Sapphire Radeon HD 5770 Flex Eyefinity review
The idea is a great one, Eyefinity gaming without DisplayPort, but the card itself is only just up to the task, for now.
The question then, is whether this mid-range HD 5770 is up to running games at the very high resolutions demanded by Eyefinity. You can pick up three Full HD 22in monitors for as little as £300 inc VAT. Those would give you a massive resolution of 5,760×1,080, and a panoramic view of your game. High resolutions aren’t the huge problems they used to be for graphics cards. We tried running Crysis at this resolution and by reducing detail levels to medium and turning AA off we were pleasantly surprised to get 26.33fps. To get smoother frame rates we had to dial down the resolution. At 5,040×1,050 we managed 31.18fps, while at 3,840×720 we managed 50.5fps. These are respectable scores for such a demanding setup, though with the detail levels turned down it’s a trade-off rather than an out-an-out success.
It’s unlikely then, that this card will provide you with Eyefinity gaming at reasonable detail levels for very long. Newer games are bound to tax the card’s capabilities, especially once more DirectX11 titles are released. So, although we’re really keen on the Flex design, we think it needs to be applied to a more powerful card, like the HD 5850 or 5870. Still, if you’re looking for triple-monitor gaming on a budget, then this card justifies its £30 premium over a standard HD 5770.
Basic Specifications | |
---|---|
Price | £153 |
Rating | **** |
Details | www.sapphiretech.com |
Interface | PCI Express x16 2.1 |
Crossfire/SLI | CrossFireX |
Slots taken up | 2 |
Brand | ATI |
Graphics Processor | ATI Radeon HD 5770 |
Memory | 1GB GDDR5 |
Memory interface | 128-bit |
GPU clock speed | 850MHz |
Memory speed | 1.20GHz |
Card length | 229mm |
Features | |
Architecture | 800 stream processors |
Anti aliasing | 24x |
Anisotropic filtering | 16x |
Connectors | |
DVI outputs | 2 |
VGA outputs | 0 |
S-video output | no |
S-Video input | no |
Composite outputs | no |
Composite inputs | no |
Component outputs | no |
HDMI outputs | 1 |
Power leads required | 1x 6-pin PCI Express |
Extras | |
Accessories | DVI to VGA adaptor, HDMI to DVI adaptor, Molex to 6-pin power adaptor |
Software included | none |
Benchmark Results | |
3DMark Vantage 1680 | 5,538 |
Call of Duty 4 1680 4xAA | 66.6fps |
Call of Duty 4 1440 4xAA | 78.5fps |
Crysis 1680 High 4xAA | 33.6fps |
Crysis 1440 High 4xAA | 41.0fps |
Buying Information | |
Warranty | one-year RTB |
Price | £153 |
Supplier | http://www.overclockers.co.uk |
Details | www.sapphiretech.com |