AMD Radeon HD 7750 & Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition Review: Evading The Price/Performance Curve
by Ryan Smith & Ganesh T S on February 15, 2012 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- HTPC
- GCN
- Radeon HD 7000
Metro: 2033
Paired with Crysis as our second behemoth FPS is Metro: 2033. Metro gives up Crysis’ lush tropics and frozen wastelands for an underground experience, but even underground it can be quite brutal on GPUs, which is why it’s also our new benchmark of choice for looking at power/temperature/noise during a game. If its sequel due this year is anywhere near as GPU intensive then a single GPU may not be enough to run the game with every quality feature turned up.
Things get better for AMD under Metro. Metro is extremely shader bound, which helps prop up performance in some areas and drives it farther apart in others. For the 7770, this means it still trails the 6850, but now only by 15%. Meanwhile XFX’s factory overclock helps to close that gap.
Given the shader-heavy nature of Metro, it’s interesting to note just how well the 7770 is doing versus the 5770, even though the 7770 only has 94% of the theoretical shader performance. Although the launch of the 7900 series didn’t give us a lot of data to work with regarding the efficiency of GCN shaders in games, the 7700 provides the first piece of solid data that GCN shaders are actually more efficient than VLIW5 shaders in at least some cases. Considering the die space penalty for implementing GCN functionality, this is very good news for AMD.
Of course as Metro is so shader heavy, it means it drives a wedge between the 7770 and 7750. The 7770 is now 21% ahead of the 7750, which compared to the 45% price premium is quite good, but it means the 7750 won’t be performing so close to the 7770 all of the time. And much like Crysis it’s slightly trailing the 5770.
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faizoff - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
I thought the 7770 would outperform the 6850 at least. Great review.sigmatau - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
For AMD cards, you look at the second number to indicate performance. An 8 series card like in the 6850 usualy performs as well or slightly better than a next generation 7 series card like the 7770.The 3rd number also indicates performance, but not nearly as much as the second number.
TerdFerguson - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
er, not really. A 58xx is faster than a 68xx.sigmatau - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
The 68xx series introduced an anomaly in the formula. But generaly what I stated is true.CeriseCogburn - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link
The anomaly here is the NVIDIA Gtx460 SMOKES the 7770 on everything, in every test, and costs 33% less.I see the crazed fan base cannot bring themselves to say it.
I'll say it - 19 pages unsaid, over a long time.
THE NVIDIA GTX460 SMOKES THIS CARD RO DEATH, AND THERE'S MORE OF THOSE ON NEWEGG FOR LESS MONEY THAN THE 7770.
Spunjji - Thursday, June 21, 2012 - link
My word you are tiresome.nissangtr786 - Thursday, July 5, 2012 - link
Using your logic a gtx 580 smoke the gtx 460.The reason why 7770 costs a bit is because its new technology, power consumption goes down quite a bit. Compare the card to same power consumption of new generation card maybe a 7870 and the 7870 will smoke the gtx 460.
perferformance per watt 7770m smokes the gtx 460.
lambchowder - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
you seriously need to stop posting. everything you post comes off as rabid nvidia fanatic, because you evidently are one, and you seem to camp outside these benchmarks to say the same thing everytime!! "this thing SMOKES~~~~!! the 7770!!! thats all i look at are the frame rates!!! i dont take anything else into consideration cause im an nvidia superfan"Beararam1 - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - link
Really? I thought the 6870>5850. No?CeriseCogburn - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link
This 7k series needs some www.verdetrol.com--
LOL - How low can you go amd ?
Seems like more firings and cullings are in the works - or perhaps they already dragged the cat in and are now stuck with perverts.