Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 FleX GHz Edition 1GB Graphics Card Review

The Radeon HD 7770 graphics card is a bit of an unsung hero in the GPU world, and we will be the first to admit that we’re probably part of that census. When the card launched, it was aimed at the budget conscious and was a fantastic milestone for those wanting to move from an embedded solution to something with a little more juice, while keeping your significant half happy at the same time, and we all know how difficult that can be, don’t we?

While the HD 7770 had its perks in terms of the value and price/performance battle, it didn’t exactly offer up anything mindblowing, as it wasn’t in the same league as the 7900/Nvidia 600 series cards we’ve looked at recently. So what can the board partners do to make it stand out, and offer something that wasn’t necessarily your run of the mill card? Sapphire believe they have the solution.

Sapphire in my mind are always at the forefront of trying to offer their customers the very best features, for the very best price, and this is why they have a large array of segments within their product range, and one of my favourites has got to be FleX.

FleX allows the consumer to use up to three screens in landscape or portrait mode through use of DVI monitors, instead of having the need for the more expensive DisplayPort screens which can sometimes cost more than the graphics card, or sometimes, even your whole machine. Generally you’d see a card giving the functionality of Eyefinity to the consumer, but requiring these expensive monitors or some kind of active dongle which can cost a small fortune in its own right. A FleX card however, gives this practicality but on a much lower price point, as the card takes care of all the work for you. Couple this with a HDMI to DVI dongle that Sapphire include as standard, and you have a fantastic bundle for an amazing price.

So before we get into looking at the card in more detail and of course its performance, we must take a look at the bundle on offer to show exactly what your money buys you. After we’ve looked at the packaging and accessories, we can take a closer look at the card and then see what it can really do in terms of performance, and yes for those wondering; we will be testing Eyefinity triple screen resolutions too.