XFX R7770 Black Super Overclocked Edition

Manufacturer: XFX Creation, Inc.
Product Name: R7770 Black Super Overclocked Edition with Double Dissipation
Part Number: FX-777A-ZDSC
Suggested Retail Price: $179.99 MSRP

Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by XFX.

AMD might have trouble keeping up with the competition in the CPU arena, but their acquisition of ATI allowed them to become a major player in the graphics world. AMD and NVIDIA regularly trade places in the "fastest video card" rankings, and while NVIDIA's been good holding down the title with its current high-end, the Fermi-based GTX 580, AMD's new "Tahiti" GPU decisively stole the performance crown in its 7970 form.

In recent weeks Benchmark Reviews has had the privilege of testing XFX' top-end overclocked versions of cards based on the Radeon 7970 and Radeon 7950 GPUs. We were very impressed with their performance, low noise levels, and "ZeroPower" technology. However, at $600 and $500, respectively, they're out of the price range of most enthusiasts. Cards based on AMD's Pitcairn and Cape Verde GPUs should be much less expensive. Today we have XFX' factory-overclocked version of the Cape Verde-based Radeon 7770 GPU. At $179.99, it's much less expensive than the Tahiti-based cards, but how will its performance compare?

Although it's much smaller, the XFX 7770 Black Super Overclocked Edition with Double Dissipation is visually very similar to its big brother cards.

AMD "Southern Islands" GPU

It's always exciting to see AMD or NVIDIA come out with a completely new GPU architecture. The "Southern Islands" GPUs are AMD's implementation of its "Graphics Core Next" architecture, and comprise three different families of GPUs:

• Tahiti for high-end cards like the Radeon 7970 and 7950
• Pitcairn for more mainstream users
• Cape Verde brings up the low end

AMD made the Tahiti-based Radeon 7970 and 7950 cards available first, followed now by the Cape Verde-based 7770 and 7750. Pitcairn cards are as yet unavailable.

Graphics Core Next

AMD had several goals in mind for Graphics Core Next, and one of the main things they wanted to do was to catch up with NVIDIA in the "GPU compute" arena. Right now, NVIDIA's "CUDA" (Compute Unified Device Architecture) dominates in GPU computing, with a robust set of developer tools and years of track record behind it. AMD's "DirectCompute" alternative has been around almost as long but has failed to catch on with developers to the degree that CUDA has. AMD is making a real push for DirectCompute with these new GPUs, and claims that over 200 applications already benefit from DirectCompute technology.

For Southern Islands, AMD has grouped simple ALUs (arithmetic logic units) into a single SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data) unit. A number of SIMD units, along with instruction decoders and schedulers, branch units, vector processors, and other items comprise a compute unit, and a number of these compute units (along with memory controllers and whatnot) comprise a Southern Islands GPU chip. Each compute unit comprises 64 shaders; the 7970 has the full complement of 32 compute units (and thus 2,048 shaders), the 7950 has 28 compute units (1,792 shaders), while the Radeon 7770 has 10 compute units (640 shaders). The Cape Verde GPU has about 1.5 billion transistors as compared to Tahiti's 4.3 billion.

Here's a summary of the specifications of the XFX cards Benchmark Reviews has tested so far:

AMD has tweaked their VLIW (very long instruction word) architecture to provide more consistent performance. Previous generations of AMD GPUs often left many compute units/stream processors idle, because dependencies in the data being worked on meant that not all the compute units could be used at once. Southern Islands architecture provides a greater degree of parallelism (it's that SIMD stuff, really, being used effectively) and can keep most compute units working all the time, leading to more consistent (and higher) performance. This has obvious advantages in both graphics processing and general GPU-compute operations.

Other enhancements common to all of AMD's new GPUs include:

Partially Resident Textures: As games increasingly use very large textures, loading and manipulating the texture data takes more time. A Southern Islands GPU can load only the part of the texture that will actually be visible in a frame, reducing the memory bandwidth and workload.

Error-correcting code support: There's not much detail on this feature yet, but it looks as if AMD will be able to offer optional ECC support (important for industrial applications) without having to use ECC memory. This will detect and correct memory errors, although AMD's tech white paper doesn't go into specifics such as how many bits can be detected/corrected.

PowerTune and ZeroPower: These feature dynamically clock the card's GPU and memory doesn (PowerTune) when high performance isn't needed, and can shut off entire sections of the GPU (ZeroPower) when the card is idle. For example, the second card in a CrossFireX system can be idled down to less than 5 watts if you're just browsing the Windows desktop; a single card system will power down if your display goes to sleep. Combined with the inherent efficiency of the 28nm fabrication process, this results in significant power savings. Side benefits you'll notice include less heat and noise emanating from your rig, especially when you're not gaming.

Eyefinity 2.0: New support for 5x1 monitor layouts, improved bezel correction, and support for custom resolutions enhance AMD's existing Eyefinity feature. I saw a 5x1 system demonstrated at an AMD press even a few months ago and it was quite impressive.

28nm fabrication process: If you make 'em smaller, you can fit more of 'em in. The 7970 GPU has a staggering 4.3 billion transistors, and even the 7770 has 1.5 billion. The original Intel 4004 microprocessor had about 2,300. My 1969-vintage HP 9100B programmable calculator has 40.

PCI Express 3.0 support: This has twice the bandwidth of PCI-E 2.0, but I'm not sure what real-world effect this will have, especially on x16 slots. Even the beefiest current video cards aren't hobbled by 8x PCI-E 2.0 bandwidth.

Let's take a look at what these features actually mean on a real, live video card.

Closer Look: XFX Radeon HD 7770

The XFX R7770 Black Super Overclocked Edition with Double Dissipation comes with an accessory package that includes a DVI to HDMI cable, a DVI to VGA adapter, a Crossfire bridge, a spiffy Black Edition badge for your case, a driver CD, and documentation. Not shown are order forms for additional cables and the warranty registration.

The styling of the XFX R7770 is similar to its Tahiti-based big brother R7950 and R7970 cards. The main differences are a single 6-pin power connector and only a single Crossfire bridge connector. With this card you'll be limited to a two-card Crossfire setup.

Well, there is one other difference: it's much smaller than the 79XX-series cards. Next to an R7950 card, the 7770-based card seems small and delicate.

The back of the card has many fewer components that its larger brothers. The heat sink is secured by only four screws, instead of the 20+ on the larger cards.

Let's take a closer look at this card in the next section.

FX-777A-ZDSC Detailed Features

The connectors are the same available on the larger cards: two mini-DisplayPort, one HDMI, and one (bright red) DVI. Using accessory cables from XDX you can connect up to six monitors to this card.

The Cape Verde GPU puts out much less heat than Tahiti GPUs, so the elaborate vapor-chamber and heat pipe-based cooler of the 79XX series cards isn't necessary. The heat sink is a simple copper plate with aluminum fins, cooled by two fans..

The top of the board has a anodized red aluminum panel with the card's model number and "Ghost Thermal Technology" on it. This is obviously a plus for those of you with windowed cases.

Removing the cooler exposes the Cape Verde GPU and four Hynix memory chips that comprise the card's 1GB of memory. As is all too common these days, far too much thermal paste was applied to the GPU when the card was assembled. The memory chips do not touch any part of the cooler and rely on airflow from the dual fans for cooling.

The front of the card is open, so about half the cooling air will exit into your case rather than out the rear of the card. However, this shouldn't be a problem for well ventilated cases since this card uses relatively little power and thus produces relatively little heat.

We'll cover the features and specifications of this card in the next section.

R7770 Black Super OC Features

• GPU Edging: Black Edition Selection Process Double Dissipation
  • Exclusive XFX Black Edition Selection Process to identify the top 1% of GPUs capable of reaching maximum overclock speeds.
• Ghost Thermal Technology
  • Floating cover design maximizes airflow
• Duratec: Solid Capacitors
• Duratec: Ferrite Core
• Duratec: 2oz Copper PCB
• Duratec: IP-5X Dust Free Fans
• Duratec: XFX Bracket

FX-777A-ZDSC Specifications

• Part Number: FX-777A-ZDSC
• Model: Radeon HD
• GPU: 7770
• Performance Level: Black Edition
• Core Clock: 1120MHz MHz
• Memory Size: 1GB
• Memory Type: GDDR5
• Memory Bus: 128-bit
• Bus: PCI-Express 3.0
• Output 1: 2x Mini-DisplayPort
• Output 2: DVI-D
• Output 3: HDMI
• Fan Type: Dual Axial

While the FX-777A-ZDSC doesn't have (or require) the elaborate vapor-chamber cooler XFX uses on its 7900-series cards, it has most of the other enhancements XFX applies to AMD's reference design: 2 ounce copper PCB, ferrite core chokes, and solid capacitors capable of operation up to 105 degrees Centigrade. As with the Tahiti-based cards, the Black Edition 7770 uses hand-selected GPUs that XFX says are in the "top 1%" and can reach higher clock speeds without having to increase the wattage being drawn by the card. XFX delivers the card pre-overclocked with a GPU speed of 1120MHz (as compared to a stock speed of 1000MHz) and a memory speed of 1300MHz (stock speed 1125MHz).

Let's get on with the testing regimen...

VGA Testing Methodology

The Microsoft DirectX-11 graphics API is native to the Microsoft Windows 7 Operating System, and will be the primary O/S for our test platform. DX11 is also available as a Microsoft Update for the Windows Vista O/S, so our test results apply to both versions of the Operating System. All of the tests in this review were run with DX11 graphics.

According to the Steam hardware survey, as of December 2011 the most popular desktop resolution (for Steam users) is 1680x1050 pixels, with a 17.59% share, with 1920x1080 pixels coming in second with only 7.7%. I ran most tests at both 1680x1050 and 1920x1200 (I continue to prefer the 16:10 ratio of 1920x1200 to the mysteriously more popular 1920x1080 resolution).

I used a combination of synthetic and video game benchmark tests in this article to illustrate relative performance among graphics solutions. Our benchmark frame rate results are not intended to represent real-world graphics performance, as this experience would change based on supporting hardware and the perception of individuals playing the video game.

Note: AMD has not rolled the drivers for their new GCN video cards into their standard Catalyst release yet, so we're stuck with mysterious numbers: in this case the driver supplied with the Radeon 7770 video card is known as "ATI Driver 8.932.5-120116a-131942C-ATI".

DX11 Cost to Performance Ratio

For this article Benchmark Reviews has included cost per FPS for graphics performance results. Only the least expensive product price is calculated, and does not consider tax, freight, promotional offers, or rebates into the cost. All prices reflect product series components, and do not represent any specific manufacturer, model, or brand. These retail prices for each product were obtained from NewEgg.com on 12-February-2012:

• $139.00 GeForce GTX 460
• $190.00 GeForce GTX 560
• $330.00 GeForce GTX 570
• $135.00 Radeon HD 6850
• $240.00 Radeon HD 6950
• $180.00 Radeon HD 7770 (MSRP of XFX R7770 Black Super Overclocked Edition with Double Dissipation)

Intel X79-Express Test System

• Motherboard: ASUS Sabertooth X79 TUF, BIOS 0906
• Processor: Intel Core i7-3960X
• System Memory: 16GB Kingston HyperX Genesis DDR3-2133
• Primary Drive: Western Digital Velociraptor 300G
• Monitor: 27-Inch Widescreen LCD (up to 1920x1200@60Hz)

DirectX-11 Benchmark Applications

• Aliens vs Predator
  • High Settings: (High Quality, 4x AA, 8x AF, SSAO, Shadow Sampling, Tessellation, Medium Shadows)
• 3DMark11
  • "Performance" settings (resolution set to 1920x1200 from standard 1920x1080)
• Lost Planet 2
  • 4x AA, Middle Shadow Detail, Middle Texture, Middle Render, DirectX 11 Features)
• Batman: Arkham City
  • FXAA (medium), DX11 features on, Normal Tessellation, High Detail, Dynamic Shadows, Motion Blur, Distortion, Lens Flares, Light Shafts, Reflections, Ambient Occlusion, PhysX off
• Metro 2033
  • High Settings: (High Quality, MSAA 4x, 4x AF, Advanced DOF, Tessellation)
• Unigine Heaven Benchmark 2.5
  • High Settings: (High Quality, Normal Tessellation, 8x AF, 4x AA)
• Crysis 2
  • High Quality, 4xAA, DirectX 11 features, Edge AA, Normal Resolution Textures

Video Card Test Products

• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 Reference Design (675 MHz GPU/1350 MHz Shader/1800 MHz vRAM - Forceware 285.62)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Reference Design (822 MHz GPU/1645 MHz Shader/2100 MHz vRAM - Forceware 285.62)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 Reference Design (732 MHz GPU/1464 MHz Shader/1900 MHz vRAM - Forceware 285.62)
• ATI Radeon HD 6850 Reference Design (775 MHz GPU/1000 MHz vRAM - ATI Catalyst Driver 11.12)
• PowerColor PCS+ HD6950 Vortex II (850 MHz GPU/1300MHz vRAM - ATI Catalyst Driver 11.12)
• XFX 7770 Black Super Overclocked Edition with Double Dissipation (1120 MHz GPU/1300 MHz vRAM - ATI Driver 8.932.5-120116a-131942C-ATI)

DX11: 3DMark11

3DMark11 is Futuremark's latest iteration of the video card software benchmark suite, building on the features of 3DMark Vantage and 3DMark 06 as well as earlier version. It's optimized and intended for testing DirectX-11 capable hardware running under Windows Vista or Windows 7.

• 3DMark11
  • Extreme Settings, 1920x1200 resolution

3DMark Vantage offers benchmark tests focusing on GPU, CPU, and Physics performance. For this review I concentrated on the four GPU-specific tests. The first two tests take you through an undersea scene with small submarines exploring the sea floor and sunken ships. In the GT1 test, there's no tessellation, but there are extensive lighting and shadow effects. In the GT2 test, the same scene is repeated but with moderate tessellation and fewer lighting effects.

Here we see nice scaling with the NVIDIA cards. The previous generation Radeon HD6850 and HD6950 acquit themselves well, with the 6950 matching the performance of the GTX 570. The Radeon HD 7770 comes in at just under the performance of the 6850

Cost Analysis: GT1+GT2

The second pair of graphics tests explore an abandoned temple deep in a tropical jungle. The GT3 test has medium tessellation and one shadow-casting light, while the GT4 test ups the ante with heavy tessellation and many shadow-casting lights. The GT4 test is by far the most demanding of this test suite.

Cost Analysis: GT3+GT4

Test Summary: The Cape Verde GPU turns in a credible performance, almost equaling the performance of the HD6850 even though it's designed to compete at the next level down.

DX11: Crysis 2

The latest entry in Crytek's "Crysis" series launched in early spring of 2011. The initial release lacked DX11 support and was widely criticized for low-quality textures. A few months later Crytek released patches that provided DX11 features and more than a gigabyte of new high-resolution textures. Thus fortified, Crysis 2 is one of the most visually impressive games available.

I used the Adrenaline Crysis 2 benchmark tool to benchmark a scripted run-through of Times Square. I set the quality level to "Extreme" and turned on DirectX 11 and high-resolution textures. AA was enabled in the benchmark (although it's not a game option normally) to increase the load on these graphics cards.

• Crysis 2 with Adrenaline Benchmark
  • High quality, DX11 features, normal resolution textures, 4xAA, Edge AA, Times Square sequence

Cost Analysis: Crysis 2 (1920x1200)

Test Summary: NVIDIA cards dominate this test, with the GTX 560 almost matching the performance of the $50-more-expensive HD6950. The HD7770 again nips at the heels of the HD6850.

DX11: Batman: Arkham City

If there was ever a game that showcased the growing gap between game consoles and high-end gaming PCs, Batman: Arkham City is it. In this dystopian near-future, part of Gotham City has been walled off as an enclave for criminals (rather like Escape from New York). It's a 3d-person action game that adheres to story line previously set forth in Batman: Arkham Asylum, and is based on an updated Unreal Engine 3 game engine. Batman: Arkham City is a DirectX 11 title that uses multi-threaded rendering to produce life-like tessellation effects.

One annoyance with the game is that all game settings must be made through a hidden application called "BMLauncher". Once you've made your settings, though, an in-game benchmark provides the feedback you'll need to tune your system's performance.

• Batman: Arkham City
  • FXAA (medium), DirectX 11 features, medium tessellation, medium Detail, Dynamic Shadows, Motion Blur, Distortion, Lens Flares, Light Shafts, Reflections, Ambient Occlusion, PhysX off

The AMD Radeon graphics cards are at a disadvantage here, since, like Arkham Asylum, Arkham City is a showcase of PhysX effects, which can be directly accelerated by NVIDIA cards but not by AMD cards. I left PhysX turned off for this test but if your Radeon-equipped rig is running an Intel 2500K or higher processor, consider turning it on: the PhysX will run on the CPU but modern multi-core CPUs have enough power to do a credible job, and you'll miss out on some really cool effects otherwise.

The HD7770 matches the performance of the HD 6850 here.

Cost Analysis: Arkham City (1920x1200)

Test Summary: Careful coding and design of the Arkham City graphics engine means that even lower-end video cards can produce playable frame rates at high resolutions.

DX11: Aliens vs Predator

Aliens vs. Predator is a science fiction first-person shooter video game, developed by Rebellion, and published by Sega for Microsoft Windows, Sony PlayStation 3, and Microsoft Xbox 360. Aliens vs. Predator utilizes Rebellion's proprietary Asura game engine, which had previously found its way into Call of Duty: World at War and Rogue Warrior. The self-contained benchmark tool is used for our DirectX-11 tests, which push the Asura game engine to its limit.

I configured Aliens vs. Predator to use the highest quality settings with 4x AA and 16x AF, as well as turning on DirectX-11 features such as Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO) and tessellation, along with advanced shadows.

• Aliens vs Predator
  • Texture quality High, Shadow quality medium, 4xAA, 8xAF, SSAO on, Hardware tessellation, Advanced Shadow Sampling

Cost Analysis: Aliens vs Predator (1920x1200)

Test Summary: The Radeon HD 7770 doesn't like this test, turning in scores that are 29% slower than the HD 6850.

DX11: Lost Planet 2

Capcom provides a stand-alone benchmark tool for Lost Planet 2. Reviewers love stand alone benchmarks, and users should, too, since they allow the evaluation of a system without the trouble and expense of purchasing and configuring the actual game. Lost Planet 2 takes place on E.D.N. III, the same planet in the original Lost Planet game, but ten years later. The snow has melted and somehow giant tropical jungles have grown to fill the landscape.

Lost Planet 2 takes advantage of DX11 features including tessellation and displacement mapping on water, level bosses, and player characters. In addition, soft body compute shaders are used on 'Boss' characters, and wave simulation is performed using DirectCompute. These cutting edge features make for an excellent benchmark for top-of-the-line consumer GPUs. There are two parts to the benchmark: Test A, which is a semi-random script that's a good example of normal game play, and Test B, which is a deterministic script that places a significantly heavier load on the card being tested.

• Lost Planet 2
  • 1920x1200, 4X AA, Motion Blur, Middle Shadow Detail, Middle Texture Detail, Middle Rendering, Middle DX11 features

Cost Analysis: Lost Planet 2 (1920x1200, Test B)

Test Summary: The 6850 wins, barely, in Test A, while the 7770 pulls just as fractionally ahead in Test B. I'd call this one a wash between the two cards.

DX11: Metro 2033

Metro 2033 is an action-oriented video game with a combination of survival horror, and first-person shooter elements. The game is based on the novel Metro 2033 by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. It was developed by 4A Games in Ukraine and released in March 2010 for Microsoft Windows. Metro 2033 uses the 4A game engine, developed by 4A Games. The 4A Engine supports DirectX-9, 10, and 11, along with NVIDIA PhysX and GeForce 3D Vision.

The 4A engine is multi-threaded in such that only PhysX had a dedicated thread (although PhysX is disabled for this test), and uses a task-model without any pre-conditioning or pre/post-synchronizing, allowing tasks to be done in parallel. The 4A game engine can utilize a deferred shading pipeline, and uses tessellation for greater performance, and also has HDR (complete with blue shift), real-time reflections, color correction, film grain and noise, and the engine also supports multi-core rendering.

Metro 2033 features superior volumetric fog, double PhysX precision, object blur, sub-surface scattering for skin shaders, parallax mapping on all surfaces and greater geometric detail with a less aggressive LODs. Using PhysX, the engine uses many features such as destructible environments, and cloth and water simulations, and particles that can be fully affected by environmental factors.

• Metro 2033
  • DirectX 11, High quality, 4xAA, 4xAF, tessellation, DOF, "Frontline" scene, no PhysX

NVIDIA has been diligently working to promote Metro 2033, and for good reason: it is the most demanding PC video game we've ever tested. When their flagship GeForce GTX 580 struggles to produce 26 FPS at 1920x1200 with DirectX-11 anti-aliasing turned two to its lowest setting, you know that only the strongest graphics processors will generate playable frame rates. All our tests disable advanced PhysX options.

Cost Analysis: Metro 2033 (1920x1200)

Test Summary: There's no doubt that this is a very demanding game. What Crysis was to top-end video cards a few years ago, Metro 2033 is now, with even the strongest single-GPU cards struggling to break 30 frames per second at 1920x1200. And note that this is with PhysX features turned off! No card here could break the 30fps barrier, although the GTX 570 and HD 6950 came very close. None of the other cards produced playable frame rates at that resolution with these settings.

DX11: Unigine Heaven 2.5

The Unigine "Heaven 2.1" benchmark is a free publicly available tool that grants the power to unleash the graphics capabilities in DirectX-11 for Windows 7 or updated Vista Operating Systems. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. With the interactive mode, emerging experience of exploring the intricate world is within reach. Through its advanced renderer, Unigine is one of the first to set precedence in showcasing the art assets with tessellation, bringing compelling visual finesse, utilizing the technology to the full extend and exhibiting the possibilities of enriching 3D gaming.

The distinguishing feature in the Unigine Heaven benchmark is a hardware tessellation that is a scalable technology aimed for automatic subdivision of polygons into smaller and finer pieces, so that developers can gain a more detailed look of their games almost free of charge in terms of performance. Thanks to this procedure, the elaboration of the rendered image finally approaches the boundary of veridical visual perception: the virtual reality transcends conjured by your hand. The "Heaven" benchmark excels at providing the following key features:

• Native support of OpenGL, DirectX 9, DirectX-10 and DirectX-11
• Comprehensive use of tessellation technology
• Advanced SSAO (screen-space ambient occlusion)
• Volumetric cumulonimbus clouds generated by a physically accurate algorithm
• Dynamic simulation of changing environment with high physical fidelity
• Interactive experience with fly/walk-through modes
• ATI Eyefinity support

• Unigine Heaven 2.5
  • High Shaders, Normal tessellation, 4xAA, 8xAF

Cost Analysis: Unigine Heaven (1920x1200)

Test Summary: The XFX HD7770 matches the 6850 in this test, which is impressive.

XFX 7770 Super OC Temperatures

Benchmark tests are always nice, so long as you care about comparing one product to another. But when you're an overclocker, gamer, or merely a PC hardware enthusiast who likes to tweak things on occasion, there's no substitute for good information. Benchmark Reviews has a very popular guide written on Overclocking Video Cards, which gives detailed instruction on how to tweak a graphics cards for better performance. Of course, not every video card has overclocking headroom. Some products run so hot that they can't suffer any higher temperatures than they already do. This is why we measure the operating temperature of the video card products we test.

At the start of the test, I measure the idle temperature of the card with the card sitting at the Windows desktop, using the GPU-Z utility. Next, I start FurMark's stress test and let it run until the temperature curve flattens and the temperature has not varied more than 1 degree in the last five minutes.

FurMark does two things extremely well: drive the thermal output of any graphics processor higher than applications of video games realistically could, and it does so with consistency every time. FurMark works great for testing the stability of a GPU as the temperature rises to the highest possible output. The temperatures discussed below are absolute maximum values, and not representative of real-world performance.

The XFX R7770 Black Super Overclocked Edition with Double Dissipation lacks the fancy heat-pipe equipped vapor chamber cooler of the larger HD 7900 series cards, but its much smaller die and lower transistor count means that it simply doesn't generate that much heat. Interestingly the idle and maximum temperatures are identical to the ones I recorded for the XFX Radeon 7950 card.

The fans ramped up to a little over 50% speed for this test, and were almost inaudible. This would be a good card if you're concerned about system noise.

VGA Power Consumption

Like AMD's Tahiti GPU, the Cape Verde is fabricated on a 28nm process. There are two advantages to making transistors smaller: you can make 'em faster, and they use less power. Both are true here, but AMD didn't stop there, since their Graphics Core Next architecture has a number of clever power-saving features.

Like a modern CPU, a Cape Verde GPU will aggressively clock itself down when its full capabilities aren't needed, reducing current draw with what AMD calls "PowerTune". But they go even further, with "ZeroCore" technology turning off entire sections of the chip when they aren't in use. This features work amazingly well.

To measure isolated video card power consumption, Benchmark Reviews uses the Kill-A-Watt EZ (model P4460) power meter made by P3 International. A baseline test is taken without a video card installed inside our test computer system, which is allowed to boot into Windows 7 and rest idle at the login screen before power consumption is recorded. Once the baseline reading has been taken, the graphics card is installed and the system is again booted into Windows and left idle at the login screen. Our final loaded power consumption reading is taken with the video card running a stress test using FurMark. Below is a chart with the isolated video card power consumption (not system total) displayed in Watts for each specified test product:

It's obvious that AMD's power-saving technologies work incredibly well. The card uses almost no power when your system's simply sitting there in Windows; in fact, the power use is so low in these cases that it's hard to discern among the "noise" (power usage will fluctuate by several watts even in an "idling" system).

XFX R7770 Super OC Overclocking

XFX calls this card a "Super Overclock" edition. AMD's standard clocks for the graphics cores and memory of a 7770 GPU are 1,000MHz and 1125MHz, respectively; XFX pushes these to 1,120MHz and 1,300MHz as shown in the GPU-Z screenshot below. Note: Although GPU-Z doesn't check the "OpenCL" box in the "Computing" section, the card does in fact support it.

This is a pretty aggressive overclock, and I found out just how aggressive it was when I tried to push it further. Even increasing the maximum power limits by 20%, I wasn't able to get the card to complete benchmark runs at a mere 1150MHz. That means I couldn't increase the GPU core frequency by 2.68 percent. There's virtually no overclocking room left in this card.

XFX Radeon 7770 SOC Final Thoughts

The fact that this card came in last or next to last on most of these tests is an artifact of the cards I had available to test it against. Performance-wise, it competes well with the NVIDIA GTX 460 and the Radeon HD6850, which is very impressive when you consider that Cape Verde represents the bottom end of AMD's new GCN-based cards. Ideally this card should be compared to the older Radeon 6700 series cards. The GCN competitor to the HD 6800 series will be the as-yet-unreleased Pitcairn-based GPUs.

But marketing positioning details mean little to the average gamer: what counts is the performance. And while technically the performance of the R7770 Black Super Overclocked Edition with Double Dissipation is impressive considering it's the low end of AMD's new lineup, out in the real world it's different: why would you buy this $179.99 card when a $134.99 HD 6850 will match or beat it in most performance benchmarks?

You might then ask what other features the HD7770 has that the HD6850 doesn't. Well, how about:

• DirectX 11.1 support
• Ability to support up to 6 monitors simultaneously (with extra-cost cables)
• Ability to support 4K ultra-high-resolution displays
• Power savings, especially in CrossFireX configurations
• Texture compression features mean that 1GB video RAM might take you a little further than 1GB on an older card

While these are all nice features, they all pale into insignificance next to the cruel calculus of frames per second. This card is simply too expensive for the level of performance it returns.

AMD's Tahiti cards startled everyone with their high prices, but many enthusiasts are willing to pay that kind of money because these cards represented the highest single-GPU performance available. The Cape Verde is just as impressive from a performance point of view: it moves today's low-end video card performance solidly into what was previously mid-range performance territory. Unfortunately it does so at prices that are higher than many existing mid-range cards of similar performance. An NVIDIA GTX 460 will return similar performance with the added benefit of PhysX, while costing up to $40 less. A Radeon HD6850 provided similar cost/performance benefits.

XFX R7770 Black Edition Conclusion

IMPORTANT: Although the rating and final score mentioned in this conclusion are made to be as objective as possible, please be advised that every author perceives these factors differently at various points in time. While we each do our best to ensure that all aspects of the product are considered, there are often times unforeseen market conditions and manufacturer changes which occur after publication that could render our rating obsolete. Please do not base any purchase solely on our conclusion, as it represents our product rating specifically for the product tested, which may differ from future versions. Benchmark Reviews begins our conclusion with a short summary for each of the areas that we rate.

The performance of the card was excellent. Cape Verde GPUs represent the lowest end of AMD's new Graphics Core Next architecture, yet provide performance similar to the previous generation's mid-range cards. The card's power-saving technologies mean that it stays quite and cool.

The appearance of the card was striking and original. XFX even made the effort of using a red, lettered top plate so everyone will know what card you have should you display it in a windowed case. I do think the card would look a little "cleaner" with a back plate to cover the exposed circuitry on the rear of the card.

The construction of the card seems very solid. As with many graphics cards, too much thermal paste was applied at the factory, but the card still ran very cool under load.

AMD's Graphics Core Next GPUs bring new functionality to the graphics card world: extremely efficient power usage, 4K monitor support, PCI-E 3.0 support, and DirectX 11.1. Admittedly some of these features have no immediate use (it's not as if even dual GPU cards saturate a PCI-E 2.0 x16 slot), but it's nice to know they're there. The only thing lacking is PhysX support. NVIDIA continues to insist PhysX is an open standard, although nobody else has implemented it yet, and there must be a reason why. Nonetheless, PhysX-enabled games such as Batman: Arkham City bring new levels of realism to the consumer space, and not being able to support this feature well is definitely a drawback.

XFX's packaging and accessories bundle is first-rate. Out of the box, the card can be connected to any monitor you may have, regardless of its interface...everything from VGA to the very latest DisplayPort monitors can be accommodated.

Unfortunately, the card suffers from the same problem as its Tahiti-based big brothers: a very high price. While the Tahiti cards can get away with this due to their staggering performance, this Cape Verde card finds its performance matched or exceeded by a number of much less expensive cards, some from within AMD's own product line.

Although the XFX R7770 Black Super Overclocked Edition with Double Dissipation card benefits from XFX' first-rate hardware (2 ounce copper PCB, solid Japanese capacitors, dust-resistant fans, etc.), it's not enough to justify the much higher price. This card simply isn't competitive in the current market.

Pros:

+ Moves low-end performance bar up
+ Incredible power efficiency
+ Very quiet
+ Striking appearance
+ Supports up to 6 monitors with additional cables
+ Very low GPU temperatures under load
+ Double-lifetime warranty

Cons:

- No PhysX support
- Poor price/performance ratio
- Limited to two-card CrossFire

Ratings:

• Performance: 8.00
• Appearance: 9.00
• Construction: 9.00
• Functionality: 8.50
• Value: 7.00

Final Score: 8.30 out of 10.

Benchmark Reviews invites you to leave constructive feedback below, or ask questions in our Discussion Forum.

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