Powercolor HD5770 Vortex 1GB Review

1. Introduction2. The PowerColor HD5770 Vortex3. Testing Methodology4. Colin McRae Dirt 25. Batman: Arkham Asylum6. Left4Dead27. Crysis Warhead8. Far Cry 29. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call Of Pripyat10. UniGine Heaven Benchmark11. Power Consumption12. Noise Levels13. Thermal Dynamics14. Manual Overclocking15. Closing Thoughts16. View All Pages

If you have been following the news and reviews lately you will have assuredly seen mention of nVidia's stellar new ‘mass market' Fermi card the GTX460 – KitGuru reviewed the overclocked eVGA version and it walked away with very high praise indeed. While it is capable of delivering a fantastic gaming experience it only costs around £175 and the upside of this is that ATI have been forced to reduce some of their own prices to help keep the market competitive.

This means that if you are in the market for a new graphics card and can't stretch to the GTX460 asking price then the card on review today might very well tickle your tastebuds. With the reference HD5770 on offer now for £130, there has never been a more affordable time to get into DX11 gaming.

The PowerColor Vortex is an overclocked HD5770 boasting higher core and memory speeds, with an interesting new high performance cooler which aims to not only lower temperatures but to reduce noise. It is also home to the world's first ‘movable fan' system – yes the fan can be moved in or out on a profile of around a centimeter. This serves to adjust the motion of airflow and should lead to operational temperature drops when compared with the reference solution.

“PowerColor offers an attractive option which features a brand-new cooling technology with additional factory overclocking,” said Ted Chen, CEO of TUL Corporation. “We never compromise – so here's the solution which can bring the ultimate gaming performance in a better cooling environment!”

The specifications of the video card are as one may expect from a customized solution. The graphics processing unit (GPU), for instance, operates at a clock speed of 900MHz (reference is 850mhz) and the 1GB of GDDR5 VRAM is set at 4,900 MHz effective (reference is 4.8ghz). The interface is still on a 128 bus. Furthermore, the model features 800 Stream processors and connects to video output devices via dual-DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort outputs. Obviously, DirectX 11 and all of ATI's proprietary technologies are fully supported.

The Card arrives in, yes, yet another box with a car on front. It seems Asus and Powercolor are obsessed with changing their graphics cards into futuristic sports and muscle cars. Why? I have no idea!

The back of the box explains that the fan can be adjusted to alter the air flow, we will look at this later.

Our card was not in a full retail box yet and as such it was a little loose in the packaging as can be seen above. I think we received one of the first samples off the production line.

The box contains a driver CD, a Crossfire Connector and a DVI adapter. There is also a black and white guide showing how to adjust the fan – this incidentally can also be removed from the top of the cooler to allow for easy cleaning of the heatsink, which is a very practical feature to add. Our early reviewer bundle didn't have it, but Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will be included as a free game.

The Powercolor has a traditionally red coloured ATI PCB and the front shroud is home to a black 9 blade fan.

There is a substantial heatsink under this which connects to a copper block which cools the graphics processing core.

Powercolor are making the cooling unit on this card a focal point of their sales pitch. The system is simple, you can pull it out by around a centimeter which changes the flow of air.

The cooler has three little angled levers which can be pulled to move the fan out from the heatsink. The fan can also be removed from the main unit, exposing the heatsink for easy cleaning. How cool is this?

It is a really nice concept actually as cleaning the heatsink of a regular graphics card can be quite a painful experience. It is also worth pointing out that when we fitted this card in our Silverstone SG07 chassis when the cooler is ‘extended' we noticed it was able to move more air – it was almost touching the chassis it was that close. Powercolor claim that this fan system will ‘maximise the efficiency of air convection by increasing the space between fan and heat'.

This is the fan head in extended mode.

The fan design is also really good as Powercolor have opted for a larger model than the one found on the reference design. The only negative would be that unlike the reference design hot air will not be expelled from the rear of the chassis.

Several views of the card – top left fitted inside the Silverstone Sugo SG07.

It requires a single 6 pin PCI e power connector to operate, which means almost any semi modern PSU will be able to power this without a problem.

Twin dual link DVI output as well as displayport and HDMI connectors. Thats all the digital bases covered then!

As would be expected it is indeed crossfire capable if you fancy more power down the line.

A GPUz screenshot showing the cards overclocked specifications as discussed earlier. Memory is running at an effective 4.9Gbps.

When testing the Powercolor HD5770 Vortex we feel it is important to use a system that the buying public would be using in this specific sector. We could easily slot in an Intel 980x, but it’s not a very realistic configuration so we opted for the excellent Core i5 750 which is one of the best value chips on the market right now.

We have tested the HD5850 at 1920×1200 and the HD5670 at 1280×1024 in the past so we will keep testing today at a middle ground of 1680×1050 with AA and high image quality settings when possible. There may be a few of the engines we can easily increase the resolution to 1920×1200, however many people buying one of these cards might not be able to afford a 24 inch screen. Basically, we are aiming to achieve playable framerates with as much eye candy as possible. If I owned a HD5770 I would be looking for this sweet spot.

I also wanted to include results with a Sapphire HD5770 Vapor X card which is clocked slower and will show gains when using this higher overclocked model. The Sapphire card only had a 10mhz increase on the core, so it is very close to reference speeds.

Test System:

PowerColor HD5770 Vortex 1GB

Sapphire HD5770 Vapor X 1GB (860 Core 4.8ghz mem)
Intel Core i5 750 2.66ghz
Corsair 4GB DDR3 @ 1600mhz
MSI P55-GD65
Coolit ECO A.L.C.
Silverstone Raven 2 Chassis

Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit
Catalyst 10.7
Fraps Professional
Corsair TX650W PSU
Dell 2405W Panel
Intel 160GB SSD & 1TB Western Digital Drive

Keithley Integra Model 2700
MultiMeter Thermal Probe
Digital Sound Level Noise Decibel Meter Style 2
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp

Colin McRae Dirt 2
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Left 4 Dead 2
Crysis Warhead
Far Cry 2
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call Of Pripyat

All the latest bios updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru test all games across five closely matched runs and average out the results to get an accurate median figure.

Our minimum frame rate game graphs have three main zones. These are sampled over a specific 30 interval period of time and then mapped into a chart. These are handy reference guides to detail worst case performance of the product being reviewed. When we test video cards we try to find the best combination of resolution and image quality settings while still maintaining playable frame rates.

Over 30fps is the zone most people want at all times, this means perfectly smooth frame rates with no hitching.

Between 30fps and 25fps is the KitGuru ‘Playable’ zone, although some people might notice occasional stuttering in specific scenes.

Under 25fps is classed as the KitGuru ‘Danger Zone’ which means that the game experience will be less than impressive. Settings and/or resolution would need lowered to help smooth out the frame rate.

Colin McRae: Dirt 2 (known as Dirt 2 outside Europe and stylised, DiRT) is a racing game released in September 2009, and is the sequel to Colin McRae: Dirt. This is the first game in the McRae series since McRae’s death in 2007. It was announced on 19 November 2008 and features Ken Block, Travis Pastrana, Tanner Foust, and Dave Mirra. The game includes many new race-events, including stadium events. Along with the player, an RV travels from one event to another, and serves as ‘headquarters’ for the player. It features a roster of contemporary off-road events, taking players to diverse and challenging real-world environments. The game takes place across four continents: Asia, Europe, Africa and North America. The game includes five different event types: Rally, Rallycross, ‘Trailblazer,’ ‘Land Rush’ and ‘Raid.’ The World Tour mode sees players competing in multi-car and solo races at new locations, and also includes a new multiplayer mode.

This engine support DX11 and was one of the integral releases for ATI when they launched the 5xxx series cards a while ago. Hardware tessellation is used on the crowd, as well as water and cloth objects. DirectCompute 11 accelerated high definition ambient occulsion is also integrated with full floating point high dynamic range lighting.

We enabled maximum settings, including hardware tessellated animated crowds and dynamic water via ULTRA settings.

The Powercolor Vortex is able to power through our intensive test setting with eye candy cranked high. The frame rates are smooth throughout which leads to a great real world gaming experience.

Batman: Arkham Asylum, written by veteran Batman writer Paul Dini, is based on the long-running comic book mythos, as opposed to most other Batman games which are adaptations of the character in other media besides the source material. The Joker, Batman’s arch enemy, has instigated an elaborate plot from within Arkham Asylum where many of Batman’s other villains have been incarcerated. Batman investigates and comes to learn that the Joker is trying to create an army of Bane-like creatures that threaten Gotham City, and is forced to put a stop to the Joker’s plans. The game’s main characters are voiced by the actors from the DC Animated Universe, namely Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, and Arleen Sorkin reprise their roles as Batman, the Joker, and Harley Quinn, respectively. The game is played as a third-person perspective action-adventure game with a primary focus on Batman’s combat abilities, his stealth and detective skills, and an arsenal of gadgets that can be used in both combat and exploration.

To test we set everything to maximum, but disabled physX and Multi Sample Anti Aliasing. We choose some of the most intensive areas of this game to nail the card, this gives a truly real world ‘worst case scenario’.

At these settings Batman: Arkham Asylum is as smooth as butter and the frame rate never comes close to dipping into the danger zone area. The Powercolor overclocked card offers a couple of extra frames per second when compared with the Sapphire Vapor X model.

Left 4 Dead 2 is a cooperative first-person shooter game. It is the sequel to Valve Corporation’s award-winning Left 4 Dead. The game launched on November 17, 2009, for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 in the United States; it launched November 20 in Europe. It builds upon the cooperatively-focused gameplay of the original and uses Valve’s proprietary Source engine, the same game engine used in Left 4 Dead. The game made its world premiere at E3 2009 with a trailer during the Microsoft press event.

In a similar fashion to the original, Left 4 Dead 2 is set during the aftermath of an apocalyptic pandemic, and focuses on four survivors fighting against hordes of the infected. The survivors must fight their way through levels, interspersed with safe houses that act as checkpoints, with the goal of reaching a rescue vehicle at the campaign’s finale.

The gameplay is procedurally altered by an artificial intelligence engine dubbed the “Director” that monitors the players’ performance and adjust the scenario to provide a dynamic challenge. Several new features have been introduced: new types of infected, melee weapons, and a story-arc that connects the game’s five campaigns together.

Left4Dead 2 uses Valve’s Source engine and it’s not a particularly taxing engine for modern hardware, therefore we will run tests at 1920×1200 with this title.

The Powercolor Vortex has no problem with the Source engine as we expected and delivers stunning frame rates at the native resolution of the 24 inch screen we are using.

Crysis Warhead, like the original, Crysis, is based in a future where an ancient alien spacecraft has been discovered beneath the Earth on an island east of the Philippines. The single-player campaign has the player assume the role of (Former SAS) Delta Force operator Sergeant Michael Sykes, referred to in-game by his call sign, Psycho. Psycho’s arsenal of futuristic weapons builds on those showcased in Crysis, with the introduction of Mini-SMGs which can be dual-wielded, a six-shot grenade launcher equipped with EMP grenades, and the destructive, short ranged Plasma Accumulator Cannon (PAX). The highly versatile Nanosuit returns.

In Crysis Warhead, the player fights North Korean and extraterrestrial enemies, in many different locations, such as a tropical island jungle, inside an “Ice Sphere”, an underground mining complex, which is followed by a convoy train transporting an unknown alien object held by the North Koreans, and finally, to an airfield. Like Crysis, Warhead uses Microsoft’s Direct3D 10 (DirectX 10) for graphics rendering.

We use a particularly intensive area of gameplay which we call the Cargo run, this is strictly a ‘worst case scenario’ and generally you should experience slightly better performance through the majority of the game.

If ever you wanted to bring a graphics card to its knees, run either Crysis or Metro 2033. The 5770 struggles to keep the frame rates over 30, but at these settings we manage to always remain just over the danger zone of 25fps. A few years ago, a £140 card would never have been able to power Warhead at these settings.

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.

For our testing we are using Direct X 10 rendering mode, with all in game details set to “Ultra High”.

The performance of the Powercolor HD5770 Vortex is excellent throughout our stress level testing within Far Cry 2. This game would be perfectly playable at a higher resolution also if you lowered the anti aliasing settings.

The events of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat unfold shortly after the end of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl following the ending in which Strelok destroys the C-Consciousness. Having discovered the open path to the Zone’s center, the government decides to stage a large-scale operation to take control of the Chernobyl nuclear plant.

According to the operation’s plan, the first military group is to conduct an air scouting of the territory to map the anomalous fields. Thereafter, making use of the maps, the main military forces are to be dispatched.

Despite thorough preparations, the operation fails. Most of the advanced helicopters crash. In order to collect information on the reasons for the operation’s failure, Ukraine’s Security Service send their agent (protagonist – Alexander Degtyarev) into the Zone. From now on everything depends on the player.

The player must traverse through the Zone and investigate the crash sites. As the player progresses he starts learning how the helicopters were shot down. The climax of the story begins when the player reaches Pripyat to find survivors of the helicopter crashes. The player eventually meets Strelok from the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game (Shadow of Chernobyl) and learns of the secrets behind the Zone.

This game uses the XRAY 1.6 Engine which allows for advanced graphics features through DX11 such as real time GPU tessellation. Image quality settings were all set to their maximum levels to stress the card in a ‘real world’ DX11 situation.

The XRAY engine is an intensive test of any video card and the Power HD5770 Vortex maintains a good steady frame rate at our chosen settings. For higher resolutions you would be need to invest in a more powerful video card, or contemplate using two in Crossfire.

Unigine is a top-notch technology, that can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of our customers claim that they have never seen such an extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand. It is already used in the development of different projects (mostly games).

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 always test Unigine at 1920×1080 (1080p) at default settings so comparisons with other graphics cards in Kitguru reviews are possible.

The results are pretty much what we expected and nVidia are clear performance leaders in this particular benchmark with the release of their new Fermi Cards. Even though its £40 more, The eVGA overclocked GTX460 for instance manages a 34 average frame rate at these settings with only a drop to 16 fps at the minimum readings.

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. The best way to get maximum load results is by using Furmark, and even though it is not indicative of a real world situation it shows the limits the card can theoretically demand. The ‘gaming’ results are measured when playing Crysis Warhead and is a more valuable result to take from this.

As with all HD5000 Series based cards the power consumption of the PowerColor HD5770 Vortex is excellent. Consuming only 17W at idle and 66W when gaming in Crysis.

Recently we 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 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

We tested with the cooler in the raised position, but didn't really record any difference as the cooler has been configured to spin the fan slowly regardless of the position. These results are fantastic and put the card firmly into the ‘quiet' category. Within the majority of gaming systems the fan will remain inaudible and we never noticed it going over 40% of total fan speed, even when running Furmark. You would only hear it under load if you are using it in a very quiet system such as a media PC.

We measure temperatures with diodes and our Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp gun for verification. Room ambience in our labs is kept to 25c with air conditioning to ensure accurate results.

To stress test we run Crysis at Enthusiast settings and then use Furmark. Furmark is a synthetic test and not really indicative of ‘real world’ conditions but it is interesting nontheless.

These temperatures are excellent, especially when you consider the overclocked speeds and the very low noise from the cooler. Realistically you would never expect this card to exceed 70c when gaming, even in a modestly cooled chassis.

Even though the Powercolor HD5770 Vortex comes supplied with overclocked settings we wanted to see how much further we could push it via manual overclocking. This is always a good indication of potential headroom, even though the results of this will vary from card to card. We initially left Catalyst Control Center to get its own maximum ratings.

Catalyst Control Center came up with the settings above, which were considerably ‘out'. After manually testing the card for several hours our maximum figures were 950mhz on the core and 1400mhz on the memory.

Anything over 950mhz on the core proved unstable, however the memory overhead was incredible. We successfully sustained a whopping 1400mhz (5.6ghz) overclock which is a huge increase over the 1225mhz (4.9ghz). We confirmed our results with MSI Afterburner and anything above 1400mhz caused artifacting onscreen.

Now that we have our maximum overclock we decided to try a couple of tests again to see how the overclocked speeds would affect the performance of the card.

Unigine recorded increases as expected but we are much more interested in the real world gaming improvements. Crysis Warhead increased by a considerable 3FPS with both minimum and average frame rates – this can actually help to smooth out some of the more intensive gaming sections. Very good results indeed.

With such a considerable overclock we wanted to recheck the temperatures to ensure they were still within safe parameters.

The temperatures rose by about 8 degrees but we noticed that the fan wasn't speeding up any higher than 40 percent, the same speeds with Furmark at reference clocks. Manually adjusting the fan or setting up profiles would help reduce temperatures, but clearly Powercolor are aiming for a mixture of cooling and noise levels. If you hate noise then this card is going to be a great first consideration.

The HD5770 is one of KitGuru's favourite cards in the ATi 5000 series. It offers very respectable gaming performance with extremely competitive pricing, especially now as they have dropped even further since the release of the nVidia GTX460. There has never been a better time to buy a HD5770.

The Powercolor version of the card is better in every conceivable way. It runs cooler, its quieter, it has extremely impressive overclocking capabilities and while we can't yet find it for sale in the UK, we have been told that the pricing is expected in the £145-£150 mark – putting it head to head against the Sapphire Vapor X 1GB.

The PowerColor card is supplied with a good core clock increase, 50mhz over reference speeds which makes the performance increases noticeable (900mhz). The memory also receives a very modest boost of 25mhz (effective 100mhz) to 3.9GHZ.

This however only paints half the picture.

As we found with the Sapphire board, the memory headroom is simply massive and we managed to get the 1GB of memory clocked to 1400mhz, giving an effective speed of 5.6ghz which is extremely impressive. The fact that the core also overclocked a further 50mhz without noise levels increasing means this will be an ideal board for discerning enthusiasts who hate irritating fan noise.

This leads me nicely into one of the products key talking points, the inventive cooler solution which is height adjustable. In a raised position we noticed slightly better airflow around the card, but in real world terms, the card has been so effectively configured that it didn't make much difference. What we do love however is the fact that the fan area is detachable to aid with cleaning of the heatsink. This is not a gimmick and is actually one of the most creative ideas ive seen this year and means the user can clean the card easily without having to detach the complete cooler unit.

This is the finest HD5770 we have tested and we love the proconfigured fan settings, it never becomes intrusive in a system build, remains much cooler than the reference solution and has a very low power draw.

KitGuru says: If you have £150 and want a new video card, then this gets the complete KitGuru stamp of approval.

Discuss here in our forums or leave a quick comment below.

Become a Patron!