VTX3D Radeon HD6770 & HD6670 Streamer Edition Review

1. Introduction2. VTX3D Radeon HD6670 Streamer Edition3. VTX3D Radeon HD67704. VTX3D Radeon HD6670 Streamer Edition (Super High Res Gallery)5. VTX3D Radeon HD6770 (Super High Res)6. Testing Methodology7. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark8. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage9. Synthetic: 3DMark 1110. Image Quality: HQV Benchmark 2.011. Gaming: F1 201112. Gaming: Dead Island13. Gaming: Deus Ex Human Revolution14. Gaming: Far Cry 215. Gaming: Resident Evil 516. Gaming: Tom Clancy HAWX 217. Gaming: Total War: Shogun 218. Technical: Acoustics Performance19. Technical: Thermal Dynamics20. Technical: Power Consumption21. Technical: Overclocking22. Closing Thoughts23. View All Pages

VTX3D are a relative newcomer to the graphics sector, although we have reviewed several of their graphics cards in the past. VTX3D stands for Vertex / 3D and they are the ‘price aggressive' brand from the TUL Corporation, the parent company of PowerColor.

We are looking at two of their new cards – the HD6770 and a rather special HD6670 Streamer Edition, both firmly aimed at the enthusiast media center audience. The Streamer Edition allows the user to watch, and enjoy digital television broadcast material.

VTX3D HD 6670 1GB GDDR5 【Digital Streamer Edition】

• Model: VX6670 1GBD5-HV2Q
• Graphics Engine: RADEON HD 6670
• Video Memory: 1GB GDDR5
• Memory Interface: 128bit
• DirectX® Support: 11
• Bus Standard: PCI Express 2.1
• Core Speed: 800MHz
• Memory Speed: 1000MHz (4.0Gbps)
• VGA Output: On Board
• DVI Output: On Board
• HDMI Support: On Board
• Minimum System Power Requirement: 400W

VTX3D HD 6770 1GB GDDR5

• Model: VX6770 1GBD5-H
• Graphics Engine: RADEON HD 6770
• Video Memory: 1GB GDDR5
• Memory Interface: 128bit
• DirectX Support: 11
• Bus Standard: PCI Express 2.1
• Core Speed: 850MHz
• Memory Speed: 1200MHz(4.8Gbps)
• VGA Output: On Board
• DVI Output: On Board
• HDMI Support: On Board
• Minimum System Power Requirement: 450W

The HD6670 Streamer Edition arrives in a red box with a high resolution image of the product on the front. VTX3D boxes are always primarily red and we don't have a problem with that.

The bundle contains an operation guide, power cable, software disc and antenna cable.

The card is built around a red PCB, with a bright red, plastic cooler  on top. The fan blades are black, so clearly that bit escaped the red paint. The most astute among you will spot the little board at the top of the backplate – this is the digital input board. The card doesn't require a power connector and isn't Crossfire capable either.

The antenna attaches to this port at the top of the card. The card can accept other, more powerful antenna if you have one.

There is a full size HDMI port, DVI port and an older analog port for backwards compatibility. This might not be such a great inclusion for a gaming card, but for a media product it can be useful.

The cooler is removed with four simple screws on the rear of the PCB. It isn't very substantial, but these cards don't demand much power, or generate a lot of heat.

Above, a GPUz overview of the hardware which features 1GB of GDDR5 memory connected via a 128 bit memory interface. There are 480 unified shaders onboard with 8 ROPS.

Driver software is installed from the supplied optical disc as shown above.

The TV tuner is accessed via Windows Media Center. Unfortunately our location has a very weak ‘over the air' signal meaning we couldn't effectively test the quality of the broadcast.

The VTX3D HD6770 arrives in a red box with a picture of ATI's mascot Ruby on the front. We aren't sure AMD are still using her for company promotion, but it certainly brings back positive memories of the good old days.

Not really much of a bundle with the HD6770. Just a simple installation guide and a software/driver disc.

Another red PCB design with bright red plastic cooler and black fan.

This card is Crossfire capable and would certainly offer decent frame rates within a performance oriented media system.

The HD6770 requires a single 6 pin connector for operation.

A similar output configuration when compared to the HD6670 on the last page. A single full size HDMI port, DVI port and VGA port.

The cooler is easy to remove, and this version is higher quality, being copper construction.

Above, a GPUz overview of the hardware which features 1GB of GDDR5 memory connected via a 128 bit memory interface. There are 800 unified shaders onboard with 16 ROPS.

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.

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.

For the synthetic and game tests today we are using a Core i7 970 system.

Processor: Core i7 970 @ 4.33ghz
Cooling: Coolit Vantage
Motherboard: MSI X58A-GD65 (MS-7522)
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10 GT
Power Supply: OCZ ZX 1250W
Memory: 6GB GSkill Performance Gaming ram @ 902.9 MHz (2:10) @ 9-9-9-24
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V+ 512GB Gen 2 SSD (Storage) / Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB (OS boot)
Monitors: Sharp AQUOS 52inch LCD 1080p TV.

Software:
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit

Unigine Heaven Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark
HQV 2.0 Software

Technical Monitoring and Test Equipment:
Nikon D300S with R1C1 kit
Keithley Integra unit
Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Extech digital sound level meter & SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter

Games:
Resident Evil 5
F1 2011
Dead Island
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Far Cry 2
Tom Clancy HAWX 2

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

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.

This tessellation heavy benchmark is a taxing initial test for the VTX3D graphics cards, but it gives us an indication of their relative gaming prowess before delving into more useful tests later in the review.

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.

3DMark Vantage is a Direct X10 synthetic benchmark and the scores are in line with what we would expect for decent gaming performance at modest settings.

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.

3DMark 11 is a Direct X 11 benchmark and the scores from both cards would indicate that they will struggle to power the latest games, without reducing resolution and/or eye candy.

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

	HD6670 & HD6770
Dial	4
Dial with static pattern	5
Gray Bars	5
Violin	5
Stadium 2:2	5
Stadium 3:2	5
Horizontal Text Scroll	5
Vertical Text Scroll	5
Transition to 3:2 Lock	5
Transition to 2:2 Lock	0
2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video	5
2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video	5
3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed	5
5:5 FPS Animation	5
6:4 12 FPS Animation	5
8:7 8 FPS Animation	5
Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP)	5
Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE)	5
Random Noise: Sailboat	5
Random Noise: Flower	5
Random Noise: Sunrise	5
Random Noise: Harbour Night	5
Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Luminance Frequency Bands	5
Chrominance Frequency Bands	5
Vanishing Text	5
Resolution Enhancement	15
Theme Park	5
Driftwood	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Skin Tones	7
Total	196

Both HD6670 and HD6770 deliver class leading image quality results, meaning they would be both ideal at the heart of a high definition media center. We will analyse noise emissions later in the review.

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.

We were pleasantly surprised that both cards could maintain playable frame rates, even at 1080p with the ultra in game preset. Anti aliasing has to be disabled however or the frame rates will suffer significantly.

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.

Dead Island is a fun game, in small doses. The engine isn't particularly taxing, which means that both of these cards can actually power the game at 1080p without running into any performance issues.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a science fiction action role-playing video game developed by Eidos Montreal and published by Square Enix.

The game is set in 2027, 25 years before the first title, where corporations have extended their influence past the reach of global governments. The game follows Adam Jensen, the security chief for one of the world’s most powerful human augmentation corporations, Sarif Industries. After a devastating attack on Sarif’s headquarters, Adam is forced to undergo radical surgeries that fuse his body with mechanical augmentations, and he is embroiled in the search for those responsible for the attack.

By lowering the image quality settings a little, we are able to keep the game playable on the HD6670, even at 1080p. The extra power of the HD6770 pushes the frame rates significantly higher with this engine.

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: 1920×1080 (60Hz), D3D10, Fixed Time Step(No), Disable Artificial Intelligence(No), Full Screen, Anti-Aliasing(2x), 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).

Far Cry 2 is still a great looking Direct X 10 game and at these relatively high settings both cards maintain steady frame rates. The HD6770 in this case however is noticeably smoother.

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.

One of my favourite games in recent years and at 1080p both cards can maintain solid frame rates. If we crank anti aliasing to 8x however the HD6670 performance drops significantly.

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 the settings below.

Good performance throughout, although the HD6670 suffered a little from juddering frame rates in some of the environments. AA might need removed completely to smooth out the frame rate issues.

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.

Real world testing can fluctuate a little, especially with dynamic environments. With this test we are using the built in benchmark results via Steam so readers can directly compare against their own hardware. Direct X 11 720p results are below – neither card really had the power to handle this engine at 1080p.

Shogun 2 is one of the more demanding Direct X 11 titles currently available. At 720p the HD6770 averages around 67 fps while the HD6670 struggles a little more, averaging 43 fps.

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 HD6670 is the quieter of the two cards, as it is demanding less power and subsequently generating lower levels of heat. The HD6770 is clearly audible when gaming, and this rises under synthetic Furmark load. Neither card could be classed as annoying, although for a media center in a living room we would opt for the HD6670.

The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 25c – 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 HD6670 is very cool running card which needs very little activity from the fan to maintain temperatures under 60c, in fact when gaming the card hovers around 50c which is a fantastic result. The HD6770 on the other hand creates more heat and the fan has to spin much harder, verifying the acoustic results on the previous page. The VTX3D HD6670 is an ideal card for a media center.

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.

The heat and noise dynamics make sense when we see the power consumption results. The HD6670 is a power sipping miser which consumes only 8 watts when idle and 47 watts when gaming. The HD6770 couldn't be classed as a power draining monster either, but it does consume almost double the power when gaming … around 91 watts in total.

We always use Sapphire's excellent TriXX software tool for our AMD overclocking adventurers and that won't change today.

Both cards overclock reasonably well, between 8 and 12 percent via the GPU and GDDR5 memory. We don't think anyone in this sector will bother overclocking either card, especially in a media center, but it is interesting nonetheless.

While cards such as AMD's HD6990 and Nvidia's GTX590 get plenty of media attention, the lower cost discrete solutions are sometimes forgotten about. Considering the level of sales these cards generate, we felt it was worth looking at two very price effective mainstream boards, ideal for general gaming duties and media center use.

The VTX3D HD6670 Digital Streamer Edition costs around £100 in the UK, although if you have no need for the Digital streaming you can pick a similar board up from VTX3D for only £72 inc vat. This is an ideal choice for a media center which will be connected to a high definition television. The image quality is class leading and the power drain is minimal. The tiny demand for power means that the PCB emits very little heat and the fan can spin slowly, reducing potential noise emissions.

When it comes to gaming, the HD6670 will handle many Direct X 9 and Direct X 10 games at 1080p without Anti aliasing. Moving to more demanding Direct X 11 titles can cause a problem and resolutions would need lowered to 720p, with image quality reductions.

The VTX3D HD6770 is a much more powerful card and can power many titles at 1080p without running into problems. This is priced just under £100 in the UK and offers a good performance to price ratio. It does demand around double the power at the socket and generates a lot more heat and noise. If you are looking to build a media center but want more performance at higher resolutions then this makes a good shortlist product.

Both cards are well worth buying, although if noise is a concern then we would also look at some of the silent solutions, such as the Asus HD6670 which retails for only £68 inc vat.

Pros:

• Both cards can power DX9 and DX10 game engines at decent settings.
• Superb image quality for high definition media playback.
• Power efficient.

Cons:

• Competition is fierce in this sector.

Kitguru says: Two cards well worth shortlisting, especially for a low cost media center/gaming system for a living room or bedroom.

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