by Rob Williams on July 11, 2011 in Graphics & Displays
It’s not often that we see a new graphics card get released that’s no different than its predecessor, but with the Radeon HD 6770, that’s just the case. We’re already familiar with HD 5770 performance, but let’s take a look at how this $140 card compares to its similarly-priced competition, including the recently-launched HD 6790.
The Radeon HD 6770 is quite an interesting little card. Alright, it’s not interesting at all – it’s exactly the same as the HD 5770, after all. We pretty well knew what we were in for, but with recent driver improvements, it was still interesting to see how the card fared against the HD 6790 – a card that’s technologically much more capable.
At Newegg, the HD 6770 can be had for about $120, with Sapphire’s model in particular selling for $140. That premium gets you the ability to setup an Eyefinity setup without a DisplayPort monitor, and also a custom cooler that’s sure to be more effective than the reference. Is that premium worth it? Only you can really decide that one.
By comparison, the HD 6790 retails for $140, and that $20 premium does actually get you a noticeable performance gain. While in some games, both of these cards will perform similarly, in others, the HD 6790 has a clear advantage. If I were in the market for either of these two cards, I’d easily pay that premium. If I didn’t have a DisplayPort monitor, however, and wanted Eyefinity, the only real choice is Sapphire’s FleX.
Another card worth some consideration is NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 460, as it performs a bit better than the HD 6790 on average. However, that card is a lot more difficult to find at or even below the $140 price-point. If you don’t mind taking mail-in rebates into consideration, you could easily spend some time finding the absolute best deal.
While I’d recommend Sapphire’s FleX for those who want Eyefinity, I couldn’t recommend it if you just wanted an HD 6770. Better suited for that is Sapphire’s own reference design, which currently costs $118 at Newegg and can be brought down to $98 after a mail-in rebate. While it doesn’t feature a special cooler, this is a GPU that won’t get too hot anyway, so my vote would be to save some money and get the same performance.
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