Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 OC Vapor-X 1GB Graphics Card Review

As we mentioned earlier, the 7700 series of cards haven’t had an easy life, and aren’t really anything that gets us that excited either. What can I say? We prefer the raw processing power of higher-end cards, and the 7700 series doesn’t really fall under that category.

Occasionally we see a time when the 7700 series of cards get a bit of a shake up, and we last saw Sapphire do this with the 7750 Ultimate which gave us the benefits of a 7750 with a passive design. Moving up slightly, we see the 7770 today get the Vapor-X treatment, with a slight overclock to increase that performance level to the next notch.

We knew that in comparison, it wasn’t going to appeal to a large market, but had more of a niche following. The market that this card opens up includes silent PC gaming at a light to medium level, as well as HTPC usage for those wanting a discrete graphics card, with a bit more performance compared to a stock reference card, so lets break it down into two areas; graphical power, and cooling benefits.

When looking at our benchmarks, the card we looked at today offers an increase over a reference card in all tests. When taking a look back at older generation cards, it’s able to rival most, but certain cards, such as the 6850 still manage to come out on top. This leave a situation where the user has to decide between performance or advanced technologies, and that is something that will be consumer specific.

In terms of the cooler, we see the Vapor-X design doing its job perfectly, giving a cool and quiet performance, even when stressed to the max at multiple resolutions, across multiple games and applications.

The real clincher here is going to be the price, and this is something that Sapphire are generally bang on the money for. Priced at around £120, it’s certainly competatively priced when you look at the next model up in the 7000 series range; the Radeon 7850. The 7850 comes in at around £170, making it around £50 more expensive, and of course you do get better graphical performance, but you suffer with a shoddy, stock design cooler, which is where this card shines.

It’s a tough decision, but a decision that needs to be made, none the less, and once again leaves it up to the end user to decide on what they want more out of performance or cooling capability. The fact that you get a few bundled extras, including a DVI/VGA adapter, and a HDMI cable, adds to the value when pitting this card against similar offerings from rival brands, but Sapphire have always had a place in our hearts, and their Vapor-X coolers are seen in the market as some of the best produced solutions in the world.

Keeping all of what we’ve said in mind, we do believe that the 7770 OC Vapor-X is going to be a good starting point for those wanting to add a discrete graphics card into their system, or even those wanting to upgrade from older generation cards. Couple all of this with the ability to add a further card in a CrossFire configuration, and with the ability to play at 1920×1080 with reasonable frame rates, we believe the Sapphire 7770 OC Vapor-X deserves our Bang For Buck Award.