AMD Radeon HD 7770 And 7750 Review: Familiar Speed, Less Power

By Chris Angelini
published

These are the lowest-end cards built using AMD's new Graphics Core Next architecture. Is 28 nm manufacturing, a fresh design, and new functionality enough to warrant upgrading existing value-oriented champs like the Radeon HD 6850 and GeForce GTX 460?

Benchmark Results: Sandra 2012

Although it’s less likely that these more entry-level cards will be used for general-purpose computing than the Radeon HD 7900-series boards, it’s interesting to see the Juniper-based Radeon HD 5770 take second-place in OpenCL floating point throughput, ahead of the Cape Verde-based boards that center on an architecture designed to improve compute. Testing double-precision performance, on the other hand, does favor the GCN-equipped 7700-series cards.

Nvidia’s cards fail this test under OpenCL, but DirectCompute does work.

AMD’s Radeon HD 7770 takes a commanding first-place finish in both the cryptographic and hashing benchmarks.

Although other cards beat it in hashing performance, the Radeon HD 7750 easily secures a second-place finish in the AES256 hashing test.

It’s pretty easy to tell GPUs with 256-bit memory buses apart from the one with a 192-bit bus and the others with 128-bit buses.

Similarly, all of the PCI Express 2.0 cards move 6 GB/s or less across the interface. Meanwhile, both Radeon HD 7700-series boards are PCI Express 3.0-capable, facilitating a little extra throughput.

Chris Angelini
Chris Angelini
Chris Angelini is an Editor Emeritus at Tom's Hardware US. He edits hardware reviews and covers high-profile CPU and GPU launches.
153 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Derbixrace
    the 7750 will be a GREAT card compared to the 6670 for those who have a shitty 300w PSU and wants a nice GPU.
    Reply
  • hardcore_gamer
    I hope the price of 7770 comes down to $130. That is where this card belongs.
    Reply
  • phamhlam
    If the 7770 is the same price as the 6850. I think we have the best value card right here. The 6850 was a great budget card but this card will change that.
    Reply
  • dragonsqrrl
    "Although other cards beat it in encryption and decryption performance, the Radeon HD 7750 easily secures a second-place finish in the SHA256 hashing test."

    I think you mean AES256.
    Reply
  • jprahman
    The fight shaping up between all these new AMD cards and Kepler is looking to be a good one. Time to just sit back with some popcorn and enjoy the show... while planning a new build for when the price war breaks out.
    Reply
  • esrever
    Seems ok, New stuff ussually cost more. The 6770 being more expensive than the 5770, the 6870 being more expensive than the 5850 ect.

    I'd expect prices to go down once supply goes up and demand goes down.
    Reply
  • confish21
    What a sad release. I'm not even excited for Pitcairn now! I foresee the $170 6870 to hold its own.
    Reply
  • This is ridiculous. Man this sucks, i've been waiting for the 7770 since early last year, and this crap is what they release?

    What_were_they_thinking?
    Reply
  • wicketr
    Well....here's hoping for a good 7850/7870 release on March 6th. Not much here worth spending money on IMO.
    Reply
  • buzznut
    This is unfortunate, considering the naming scheme. The 4770, 5770, and 6770 were/are all good budget cards that performed above where they were priced. Bang for buck has always been the draw here, but that 7770 is overpriced. Hopefully AMD will see this fumble; I agree at $120-130 this card makes a lot more sense.

    I'd actually like to see the HD 7750 at a lower price too, as we know these prices will drop over time but I still think this is slightly high for launch.
    Reply