Near–HD 4870 performance at a budget price
AMD has wasted no time bringing its DirectX 11 GPU architecture to a more affordable, mainstream-class GPU in the HD 5770. HIS is one of the first manufacturers to bring the HD 5770 to market.
At around $160, the card is priced similarly to existing Radeon HD 4870 cards. It’s the lowest-cost card in the roundup, and given the 180mm2 die size (that’s incredibly tiny for a GPU), prices are likely to eventually come down even further.
While the HIS HD 5770’s benchmark scores were the lowest in the roundup, this needs to be put into context. The card is practically miserly with power. Our system’s idle power of 142W was on a par with other HD 5000 series cards, but power at full bore was a scant 251W—about 10W lower than the HD 5850. The card requires just a single PCI Express power connector.
For the low price, you have to give up some graphical amenities, like antialiasing. It’s worth noting, however, that the HD 5770 still delivers 38fps in the Far Cry 2 action scene and 51fps in Ubisoft’s HAWX flight sim with AA and AF enabled. And like all the HD 5000 series, you can connect up to three displays to a single card.
So if you’re on a tight budget, and are still looking for a solid gaming experience and efficient power usage, check out the HIS HD 5770.
Review Roundup:
XFX Radeon HD 5870 HID Radeon HD 5870
Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 Asus EAHH5850
Diamond Radeon HD 5850 Sapphire Radeon HD 5850
Gigabyte 260 GTX Super OC HIS Radeon HD 5770
Affordable; DirectX 11 support; only one power connector needed.
Only a one year warranty; toolkit bundle from Newegg only
| HIS 5770 | EVGA 285 GTX SSC | |
|---|---|---|
| 3DMark Vantage Performance | 10,194 | 13,941 |
| 3DMark Vantage Extreme | 4,290 | 6,276 |
| HAWX (fps) | 41 | 62 |
| Far Cry / Action (fps) | 38 | 47 |
| Far Cry 2 / Ranch Long (fps) | 43 | 56 |
| Battle Forge / DX10 (fps) | 24 | 46 |
| Crysis / DX10 (fps) | 17 | 22 |
| Resident Evil 5 (fps) | 64 | 87 |
| X3: Terran Conflict (fps) | 74 | 93 |
| STALKER: Clear Skies (fps) | 19 | 27 |
Best scores are bolded. All games were run at 1920x1200 with all detail levels maxed out and 4x AA enabled. Anisotropic filtering was also enabled in game, where available.
falconkestrel
November 17, 2009 at 12:56am
They look double the size with that surface they are on. I was getting worried because that means new motherboards with the right spacing for SLI and a larger case maybe.
TigerNightmare
January 21, 2010 at 5:43am
I was like, "Holy crap, is that a triple slot GPU?!" Please tell your photographer to use less reflective surfaces, guys.
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