Test Setup And Benchmarks
In the pages that follow, you’ll see the Radeon HD 7770 and 7750 tested against six other graphics boards. These six were chosen based on an initial price estimate AMD gave us between $99 and $199 for its two new cards. In retrospect, I would have rather benchmarked a GeForce GTS 450 against the Radeon HD 7750 instead of a GeForce GTX 560 Ti up top. Also, it would have been nice to have a Radeon HD 6790 in here. That card wasn’t available for testing though, so we have the venerable Juniper-based 5770.
Also, pay particular attention to the GeForce GTX 460. The card we’re using for comparison is a 1 GB board with a 256-bit bus. As you probably already know, Nvidia sells a 768 MB version of the card. Now, however, it’s also taking advantage of the GPU’s ability to address different memory ICs by shipping a 1 GB model on a 192-bit memory bus. If you’re not paying close attention and end up with that configuration, performance will be lower than the 256-bit card benchmarked here. It’s a sneaky move, but if you buy from a vendor that lists detailed specifications, you won’t get unknowingly duped.
| Test Hardware | |
|---|---|
| Processors | Intel Core i7-3960X (Sandy Bridge-E) 3.3 GHz at 4.2 GHz (42 * 100 MHz), LGA 2011, 15 MB Shared L3, Hyper-Threading enabled, Power-savings enabled |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte X79-UD5 (LGA 2011) X79 Express Chipset, BIOS F8 |
| Memory | G.Skill 16 GB (4 x 4 GB) DDR3-1600, F3-12800CL9Q2-32GBZL @ 9-9-9-24 and 1.5 V |
| Hard Drive | Intel SSDSC2MH250A2 250 GB SATA 6Gb/s |
| Graphics | AMD Radeon HD 7770 1 GB |
| AMD Radeon HD 7750 1 GB | |
| AMD Radeon HD 6850 1 GB | |
| AMD Radeon HD 5770 1 GB | |
| Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1 GB | |
| Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 1 GB | |
| Nvidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti 1 GB | |
| Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 1 GB | |
| Power Supply | Cooler Master UCP-1000 W |
| System Software And Drivers | |
| Operating System | Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit |
| DirectX | DirectX 11 |
| Graphics Driver | AMD 8.932.2 (For Radeon HD 7770 and 7750) |
| AMD Catalyst 12.1 | |
| Nvidia GeForce Release 285.62 | |
| Games | |
|---|---|
| Battlefield 3 | High Quality Settings, No AA / 16x AF, 4x MSAA / 16x AF, v-sync off, 1680x1050 / 1920x1080, DirectX 11, Going Hunting, 90-second playback, Fraps |
| Crysis 2 | DirectX 9 / DirectX 11, Very High System Spec, v-sync off, 1680x1050 / 1920x1080, No AA / No AF, Central Park, High-Resolution Textures: On |
| Metro 2033 | Medium Quality Settings, AAA / 4x AF, 4x MSAA / 16x AF, 1680x1050 / 1920x1080, Built-in Benchmark, Depth of Field filter Disabled, Steam version |
| DiRT 3 | Ultra High Settings, No AA / No AF, 8x AA / No AF, 1680x1050 / 1920x1080, Steam version, Built-In Benchmark Sequence, DX 11 |
| The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim | High Quality (8x AA / 8x AF) / Ultra Quality (8x AA, 16x AF) Settings, FXAA disabled, v-sync off, 1680x1050 / 1920x1080 / 2560x1600, 25-second playback, Fraps |
| 3DMark 11 | Version 1.03, Extreme Preset |
| HAWX 2 | Highest Quality Settings, 8x AA, 1920x1200, Retail Version, Built-in Benchmark, Tessellation on/off |
| World of Warcraft: Cataclysm | Ultra Quality Settings, No AA / 16x AF, 8x AA / 16x AF, From Crushblow to The Krazzworks, 1680x1050 / 1920x1080 / 2560x1600, Fraps, DirectX 11 Rendering |
| SiSoftware Sandra 2012 | Sandra Tech Support (Engineer) 2012.SP1c, GP Processing and GP Bandwidth Modules |
| CyberLink MediaEspresso 6.5 | 449 MB 1080i Video Sample to Apple iPad 2 Profile (1024x768) |
| LuxMark | 64-bit Binary, Version 2.0 |