Sapphire Radeon HD 6770 Vapor-X & HD 6670 Ultimate Review - PAGE 1

Entry level graphics cards aren't designed to push as many pixels per-second as their high-end counterparts, but they still play a vital role in the market. In fact, graphics cards priced at or below the $100 mark make up the largest share of GPU's sold worldwide. The simple reasoning for this is that most home PC users can be categorized as light to moderate gamers who use their computers mainly for tasks such as photo editing, streaming videos, surfing the internet and multi-tasking. For this large majority, the graphics cards' price and manufacturer support are more essential than the absolute gaming power of the product.

In our labs we have two graphics cards that are positioned directly at these home PC users that are looking for a product that offers enough support for any type of use, but still inexpensive enough to be purchased by virtually anyone. Don't let the low prices fool you though, both the cards on our testing block can still pack quite the punch when it comes to gaming.

The first card is the Sapphire HD 6770 Vapor-X, which is the more powerful of the two graphics cards we are going to be looking at. However it does come with some controversy behind it. This is because the HD 6770 is essentially an HD 5770, as both use the same Juniper based GPU and have the same memory sub-system. The only real difference between the HD 6770 and its predecessor, aside from the new name, is that it comes with a tweaked BIOS that adds additional support. Also, as part of the Vapor-X line of graphics cards the HD 6770 has an updated Vapor chamber thermal solution.

The second card is the Sapphire HD 6670 Ultimate. This card is slightly the less powerful of the two, but it still has a 1GB GDDR5 frame buffer and 480 Stream Processing Units to allow it to fare reasonably well in resolutions at or below 1050p. Also, since the HD 6670 has been on the market for a few months now, Sapphire has had enough time to tweak with the design of the board using a custom PCB and adding an updated passively cooled thermal solution.

The HD 6770 Vapor-X and HD 6670 Ultimate have an MSRP or $134.99 and $99.99 respectively, but to improve the overall value Sapphire is including a free copy of DiRT 3 with both models.