VTX3D HD7770 1GHZ Edition Crossfire Review

Rating: 7.0.

AMD have had great success so far with their HD7970 and HD7950 high end graphics solutions, however the cost of both models has been prohibitive for many people. The reviews today will appeal to a wider audience who have a budget of around £150 or less to spend on a new graphics card. In this particular review we take a look at the VTX3D HD7770 in both single and dual card configurations.

It would be fair to say that VTX3D have yet to earn a high profile reputation in the enthusiast sector, although we reviewed several of their cards in the past and left with mainly positive feelings. For those who have never read one of our VTX3D reviews, they are a part of parent company TUL Corporation … who are also responsible for the PowerColor brand.

VTX3D mainly use AMD reference designs and coolers, aiming for the lowest price point possible. While there is nothing wrong with this, it can make for a very dull reading (and testing).

Sadly, today they are the only company who have adhered to the AMD reference design, changing only the stickers on the card.

AMD are keen to point out that this is the world's first GPU released at 1GHZ core clock speed. VTX3D have decided to hold the core clocks at 1GHZ, leaving other partners such as Sapphire to enhance their cooling systems and core/memory speeds.

Before you fall asleep, we decided to spice this review up by partnering the VTX3D card with a reference AMD HD7770, for some Crossfire testing.

A blast from the past … ATI's mascot Ruby adorns the box. We aren't so sure AMD would be overjoyed to see this somewhat ‘out of date' mascot being used, but we don't mind. We still miss the old ATI days.

Not much of a bundle, an installation guide, and two video converter cables.

VTX3D are using the reference AMD cooler, with their own stickers.

VTX3D are using a red PCB, unlike the reference AMD HD7770 we have, which is built around a black PCB.

The card is Crossfire capable, in a two way configuration only. If you want three way or four way Crossfire you need to aim higher up AMD's product range. A little disappointing as three or four of these cards might make for an interesting, lower cost Crossfire configuration.

The HD7770 requires a single 6 pin power connector for stable operation.

The VTX3D HD7770 has a DVI port, HDMI port, and two mini DisplayPort connectors. It is Eyefinity capable.

Removing the cooler only takes a couple of seconds. The cooler may appear to be completely plastic, but the central area is formed around a metal heatsink section, with fan positioned above.

This HD7770 uses 1GB of Hynix GDDR5 H5GQ2H24MFR memory.

Above: Single card and Crossfire.

Above, VTX3D haven't filled in the subvendor information via their bios, leaving an identity of (2319). The specifications we detailed on the first page, but here they are again. This is a 28nm ‘Cape Verde' GPU core with 16 ROPs, 640 Unified shaders and 1 GB of GDDR5 memory via a 128 bit memory interface. The core on this card is running at reference 1GHz speeds, and the memory at 1,125mhz (4.5 Gbps effective).

On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. You can right click and ‘save as’ to your computer to view later.

To test today we are using our long standing Core i7 970 system, which is overclocked. We have a variety of hardware benchmarked on this system within the last couple of months which will make for an interesting market comparison.

Test System:
Processor: Core i7 970 @ 4.6ghz
Graphics: VTX3D HD7770 (and AMD HD7770 for Crossfire testing)
Cooling: Coolit Vantage
Motherboard: MSI X58A-GD65
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10 GT
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200
Memory: 6GB ADATA @ 2133mhz 9-10-9-32
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V+ 512GB Gen 2 SSD (Storage) / Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB (OS boot)

Comparison Cards:
HD7970
HD7950
HD6990 (880 core)
HD6970
HD6950
HD6870
HD6790
HD6770
HD6670
GTX590 SLi
GTX590
GTX580 SLi
GTX580
GTX570

Monitors: Dell U3011

Software:
Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark

Games:
HomeFront
Alien V Predator
Dead Island
Tom Clancy HAWX 2
Resident Evil 5
Far Cry 2
F1 2011
Total War: Shogun 2

All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.

Some game descriptions are edited from Wikipedia.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

We use the following settings: 1920×1080 resolution. Anti Aliasing off. Anisotrophy 4, Tessellation normal. Shaders High. Stereo 3D disabled. API: Direct X 11.

In single card mode, the VTX3D HD7770 1GHZ manages to outperform the HD6870. This is a great indication of how far AMD have advanced in regards to Tessellation performance. In CrossfireX, the performance falls in between the HD7950 and HD7970, averaging almost 70 frames per second.

Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.

The HD7770 falls in ahead of the HD6790, scoring 13,329 points in single card mode. The AMD HD6870 is way out ahead this time, scoring 17,023 points. In Crossfire the performance scaling is very strong, with both cards scoring almost 25,000 points. This places the dual card configuration between the HD6970 and Nvidia's GTX580 which scores 26,342 points.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

With this synthetic Direct X 11 test, the HD7770 scores around 3,500 points which is around 1,000 points less than the HD6870. It is around 300 points more than the last generation HD6790 however.

In Crossfire, the performance just exceeds a single GTX580, although the differences are so minor it would be impossible to tell. The HD7950 scores a couple of hundred points more than the dual HD7770's.

HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evalute motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.

There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on Bluray. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content so will we.

This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.

Read our initial analysis over here

A score of 196 points is class leading right now, the ideal solution for high definition media playback on a big screen.

F1 2011 is the newest Direct X 11 racing game from industry pioneers CodeMasters. The 2011 Formula One season is the 62nd FIA Formula One season. The original calendar consisted of twenty rounds, including the inaugural running of the Indian Grand Prix before the cancellation of the Bahrain Grand Prix. Pirelli returns to the sport as tyre supplier for all teams, taking over from Bridgestone. Red Bull Racing are the reigning Constructor’s Champions. Red Bull Racing’s Sebastian Vettel is the defending Drivers’ Champion, one of five World Champions appearing on the grid.

The single HD7770 scores around 3 fps more than the last generation HD6790, averaging 42. Crossfire scaling with this game and the latest driver is impressive, averaging 4 fps more than a single HD7970 (77 fps v 73 fps).

Homefront’s PC version was developed by Digital Extremes, a Canadian developer responsible for numerous Unreal Tournament games and Bioshock ports. It received mixed reports, although Kitguru really likes the single player aspect of this title. The engine isn’t the most demanding on the market, but it requires decent partnering hardware for solid frame rates at 1080p.

Single card delivers playable frame rates, averaging around 40 fps. In Crossfire, the performance is very closely matched with the HD7970.

Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today.

To test the cards we used a 1080p resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on. We use this with most of our graphics card testing so cards are comparable throughout reviews.

Single card performance is very closely matched with the last generation HD6790, which is honestly a little disappointing. In Crossfire, the two cards are matched with the previous generation flagship, the HD6970.

Dead Island is a first person horror action-adventure video game developed by Techland and published by Deep Silver for Microsoft Windows. It is centered on the challenge of survival on a zombie-infested open world island with a major emphasis on melee combat. It is rather good fun, for a short while, but it becomes repetitive.

We experienced some issues in Crossfire with this game, and instead have just presented the single card results, shown above. The HD7770 outperforms the HD6790 by around 7 fps.

Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2 is an arcade-style flight action game developed by Ubisoft Romania and published by Ubisoft. After the events of the first game, the H.A.W.X squadron is sent to Middle East, where a high level of violence is being registered, and the appearance of various insurgents leaders in various hotspots. The team also has to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Russian nuclear weapons. The player will be controlling three groups: one American (Hunter), one British (Munro) and one Russian (Sokov), each with its own pilots and supporting characters. There will also be references to other characters in the Tom Clancy universe.

We are testing in full DX11 mode with all settings to maximum.

The single HD7770 averages 61 frames per second, which is great. In Crossfire the performance scaling is almost double, averaging the same as the HD7970 @ 117 frames per second. Minimum frames per second is slightly worse however.

Resident Evil 5, known in Japan as Biohazard 5, is a survival horror third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the seventh installment in the Resident Evil survival horror series, and was released on March 5, 2009 in Japan and on March 13, 2009 in North America and Europe for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A Windows version of the game was released on September 15, 2009 in North America, September 17 in Japan and September 18 in Europe. Resident Evil 5 revolves around Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar as they investigate a terrorist threat in Kijuju, a fictional town in Africa.

Within its first three weeks of release, the game sold over 2 million units worldwide and became the best-selling game of the franchise in the United Kingdom. As of December, 2009, Resident Evil 5 has sold 5.3 million copies worldwide since launch, becoming the best selling Resident Evil game ever made.

The single card performance is around 7 fps more than the HD6790, which is slightly lackluster for an older Direct X 10 title. In Crossfire, the two cards slot in between the HD7950 and HD7970, averaging 153 frames per second.

Far Cry 2 (commonly abbreviated as “FC2 or “fc2″) is an open-ended first-person shooter developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It was released on October 21, 2008 in North America and on October 23, 2008 in Europe and Australia. It was made available on Steam on October 22, 2008. Crytek, the developers of the original game, were not involved in the development of Far Cry 2.

Ubisoft has marketed Far Cry 2 as the true sequel to Far Cry, though the sequel has very few noticeable similarities to the original game. Instead, it features completely new characters and setting, as well as a new style of gameplay that allows the player greater freedom to explore different African landscapes such as deserts, jungles, and savannas. The game takes place in a modern-day East African nation in a state of anarchy and civil war. The player takes control of a mercenary on a lengthy journey to locate and assassinate “The Jackal,” a notorious arms dealer.

Far Cry 2 is still a popular game and the open world environment can be taxing on even the latest hardware available today.

Settings: 1920×1200, D3D10, Disable Artificial Intelligence(No), Full Screen, Anti-Aliasing(8x), VSync(No), Overall Quality(Ultra High), Vegetation(Very High), Shading(Ultra High), Terrain(Ultra High), Geometry(Ultra High), Post FX(High), Texture(Ultra High), Shadow(Ultra High), Ambient(High), Hdr(Yes), Bloom(Yes), Fire(Very High), Physics(Very High), RealTrees(Very High).

As with many of the games in the review, single card HD7770 performance is just ahead of the last generation HD6790. In Crossfire, the two cards manage to outperform the last generation HD6970 flagship, falling in 3 frames behind the HD7950.

Shogun 2 is set in 16th-century feudal Japan, in the aftermath of the Ōnin War. The country is fractured into rival clans led by local warlords, each fighting for control. The player takes on the role of one of these warlords, with the goal of dominating other factions and claiming his rule over Japan. The standard edition of the game will feature a total of eight factions (plus a ninth faction for the tutorial), each with a unique starting position and different political and military strengths.

We are using the built in benchmark which is available via the STEAM client for this game.

Performance with this intensive Direct X 11 game is quite good although with a single card, 1080p performance can stutter in various sections. In Crossfire, the scaling is exactly double, increasing from an average of 30 fps to 60 fps at 1080p. Two cards really help make this game playable at high resolutions with eye candy maxed.

We have changed our method of measuring noise levels. We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. We are using a heatpipe based passive power supply and an Intel SSD to keep noise levels to a minimum. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests.

Ambient noise in the room is around 20-25dBa. We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation.

Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

The reference cooler on this card is actually quite good, averaging around 33 dBa when gaming. Thanks to a cool running core, the fan never has to spin that high. When placed under synthetic load, the fan rotates higher, generating around 35 dBa.

The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 24c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.

Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.

The VTX3D HD7770 runs very cool, hitting around 62c when gaming. This rises to 68c when placed under synthetic load in Furmark. Still, very impressive results for the reference cooler.

To test power consumption today we are using a Keithley Integra unit and we measure power consumption from the VGA card inputs, not the system wide drain. We measure results while gaming in Crysis Warhead and record the results.

In such an energy aware climate, AMD are making a big deal out of their new ‘ZeroCore Power’ technology. Many solutions today use power gating, clock gating and memory compression to reduce idle power requirements, but ZeroCore power technology can completely power down the core GPU while the rest of the system remains active.

Power consumption is very good, averaging around 65 watts when gaming. When compared to the HD6790, the new HD7770 is more efficient, averaging around 15-20 watts less when gaming.

We normally use the Sapphire TriXX overclocking software for our reviews, but this launch was slightly rushed and Sapphire didn't have a version ready to support the HD7770 when we started these tests. We therefore reverted to AMD's Catalyst Control Center.

We pushed the core to 1110mhz, from 1000mhz. Any higher and we would experience instability and hard locking. The memory could be pushed by another 100mhz, to 1225mhz (4,900mhz effective). This translates to an 11% increase on the core, and around 9% on the memory. Decent results considering it is a reference AMD cooling solution.

The modest overclock increases 3DMark 11 scores from 3,498 points to 3,783 points. Not a huge increase, but a noticeable improvement.

When all is considered the VTX3D HD7770 is a slightly disappointing product, especially when compared directly against the Sapphire solution reviewed today. We can appreciate that not every partner can prepare a custom cooled card for AMD's launch but this is a cutthroat industry and we need to look at the wider picture before coming to a final verdict.

AMD have made a rather big song and dance about releasing the ‘World's first 1GHZ GPU' however to be perfectly honest there is very little to get excited about. It would have been more titillating to have clocked all reference HD7950's to 1GHZ, because the performance at that speed is truly exceptional and a worthy addition to the history books. That said, realistically @ 1GHZ, the HD7950 would hurt HD7970 sales so we can understand why AMD wouldn't do it.

The AMD HD7770 at 1GHZ might earn a place in history for the core clock alone, but in the real world, it is just a little faster than the HD6790 before it. Not as great a punchline for AMD, but accurate.

It isn't all gloom and doom because the reference clocked HD7770 does come to life when placed in a Crossfire configuration delivering performance parameters almost identical to a single HD7950. A very fast card at reference clocks. Obviously the game you are playing needs a driver profile to support both cards but the end result is very positive.

The price is going to be the deciding factor, and we would estimate that the reference HD7770 should hit UK shores around £130 inc vat. If we factor in my previous statement, then two HD7770's will offer similar performance to a single HD7950, while costing around £100 less. In that regard it makes for a very tempting proposition. AMD's reference cooler doesn't have to work too hard on the HD7770 core, so the noise levels are never too intrusive.

Power consumption and heat emissions are acutely modest, which earns the design a bonus point.

In closing, there is little reason to choose this specific HD7770 over the other modified solutions released today, but we would imagine that VTX3D will have the most competitive price point, as they usually do. If you are in the market for a Crossfire configuration then two VTX3D HD7770's can keep up with a HD7950 and leave enough money spare for a very tasty power supply or DDR3 memory kit.

Pros:

• Low power consumption.
• noise levels are quite good, even with the reference cooler.
• good crossfire scaling.
• two cards should only set you back £260 inc vat.

Cons:

• Not a huge leap up from previous series.
• no modified cooling on this card.
• AMD HD6790 can be picked up for £99 now
• Asus HD6850 Direct CU V2 only £89.99!

Kitguru says: VTX3D need to rely on price point to help sell this product.

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