XFX & Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 Review - PAGE 1

At the default 1GHz clock speed, the Cape Verde XT GPU offers good performance for its respective pricing point. However, even at that clock speed the HD 7770 wasn't quite fast enough to consistently attain the same level of performance as the graphics cards in AMD's Barts family. This is where AMD’s AIB partners steps in, as the majority of HD 7770 graphics cards entering the market will utilize a custom design that improves out-of-the-box performance, thermal efficiency and acoustics.

In this review we are going to be examining two custom Cape Verde XT graphics cards from Sapphire and XFX. Both of cards we are testing come with a robust thermal solution, but utilize the same Cape Verde XT graphics processor. The difference between the two cards lies in the clock speeds, as the Sapphire model has a slightly faster GPU clock frequency, while the XFX model has a slightly higher memory clock speed and bandwidth. In addition, both boards boost higher quality components than the reference design, which serves to increase the operational lifespan of the graphics card as well as improve the overall power efficiency.

We have examined multiple graphics cards from Sapphire and XFX over the years, so we have an idea of what to expect from their respective designs. However, since Cape Verde is still a new architecture it will be interesting to see if XFX and Sapphire were able to increase the overall performance, while still maintain a relatively low thermal envelope.