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The HD 7770 GHz Edition is a quite capable performer for anyone looking to get their hands on a GPU that will just game and game well. Granted with only 1GB framebuffer I would not recommend this for a large surround or EyeFinity display in game as the framebuffer could easily be taxed with a single 2560x1600 display with high textures let alone 3 or more.
For anyone who wants to game but doesn’t necessarily need to wave around the EPEEN to friends the HD7770 is a really nice choice for some mid to high level gaming as long as you don’t mind tweaking down some detail settings in certain games. Note that in BF3 we definitely got below the 30 FPS mark and you could see it with settings on Ultra, but moving to a High preset helped clear things up nicely and for a budget card this card can be a very capable solution for those gamers who want to play the newest games without demolishing their bank account.
The thermal performance is quite good as through all of our stress testing the card peaked at a low and very component friendly 52C which speaks both to the efficiency of the GPU but also the very good cooling solution which Sapphire provides in its Vapor-X cooling.In the world of real world gamers I think there are far more users who want a good value on a card rather than the beast that they talk to all of their friends about. Sure I would love to run a 4 way crossfire 7970 setup for every game but in reality putting 2 grand into the cards alone is far out of the budget for most gamers yet this card could easily be integrated into a sub 700 dollar gaming rig that is much more affordable for those who love to game but couldn’t care less about having the best of the best or bleeding edge card. I game daily and if I was looking for a good all purpose card I would be hard pressed not to look at the 7770 as it just works. The horsepower is there, the power consumption is low and the price is right. What’s not to love about a card that pulls off a good price/performance ratio like this?
