GT/s
-
Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition
40.00 GT/s
GigaTexels — higher is better
-
GeForce GT 730 GDDR5
40.10 GB/s
-
Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition
72.00 GB/s
GB/s — higher is better
-
GeForce GT 730 GDDR5
692.70 GFLOPs
-
Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition
1280.00 GFLOPs
GFLOPs — higher is better
-
GeForce GT 730 GDDR5
1560
-
Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition
4170
Points (higher is better)
| VS | ||
| GeForce GT 730 GDDR5 | Radeon R7 Graphics IGP (APU A10-7850K) |
| VS | ||
| GeForce GT 730 GDDR5 | Radeon HD 8670D IGP |
| VS | ||
| Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition | GeForce GT 1030 DDR4 |
| VS | ||
| Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition | Radeon R7 250X |
| VS | ||
| Radeon R7 360E | GeForce GTX 750 v2 |
| VS | ||
| GeForce GTX 750 v2 | Radeon R7 360 |
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