Powercolor Radeon HD 7730 review

The Powercolor Radeon HD 7730 is a very cheap and compact graphics card with an 800MHz graphics processor, 384 stream processors and 1GB of GDDR5 memory. Indeed, this graphics card measures 165mm in length and although it’s fan-cooled it only consumes one slot, so it’ll happily fit in many cases.

We initially tested the card with Dirt Showdown, and recorded an average frame rate of 23.4fps with 4x anti-aliasing, Ultra graphics and a resolution of 1,920×1,080. This isn’t fast enough for smooth, comfortable play, and we had to reduce graphics settings to High to produce a playable frame rate of 41.6fps. Reducing the resolution to 1,280×720 produced far better frame rates, with an average frame rate of 62fps with graphics quality set to High.

Somewhat predictably, given its performance with Dirt Showdown, the card really struggled in our Crysis 2 benchmark test, failing it at a resolution of 1,920×1,080 with graphics quality set to Ultra. In fact, it couldn’t produce a playable frame rate at all at a resolution of 1,920×1,080, producing an average 24.4fps with graphics quality reduced to High, our lowest Crysis 2 setting.

As with Dirt Showdown, it performed much better at a resolution of 1,280×720, and it scored a respectable 38.7fps with graphics quality set to Very High. Reducing graphics quality one stage further to High produced an even smoother frame rate of 48.6fps. Crysis 2 still looks pretty good, even at this quality setting.

Although it’s a cheap graphics card, the Powercolor Radeon HD 7730 has DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort outputs, and it can even be configured in Eyefinity mode. However, its multi-monitor support is best used for desktop applications rather than games. Conveniently, the card comes with a DVI-to-VGA output adaptor, so you’ll have no problem if your monitor only has a VGA input.

The Powercolor Radeon HD 7730 isn’t powerful enough to play the latest games at a resolution of 1,920×1,080, even if you reduce the graphics quality settings. However, it’s still better than using your processor’s built-in graphics processor, even that of the AMD A10-6800K.

Although we all want to play the latest games at the highest settings, it isn’t always possible, and few people can afford high-end graphics cards such as an Nvidia GTX Titan or AMD Radeon HD 7790. Even at a resolution of 1,280×720, modern games look great and you can still enjoy their gameplay.

If you’re on a strict and low budget, the Powercolor Radeon HD 7730 is worth considering. Otherwise, it’s well worth paying more for a Radeon HD 7770 or the excellent Radeon HD 7790.