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Our Sapphire HD5770 Flex Edition was one of the first off the production line so when it arrived with us there was no retail packaging. We can confirm however that the card ships in a blue and black box (complete with hot rendered female) detailing the main specifications of the product. ATi recommend a 450 Watt power supply is used with this board on a PCI Express 16x slot.
The package contains a Sapphire ‘Flex' cable which converts HDMI to DVI output – this is exactly the same as the cable we noticed in our Sapphire HD5670 Ultimate review a few weeks ago (single card review here and Crossfire review here). Sapphire will also be bundling a Crossfire dongle, a DVI to VGA adapter and a power converter cable which allows you to hook the card directly to a molex feed on a PSU.
Sapphire also are proud to note the inclusion of an online system called the Sapphire Select Club which makes RMA and servicing a one step process. Users also are eligible for contents and free promotions, offering video cards, games and other goodies. It is a nice touch.
Everything else in the box is just as people would expect with a driver CD and installation guide included. Obviously if you have access to the internet at home we suggest you avoid the CD drivers and get the new versions direct from AMD.
The Sapphire HD5770 Flex Edition is the same size as a reference HD5770 – a two slot design with a 7.5 inch length. The core and memory speeds are also reference with 850mhz on the core and 1200mhz on the ram. The plastic shroud cooler looks similar to other Sapphire products but we are glad to see it has been left plain black, giving it a somewhat ‘serious' look. The fan deserves a mention as it is a two wired ball bearing design with an impeller angled fan to enhance airflow and reduce noise.
Is it fully Crossfire compliant, so you can add another one for added horsepower later if you wish.
As with the reference design the Flex HD5770 only requires a single 6 pin PCI power connector to operate. The HD5770 has been tested on Kitguru many times and it is an efficient, cool running board. Always an important thing to note.
The heatsink under the shroud is a hefty aluminum/copper hybrid with heatpipes which will aid temperature control.
As we can see, there is a single DVI (top gray), dual link DVI (bottom white), HDMI and Displayport out. All of these can be used at the same time to power four screens. The only catch is that the fourth screen has to be Displayport connected.
This means we can have a four monitor 1920×1200 configuration or two monitors at 2560×1600 with one on the DL DVI port and the other on Displayport. Single link DVI and HDMI are both limited to 1920×1200.
A GPUZ screenshot confirms our early reports. In regards to clocks and technical specifications this follows true to the reference HD5770 specifications.
A quick recap: The 40nm Juniper Core is 170mm2 and has over a billion transistors. This Flex edition is supplied with Samsung GDDR5 K4G10325FE-HC04 6th generation ICs. These are rated at a stock voltage of 1.5 and 1250mhz maximum speed. We are positive the card will overclock well later however as the cooler is a substantial design and the memory has been set in the Sapphire bios to operate under specification.
