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AMD Radeon HD 7750 & Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition Review: Evading The Price/Performance Curveby Ryan Smith & Ganesh T S on 2/15/2012 12:01 AM EST
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- Radeon HD 7000
- GPUs
155 Comments
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faizoff - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkI thought the 7770 would outperform the 6850 at least. Great review. Reply
sigmatau - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkFor AMD cards, you look at the second number to indicate performance. An 8 series card like in the 6850 usualy performs as well or slightly better than a next generation 7 series card like the 7770.
The 3rd number also indicates performance, but not nearly as much as the second number. Reply
TerdFerguson - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linker, not really. A 58xx is faster than a 68xx. Reply
sigmatau - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkThe 68xx series introduced an anomaly in the formula. But generaly what I stated is true. Reply
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - linkThe anomaly here is the NVIDIA Gtx460 SMOKES the 7770 on everything, in every test, and costs 33% less.
I see the crazed fan base cannot bring themselves to say it.
I'll say it - 19 pages unsaid, over a long time.
THE NVIDIA GTX460 SMOKES THIS CARD RO DEATH, AND THERE'S MORE OF THOSE ON NEWEGG FOR LESS MONEY THAN THE 7770. Reply
Spunjji - Thursday, June 21, 2012 - linkMy word you are tiresome. Reply
nissangtr786 - Thursday, July 05, 2012 - linkUsing your logic a gtx 580 smoke the gtx 460.
The reason why 7770 costs a bit is because its new technology, power consumption goes down quite a bit. Compare the card to same power consumption of new generation card maybe a 7870 and the 7870 will smoke the gtx 460.
perferformance per watt 7770m smokes the gtx 460. Reply
lambchowder - Thursday, November 01, 2012 - linkyou seriously need to stop posting. everything you post comes off as rabid nvidia fanatic, because you evidently are one, and you seem to camp outside these benchmarks to say the same thing everytime!! "this thing SMOKES~~~~!! the 7770!!! thats all i look at are the frame rates!!! i dont take anything else into consideration cause im an nvidia superfan" Reply
Beararam1 - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - linkReally? I thought the 6870>5850. No? Reply
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - linkThis 7k series needs some www.verdetrol.com
LOL - How low can you go amd ?
Seems like more firings and cullings are in the works - or perhaps they already dragged the cat in and are now stuck with perverts. Reply
Oxford Guy - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkWhat I'd like to know is why the 7950 is shown in the Idle temp charts and then vanishes from the Load temp charts. Reply
Oxford Guy - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkSorry.. Power consumption charts.
I'd like to see the 7950/7970 load power consumption. The idle consumption is less interesting and that's where they're shown. Reply
dananski - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkMe too, the 6850 was worse than the 5850, so I'd expected it to be easily beaten by this generation's 770. Then again, the 6770 was just a 5770, so I suppose I should've learned that the mid-range is barely moving. Reply
designerfx - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - linkif you think about the fact of it's price today then it will probably be down substantially in a month - at which point it'd be quite competitive. Reply
ce12373 - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkHmmm. This AMD story sounds like a lot of other AMD stories (cough*cough "BULLDOZER"). Maybe no one has piledriven the point home to AMD yet. Oh well. Reply
medi01 - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkRight, and it's a long time that nVidiai stopped producing overpriced "you can fry pancackes with these" GPUs and even hold performance crown? Oh, it's still producing them and AMD still hold performance crown? What a pity.
Oh, but AMD went nVidia route with "confuse consumer more" naming scheme? How shameless, do they pay royalties for this to nVidia, the inventor of this rubbish? Reply
aguilpa1 - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkAMD has been doing the name bait and switch just as long as Nvidia but since your such a fan boy apparently you haven't noticed. It is obvious from your overheated GPU remarks that you are stuck on some ancient review of a past Nvidia product. And again, AMD has done the same, also in the past, 2900XT anyone? Reply
CeriseCogburn - Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - linkThe GTX 590 still holds the single card crown.
The very strange situation that has occurred is amd holding the single core card crown with 7970, finally passing the 580 after a year or closer to two and I don't remember how long.
This single core crown is gone already gone with the GTX680 benches leaked a few days early.
So amd finally did hold a crown for once in a very long time, for a very short time, 2.5 months or so....with most of that time in very weak or absent stock on retail shelves.
Spunjji - Thursday, June 21, 2012 - linkBLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH Reply
Reticence - Monday, June 24, 2013 - linkYou realize you're kinda the laughing stock of anandtech right? You wait with baited breath for every post remotely including AMD somewhere in the article to give you the opportunity to suck off nvidia and intel. I literally think you might need psychiatric help with that raging superiority complex, then again I've always thought there should be specially designed concentration camps for people like you who never grew out of acting like a blow-hard highschool kid.
Oh well, down to business.
Two 7970's (And I mean two 7970's, NOT a 7990) perform better than one Titan, EVERY benchmark has shown it, you can not deny this. And I already know what you're doing to say "BUT THAT'S 2 CARDS VS. 1, NOT FAIR ;[" But see, this is the main point that proves you're a major fucking moron. That.does.not.matter.at.all.
The the Titan is 1000$.
Two 7970's are 800$.
And while yes, it's impressive that a single card can hold it's own against two, it doesn't matter, who is going to spend 200$ more for LESS performance? I'm sure you'll also say "you're just an AMD fanboy." Wrong, I just don't like to waste my money. And I really, really, don't like you.
Nuff said.
Oh and by the way, read it and weep, pussy.
http://www.semiaccurate.com/forums/showpost.php?p=...″ Reply
Articuno - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkKepler really, really needs to come out soon, and I'm saying this as an AMD fan. Reply
Malih - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkExactly, I'm a fan of AMD myself, and I can't wait for Kepler, AMD needs a kick in the (you know what) Reply
DimeDeviL - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link"Theoretically the 5770 has a 5% compute performance advantage over the 5770." Reply
eminus - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkuhhh really? same card performs better hehehehe Reply
tynopik - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linklobbing off -> lopping off Reply
mattgmann - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkI feel like reviewers were blinded by performance with the 7970/7950 cards. They offer the same lack of competitive pricing as these lower end cards. The 7950 can be compared directly (in price and performance) to the Nvidia GTX 580, a card that was available a year ago.
I'm still rocking a pair of 4870s that set me back ~$400 a few years back. To get a substantial performance upgrade, I'd have to spend $450 on a 7950 today. Where is the value in that? Yes, power consumption and features are important but are tertiary to raw performance in almost every user scenario when it comes to gaming.
To say the least, the lack of competitive pricing between nvidia and amd currently smells a little fishy.....it wouldn't be the first time there was price fixing in the graphics card industry. Reply
maniac5999 - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkI'm convinced that the pricing for 4870s in late 2008/early 2009 was the sweet point to buy. Yes, power consumption sucks, but other than that, a card that cost me $160 then, is pretty competitive with a card that costs $120 today. I think we may have just lucked out with the 4870s, and may need to wait until at least Kepler, if not 8XXX to upgrade. Reply
chizow - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkJust be careful not to set expectations on the 4870's pricing for 2 reasons:
1) 4870 pricing was a mistake imo. AMD will say it was a calculated one in fluff pieces like the RV770 story and it was true in some degree that AMD needed to recover mindshare/marketshare and consumer confidence after the R600 debacle and a weak performing RV670. Still, when you set your single-GPU flagship at $300 and your second SKU at $200, there's not much room to go down on pricing.
2) Late 2008 early 2009 was the height of the recession. Wall Street, Real Estate, Auto Industry, all that. Nvidia and AMD were feeling it too and got involved in a highly publicized price war. That's why you saw "new" high-end performance parts like the 4890 and GTX 275 launching for $230-$250 that occupy the $350+ market today, with cards like the 4870 and GTX 260c216 selling at tremendous value for $150 or less.
Its obvious AMD is doing its best to correct their 4870 price mistake over the last few years, but with the overall performance of Southern Islands stack, the 7-series was the wrong time to do it. They should've just stuck to their old pricing scheme or at worst, matched Nvidia's pricing ($500, $380) with their Tahiti parts. Then you might see the rest of the stack priced reasonably. Reply
Zoomer - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkYeah, at this point of the business cycle, it sucks to have to buy anything. Everything is expensive due to all the capacity cuts.
Recessions are good (for buying things, cars, houses, whatever). Btw: Housing is an anomaly due to efforts to stop/slow the process. Reply
Oxford Guy - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkRecessions are good for the rich... not so good for everyone else. Reply
mattgmann - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkDon't forget, when the 4870 pricing was low, at the end of 2008, BOTH AMD and Nvidia were settling price fixing lawsuits. These companies have cheated before; they'll do it again. Reply
Hubb1e - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link"Recessions are good for the rich... not so good for everyone else. "
Really? So when the stock market lost 40% of its value and the rich lost 40% of their net worth, that was good for them?
The rich can ride out a recession better than the poor because they don't live paycheck to paycheck, but it sure as hell wasn't good for them. Reply
Galidou - Sunday, February 19, 2012 - linkMaybe we can see 4870's with maximum performance/die size in mind pricing failure because it was performing close to the big die from Nvidia gtx2xx. Or maybe we can see the ''double performance from last gen'' tactic from Nvidia a fail when it means building a super big die with low performance/size ratio just to get that double performance motto... It was all a question of ''goal to attain'' from each company. One goal paid off more than the other that time.
From an Nvidia's fanboy perception, the first will be true and the second unthinkable. From an ATI fanboy, the first will make no sense and the second will suit them well. From someone with no choosen side, both can be true.
But these 7770 and 7750 here, makes no sense, such small die with such performance for that price..... Reply
Malih - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkI agree, smells fishy, usually at this point nVidia would lower their card price.
The latest price competitive part from AMD is the 6800 series. Probably have to wait for the 8800 series? Reply
Kjella - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkI know, I bought a 5850 before the MSRP hike for around $279 + VAT in 2009 and I just checked, it clearly beats a 7770 so a >$159 value today, maybe close to the $200 card being launched in March. The 6xxxx series I thought was just because they had to scrap the 34nm process and deliver essentially a refined 5xxx series, but now they're on 28nm and there's not much bang for the buck for those of us that already have a gaming card from the 4/5xxxx series. I hope this is just a temporary situation until nVidia gets their Kepler out, or I might just sit out another generation... Reply
eminus - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkAMD has AMD (Accute Money Deficiency) right now so they need every penny they can gain. Reply
Cygni - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkIt seriously seems that the 4850/4870 was an incredible purchase. In 2009, you could get a 4850 for $99 dollars. And it STILL holds up to the top range cards.
I mean we all know that Nvidia and AMD are playing the profit game 10 times harder than the performance game in this sector, simply because games can't press the limits of the hardware, but it's still impressive. Reply
just4U - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkI bought 4 cards in the 4x lineup..
First a 4850 for $170, Second a 4870 for $199 Third a 4870 1G for $229 and lastly a 4830 for 140.. While I live in Canada I don't think prices ever came that low unless you got one helluva good deal.. $99 pricing for the 4850 wasn't the norm even late in its production run. Reply
BPB - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkI got mine real chaep at launch! BestBuy mispriced them. Still, not too much later there were good deals again and I got one for my daughter's desktop. These cards in CF still hold up well for 1920x1200 gaming. I would like to upgrade to better performance and lower power, but AMD is making that hard dollar-wise. Reply
Jorgisven - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkIndeed. Best Buy had a 25% off all Visiontek cards the week of the 4850 launch, so I got mine at launch for $150. I then caught an amazing deal on a 4870 a few months later ($129 shipped), sold my 4850 for $140. I basically bought both for a net $140.
I've been waiting for a good AMD card, but just haven't seen one. I've been tempted by the 560 Ti or 570, but they're still too expensive for my taste, and don't offer enough of an advantage to spend the cost of a PS3 on upgrading from an already decent GPU.
I'm rather disappointed with Red as of late. Reply
Dianoda - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkYeah, I jumped on that BB/Visiontek HD4850 512MB deal as well. Bought the card about a week before the official launch and at a $50 discount on top of that. Timing was perfect, too, as I had just finished my build, short one video card (borrowed a 3850 from a friend for a few weeks).
I finally upgraded from that card to a 6950 2GB (BIOS modded to 6970) about a month ago - Skyrim was just too much for the 4850 to handle @ 2560x1440. The 6950 2GB is a great card for the price if you're willing to perform the BIOS mod (and don't mind rebate forms). Reply
nerrawg - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - linkExactly! I bought 2 4850's in the UK in 2009 for £65 ($95) each - best GPU purchase I have made in 12 years! I now have a single 6870 that I bought in 2011 for £120- but its not really an upgrade at all. Thought I would wait and get a second one cheaper but now I don't think that will happen
2008-2009 was the sweet spot of a decade for Desktop GPUs. The way things are going with the Desktop (AMD bullsnoozer etc. etc.) I fear that it might have even been the sweet spot of GPU performance for the decade to come as well. I would love to see some massive progress in graphics, but it seems that the all the "suites" care about now days is "smart" this and "smart" that. I can't really blame them either, because until pc programmers get their act together and actually start making apps and games that push what is possible on current hardware I don't see any reason why I need 2X the GPU and CPU compute power every 1-2 years.
Come on guys - we are all waiting for the next "Crysis" - if it doesn't come then it might spell the end of the enthusiast desktop Reply
StrangerGuy - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkAMD having a fail product at $160 that couldn't even beat an almost 1.5 year old $150 6870 isn't surprising considering they are also the ones with the cheek to price their FX-8150 at near 2600K prices. Reply
thunderising - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkThe only problem I have with AMD on this card is WHY THE LOW BANDWIDTH.
The card performs nearly 10% faster when the memory is clocked at 6GHz QDR (TPU reviews) and 15% with Core Clock matching XFX's OCed Speed.
I think that 6GHz memory modules would have taken the HD7770 a long way ahead. The performance boost would have been enough to hit HD6850 performance, or beat it in all cases, and at that point, this card at 159$ would make sense.
Right now, until the price hits about 129$, this doesn't make sense. Reply
chizow - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkBut you get GCN, 28nm and a bottle of verdetard? Reply
Zoomer - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkGCN is worse than useless for gamers and non compute users. Reply
jokeyrhyme - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkI think I've built my last system with an AMD CPU. Intel completely abused their monopoly and decimated AMD's success in the CPU department, and I don't think AMD will have an enthusiast-quality CPU ever again. :(
That said, I think I will still use AMD GPUs for a while yet.
nVidia's Kepler may beat AMD later this year, but AMD actually has an open-source driver developer on staff and routinely publishes hardware documentation. AMD GPUs will probably have better support for Wayland than their nVidia counterparts due to these factors. If you use Linux and want to stay on the cutting edge, then I don't think picking nVidia is particularly wise. Reply
ganeshts - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkAt least in the HTPC area, NVIDIA is miles ahead of AMD in the open source support department.
Almost all Linux HTPCs capable of HD playback have NVIDIA GPUs under the hood, thanks to their well supported VDPAU feature.
AMD started getting serious with xvBA only towards the end of last year, and they still have a lot of catching up to do [ http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?65688-XB... ] Reply
Ananke - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkAMD is several years behind NVidia on the compute side...actually they are nowhere as of today. The AMD 7xxx series is so ridiculously priced, it will not get an user base to be attractive for developers. Actually, I am at the point of considering NVidia cards for computing, despite that I hate their heat and power consumption.
AMD had their chance and they blew it.
Besides, we shall see where the AMD ex-VP will go - that company most likely will be the next big player in graphics and high performance computing. Probably Apple. Reply
PeskyLittleDoggy - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - linkIn my country, company policy dictates you cannot leave your company and work for a competing company if you have valuable R&D knowledge. Thats part of the restraint of trade clause in your contract.
Basically what I'm saying is, AMD's ex-VP will not be able to work in any company with a graphics department for 2 years if the contract is similar to mine. I can't remember now but some CEO was sued for that recently. Reply
anactoraaron - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkWhat happened there at 1920x1200 for the 6870? 23.2 fps seems a bit off to me. I get a solid 60 just about everywhere (occasional dips to ~50) at 1080.
I am so glad I bought a 6870 ICEQ a month ago. Got the email today that I will be getting my rebate so your point about getting a 6870 for 159 AR is absolutely true. And the ICEQ edition I have is rocking a 1000/1150 oc all day long 32c idle 69c load via furmark 15 min run. Best part is it's much quieter than a reference card.
All of the 7xxx releases seem a bit lackluster to me. Reply
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkI go over this a bit in the commentary for that benchmark, but basically the 1GB cards are running out of memory in that benchmark. For reasons I've yet to determine, even though the 7700 series cards still only have 1GB they are handling the situation better than the 6800 and 5700. Reply
bazinga77 - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkfirst thing that should be pointed out is that i believe that the 7700 series cards that launched today only have a 128 bit memory interface so no one should expect miracles especially at higher resolutions. the memory bandwidth on x700 cards and lower has always held them back a little, where as nvidia for instance on their 550ti uses a 192 bit memory interface. if this card used a higher bandwidth memory it would do better. also the 79xx series from amd upped the bandwidth from the 69xx series from 256 bit to 384 bit which is probably one of the reasons it was so impressive.
well the gtx 460 is starting to disappear and amd discontinued the 6850 and 6870 two months ago so once they are gone they are gone. this is directly from amd. so i think this card fits in nicely and i expect once the 7850 launches that the price of this card will drop. i think that the 7770 almost being as fast as the 6850 isn't all that bad, especially because of how cool it runs and it seems like the factory oc cards close that gap even closer. considering how much power some of these cards took a couple of generations ago it seems like we are making progress. once the 7850 launches, which i believe happens next month, i think it will be the card to get, just as the 6850 was.
so all in all it seems like the 7770 will fit in nicely with a small price drop and and the discontinuation of some of the older amd and nvidia cards that has been happening, let alone taking into account the promotions we might see with rebates on these cards or bundled games etc.
lastly the 7750 seems like it will now be the best card on the market that doesn't require an external power connector and it will come in at only about $10 more than the current champ in that arena. so it looks like a nice card for the casual gamer or someone looking for an htpc card and it looks like the encoding features of the 77xx cards are pretty great. Reply
chizow - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkLike I said in the 7970 and 7950 review comments, the reality of the situation is only going to get worst as AMD reveals the rest of their 7-series product stack.
Ryan I can tell you're doing your best not to be too hard on AMD but there comes a time we need to call a spade a spade. What AMD is doing here in terms of price and performance with the 7-series is easily the worst we've ever seen in the last decade from a new GPU architecture, especially considering they're also on a new process node.
If/when Nvidia pulls an RV770 on AMD, I really hope you and the rest of the media is up to the task the same way they were with the GTX 280. I don't think you were head GPU editor at that time but I'm sure you remember the backlash. Reply
jjj - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkSo AMD either went stupid all of the sudden or they just can't produce enough cards yet and priced them to not sell.Either way,this is a mistake and they are only hurting their image (something they can't afford since Nvidia is still the stronger brand).
Lets hope Nvidia wants market share and gives us something exciting soon. Reply
stolid - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkArg. Might as well hang on to my 5770's. :/ Reply
adonn78 - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkAnd these cards are supossed to be an upgrade over the 6000 series how? Reply
Targon - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkThere is still a 7800 series set of cards that we have not seen yet. We saw the 7900 cards, and now the 7700 series. The comparisons here are 7700 vs. 6800 series, and that is ONE issue.
Price vs. performance is the primary issue that I can see, and TIME will hopefully bring down the prices to a reasonable level. I also hope/expect that there are reasons for the prices that will be fixed quickly, so will reduce the prices. We shall see, but if NVIDIA is having problems, it may be that AMD is giving NVIDIA a chance to come back, and is saving their next big performance jump for that release. Reply
chizow - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link"Price vs. performance is the primary issue that I can see, and TIME will hopefully bring down the prices to a reasonable level."
But that's exactly the problem, time hasn't brought price down to a reasonable level because we've already had 14+ months of this performance level at the same or better prices. AMD's pricing does nothing to shift the price performance metric and if anything, they are actually falling behind the curve a bit as you can get "old" parts that perform the same or better than these "new" ones at much lower prices.
The 7800 series will only emphasize this point further with similar performance relative to the 6900 series, but at much worst prices. But that's the trickle down effect of pricing a new "high-end" flagship part that's only 15-25% faster than the last-gen at a 10% price hike. There just isn't much value derived as you go further down the ladder. Reply
ET - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkThis is disappointing, although I agree that the 7750 does have a place due to its low power. Let's see what NVIDIA will offer.
The only ray of sunshine is that as always with a new architecture it takes a while for the drivers to take full advantage of the hardware, so it's possible to see performance improvements of tens of percents over time. Let's hope that's the case here. Reply
bazinga77 - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkhere is the thing to be honest. if you complain about the price that seems like a fair complaint. however one has to wonder how much it costs amd and nvidia in losses to keep dropping prices to stay competitive. at some point it has to catch up with you. with the losses amd has suffered with bulldozer they have to be smarter with the prices. also until nvidia launches something new they can stay a little heavy handed with the prices unless nvidia forces the issue especially as we see some of the older cards go away and amd has said that the 6xxx series cards are no longer in production and haven't been for months. so right now the pricing seems a little bit off but what about once you can't get a 6850,6870, of gtx 460 ti? it will make more sense then.
finally if you expected a 77xx series card to blow anything out of the water with its limited memory bandwidth of 128 bit memory then frankly you are either not very intelligent or naive. this is a lower mid ranged card that almost beats last gens upper mid range card. that is not bad. this card was never going to blow the roof off and if you thought it could will that just wasn't the best thought process you ever had. Reply
Markstar - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkI'm sorry, but you entirely missing the point of the whole concept of the IT industry. Graphic cards are not groceries, where you are lucky if you can still buy them for the same price 18 months later. The desktop market is declining, so there are plenty of computers out there fast enough to run Firefox and Word.
There HAS to be an incentive to buy new parts - and especially now that integrated graphics are fast enough for 1080p and casual games, this HAS to involve a performance gain in some form or another to get people to buy a dedicated graphic card, let alone upgrade from their existing one.
Who is going to buy this card? Seriously, who? A person who is tight on money should look on Ebay, where you get a used 5770/6770 for $60. Everyone else is bettor off buying the 6850 or going to NVidia.
Frankly, you are a bit naive if you think we will applaud AMD for releasing such an underachiever. As it stand now, AMD would have been better off with another round of rebadging (thereby saving money on R&D and freeing up 28nm wavers).
Sad, very sad. :( Reply
bazinga77 - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkintegrated graphics aren't good enough to run most games. if by casual games you mean angry birds then i guess i would agree with that.
most gpu's come out higher in price initially then we expect or want especially when newer cards come out while the other vendor, in this case nvidia, is a ways away from releasing there next gen cards. sure we can bash this card but to do so we have to assume nvidia is going to blow amd out of the water. sure amd has been rebranding their cards the last two cycles but nvidia is more guilty of that then anyone. so as the current market stands the price is a little high. but lets be honest it is only looking that way because cards like the 6850 are still available, which won't be the case in the very near future.
i guess if you want to buy a used gpu off of ebay with no warranty then someone can do that and if it craps out in a month then they can deal with that as well. and if someone is tight on money and only going to spend $60 then i doubt they are on a site like this and care about benchmarks let alone at 1080p etc.
the gtx 460 is becoming harder and harder to find and the gtx 560 is over $200 so i don't see a huge issue. i expect the cards to lower in price next month when the 7850 launches and the 7770 will settle down into a more comfortable range. if you buy a gpu or cpu day one you will always pay more typically then a couple of months later.
i don't think amd should be applauded but i think people need to be realistic. when nvidia released the 550 ti it didn't even get close to the gtx 460 ti, yet that is the exact thing amd is getting bashed for. the 550 ti competes with the 6770 and 6790, while the 6850 was trying to get closer to competing with the gtx 560 and gtx 460. like i said the 550 ti didn't perform better than the gtx 460, not even close, yet you expect amd to release a card that would typically compete against a card like the 550 ti (in its respected generation, being the next nvidia card that would replace the 550 ti) and you expect it to compete at a higher class than it is released. sure the price isn't perfect but you are expecting a civic released to compete with a corolla to actually compete with bmw 1 series. Reply
bhima - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkUhh... its really not hard to find a GTX560 for under $200.
$170 : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
$175: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
$185: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
We expect the card to compete with this because its priced a bit higher than this old tech:
HIS ICEQ 6870 $170: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8... Reply
chizow - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkGreat points Markstar, I'm glad there's others who understand the issus with the 7-series pricing many people have. Reply
TerdFerguson - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkThanks for the honest review. AMD deserves to be dragged through the coals for trying to sell us something that costs more and performs worse than a two-year-old card. This constitutes an epic failure in the world of consumer electronics. The more you stress it, the more it feels like you're an advocate of the consumer and not the greedy corporate suits. Reply
Bull Dog - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkOn VCE and the Test page, "7700 series launch is a bit more unsettling. These are cards that are going to be paired with slower GPUs, where having a high speed H.264 encoder is going to be all the more important."
I believe it should be CPU and not GPU there. Reply
pandemonium - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkI think it's pretty obvious that AMD is milking what they can while the buzz of the architecture and die size is fresh - primary opponent being absent in their next series release and all. In a month it'll be a different story. Prices will have settled in to where they belong after all the manufacturer's have their versions readily available. I don't really see how this is a big deal. Has any card released been placed appropriately immediately at debut? Reply
kevith - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkI am the lucky owner of a XFX HD4770.
It´s fairly ok for my use, music production and occasional gaming.
I would like something a bit newer though, that can handle new games in full HD.
And now I have witnessed the launch of 5750/70, 6750/70 and now 7750/70. The 5770 being "the peoples champ" for quite a while, as my 4770 could and would have been in its time, if it wasn´t for availability problems. (Probably created by AMD on purpose, realizing, that the card was to cheap.)
But as far as I can read everywhere, the 6770 is simply another 5770. And the 5770 wouldn´t really give me a significant improvement over my 4770. Never mind DX11 and Eyefinity and all that jazz.
SO. Where should I go for a difference I can feel and see right away? 6870? Prices doesn´t give ANY clue anymore, as Anandtech pointed out with this - and previous articles.
I look at Tom´s "Best card for the money..." round-ups, but I don´t get much wiser.
It sure is a jungle out there... Reply
silverblue - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkThe 4770 was far too similar in performance to the 4830 it was replacing. The 4770 was more of a test for 40nm manufacturing than anything else.
The 6850 and 6870 are definitely worthy of the cash. Reply
kallogan - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkHD 6850 is still the way to go. Reply
zepi - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkSo basically in couple of generations we've gone
4870 > 5770/6770 > 7770
Chip size
260mm2 > 165mm2 > ~120mm2 chip.
Performance is about
100 > 100 > 120
Power consumption in gaming load according to Techpowerup (just graphics card):
And soon we should have 1 inch thick laptops with these things inside. I'm not complaining. Reply
silverblue - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkGood point. One thing I think people forget is that smaller processing technologies will yield either better performance at the same power, or reduced consumption at the same performance... or a mix of the two. You could throw two cards in dual-GPU config for similar power to one you had two years back, and still not have to worry too much if CrossFire or SLi doesn't work properly (well, if you forget the microstuttering, of course). Reply
cactusdog - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkWHy is the 6770 left out of benchmarks?? Isnt that odd considering the 7770 replaces the 6770? I really wish reviewers would be independant when reviewing cards, instead of following manufacturer guidelines. Reply
Markstar - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkNo, since the 6770 is EXACTLY the same card as the 5770 (just relabeled). So it makes sense to continue using the 5770 and remind AMD (and us) that we do not fall for their shenanigans (sadly, many do fall for it). Reply
gnorgel - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkFor your 6850. It should sell a lot better now. Maybe they really stopped producing it and need to get rid of stocks. But when it's sold out almost anyone should go for a gtx 560, 7% more expensive and 30% faster.
The only reason to buy a 7770 now is if your powersupply can't support it and you would have to get a new one. Reply
duploxxx - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkby the time the 6850 is out of stock the 78xx series are launched which will knock out 560
don't understand what evryone is complaining about, its faster then the 57xx-67xx series, les spower. sure it's not cheap but neither are the 57-67 @ launch. Combined with old gen available and NV products a bit to expensive but this is just starting price.... Reply
akbo - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkMoore's law apparently doesn't apply to graphic cards. People expectations do. People expect that every two years gpus at the same price point have double transistors and thus be faster by so. Obviously perf does not scale like so since the 28 nm shrink only has a 50% improvement from 40 nm. However that would mean a 50% improvement is expected. Imperfect scaling would mean a 40% improvement.
So people expect that a card which is 20% faster than a card from 2 years ago to be 1.2/1.4 the price at launch, or an ~ 85% of the 5770 launch price in this case. That would mean that the card should retail at around $130-140 or so for the 7750 and sub-$100 pricing, like $90 or so. I expect it to be that price too. Reply
chizow - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkMoore's Law does actually hold true for GPUs in the direct context of the original law as you stated, roughly doubled transistors every 2 years with a new process node. The performance has deviated however for some time now with imperfect scaling relative to transistors, but at least ~50% has been the benchmark for performance improvements over previous generations.
Tahiti and the rest of Southern Islands itself isn't that much of a disappointment relative to Moore's Law, because it does offer 40-50% improvement over AMD's previous flagship GPU. The problem is, it only offers 15-25% improvement over the overall last-gen performance leader the GTX 580 but somewhat comically, AMD wants to price it in that light.
So we end up with this situation, the worst price performance metrics ever where a new GPU architecture and process node only offers 15-25% performance increase at the same price (actually 10% more in the 7970 case). This falls far short of the expectations of even low-end Moore's Law observer estimates that would expect to see at least +50% over the last-gen overall high-end in order to command that top pricing spot. Reply
arjuna1 - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkDX11.1?? With only one true DX11 game on the market, BF3, there is literally no incentive to upgrade to this generation of cards 7xxx/kepler.
Unless nvidia comes out with something big, and I mean big as in out of this world, I'll just skip to the next gen, and if AMD insists in being an ass with pricing, I'll go Ngreen when the time comes.
Now, the worrying thing is that it's becoming evident, both parties are becoming too cynical with price fixing, when is that anti trust lawsuit coming? Reply
tipoo - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkI probably won't be enticed into a video card upgrade until the next generation of Microsoft and Sony consoles are out. In the land of console ports, even a 6770 can run nearly everything comfortably at most common monitor resolutions. Reply
Movieman420 - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkI have an OCd C2D Wolfdale running the 4850 and I also agree that the 4850 will go down as one of the best bang for the buck cards ever.
My current i5/Z68 rig is running what I think will be considered another BBFTB card...the 6850...the dual fan Gigabyte 685OC in my case.
The 5770/6770/7770 are a fantastic line of mid-range cards...esp OCd but for a few $$ more an OCd 6850 still holds it's own quite well, there's no real counter for a 256bit vs 128bit memory bus. A big hats off tho to the 7770's high res numbers...pretty damn sweet, but I don't need uber res for a 23.5 inch monitor...ofc I'm not a hard core gamer either. Reply
cjs150 - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link7750 seems perfect for an HTPC. But to put it into context, IGPs should be using the 7750 as the benchmark for what to aim for. Can see this becoming completely obselete very soon once products based on Raspberry pi or Cu Box get released and match (the very impressive) picture quality of the 7750. In mean time get a low profile passive cooled version out and it will be perfect.
As for the 7770 I simply see no purpose for it at all. NVidia 560 is only marginally more expensive and beats it completely. 7770 seems to me to be a complete waste of stock Reply
Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkSo the 7770 should be at $109, and that forces the 7750 down to $89 or less. The die sizes on these chips are a lot smaller than their competition so I dont see what AMD is thinking. Inflation? lol. Reply
Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkWhy would a 7750 consumer 3 watts less than a 7770 during the "long idle" state. That really makes no sense. During that state there shouldnt be any difference at all between the two cards. Reply
tipoo - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkIt has over 100 more stream processors? 3W is pretty minuscule. Reply
akbo - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkThey are using a gorram 1200W PSU and those have s*** efficiency at 10% load. 3 watts means that it may pull about 1 watt more on-chip. Reply
KompuKare - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkWhich begs a simple question that has been bothering me with Anandtech GPU reviews for a while: how come they don't measure the wattage for the cards rather the whole system. Ok, it needs a custom PCI-E riser board and a multimeter but other sites (like techpowerup.com or this French site (can't think of it ATM) where the place I first saw that method used) manage it.
Or at a minimum why is there no IGPU (Intel 3000) power usage in the review to act as a baseline? Reply
Death666Angel - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkI'm kinda disappointed by the 77xx launch. I'd have hoped for some €150 - €200 cards, consequently performing better than the 6870. Maybe the 78xx will be better. I really hope nVidia comes around with good cards, that way the consumer won't get ripped off. Although I also hope that AMD makes some money in the mean time. Reply
geniekid - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkI just want to reiterate how much I appreciate the games you've chosen for your benchmarks. It's a very diverse set of games and covers a lot of the non-FPS genres that other review sites tend to leave out. Reply
ArizonaSteve - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkTime for the DOJ to start looking into the price fixing that's going on here. Reply
A5 - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkPrice fixing is explicit, purposeful collusion between 2+ manufacturers to set prices at an unnaturally high level. For an example, see the memory market in the early 2000s.
That is not what is happening here. Reply
mattgmann - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkBoth of these companies settled price fixing lawsuits in 2008 under similar circumstances. They've cheated before; don't be surprised if they're cheating again. Reply
mckirkus - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkIf Coke and Pepsi both start pricing cans of soda at $50 each, doesn't mean people will buy them. The 7770 is a $50 can of soda. Reply
CeriseCogburn - Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - linkYeah sure is price fixing when the always victorious gtx460 is $110 bucks and beats the 7770 every time and there's a large stock available...
Or the other, triple fan GTX580 at the egg for $359, and the other reduced way down from $500.
AMD is scalping we customers even now and has been since before this review. Reply
chizow - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkThere's an easy solution to price fixing: Don't buy at their asking price, or buy the faster, last-gen for cheaper.
Its not like GPUs go bad like produce or get consumed like oil. Just keep using whatever you have in your rig now, because chances are its just as fast at a cheaper price than what AMD is asking for these "new" next-gen parts. Reply
Iketh - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - linkmeh I'm not worried about it just yet, it's too early... I bet it's because of poor yields, which would make the pricing legitimate... remember it's a new arch on a new node
if the situation is the same in a month or 2, i'll be among those complaining Reply
akbo - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkI guess AMD is gonna let go of the old 6850 quick, 'cause no one is gonna buy it with this prices. Perf/watt very good tho, although mem bandwith very dissapointing. DDR4 is not coming soon enough, let alone GDDR6. 128 bits are simply not enough and 256 bits is adding more power/complexity. Can't wait for the day when GDDR6 comes and hopefully doubles bandwith for lower power/efficient clock speed. Oh, and gpu companies, when that day comes, don't be stingy like you always are and end up giving us 64 bits instead. Reply
silverblue - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkBring back TBDR and you won't need stupidly wide memory buses. ;) Reply
Roland00Address - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkThis is figuring out the price per performance, how many dollars you have to spend to get each FPS. Using Anandtech's Crysis: Warhead: 1680x1050 Gamer Quality Everything, Enthusiast Shaders+4xAA (Lower is better since you get a better bang for your buck.) Prices are from Newegg, using the cheapest card out there, no MIR are factored in, price includes shipping. Notes the 7750 and 7770 are not on newegg yet, so I am using the MSRP with no shipping to figure out the FPS per dollar. The GTX460 is using an older anandtech test since it is no longer using the more recent bench
FPS Per Dollar/Video Card/FPS/Price/Shipping/Total
$3.81 Radeon 5750 28.1 99.99 6.98 106.97
$3.23 Radeon 5770 32.5 104.99 0.00 104.99
$3.23 Radeon 6850 45.7 139.99 7.56 147.55
3.01 Radeon 6870 53.1 159.99 0.00 159.99
3.46 Radeon 7750 31.8 109.99 0.00 109.99
4.35 Radeon 7770 36.8 159.99 0.00 159.99
3.88 Geforce GTX550 TI 32.7 119.99 6.98 126.97
3.56 Geforce GTX460 1GB 41.4 139.99 7.56 147.55
3.65 Geforce GTX560 48.5 169.99 6.98 176.97
As you can see, the Radeon 7750 is actually a very good card for its price. It beats the old Radeon 5770 series, and all the Geforce only losing to the Radeon 6800 series in the terms of value. Don't forget though the Radeon 7750 can be single slot, doesn't need a 6 pin, and generates less noise and heat.
The 7770 on the other hand is the most expensive card in the terms of value. Notice that Geforce cards have a higher dollar per fps (they have less value), for the Radeon card to succeed it only has to compete with Geforce since Radeon still makes money if you buy one of the other Radeon cards. If the 7770 was priced at 131.01 it would have identical value as the gtx460 1gb, and 142.78 if the card was priced against the value of the GTX550 TI.
I wouldn't be surprised that the Radeon 7770 will drop to the 139.99 or 149.99 price range once all the older 5700 series and 6800 series leave the channel. I do not think we are going to see much cheaper 7750s though since it is a recycled part and its price per performance is very good already. OEMs are going to be eating up the 7750s like candy. Reply
rdh - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkBingo. But your numbers look at if you were to want to buy today. You might have bought the 5750 or 5770 at a significantly lower cost during a sale in the past 2.5 years. So individual price comparisons may be different than today's prices.
IN ADDITION: the 7770 and 7750 require about 3% less power and produce frame rates about 10% higher than their 57xx counterparts. This is after the 57xx have been out for nearly TWO AND HALF YEARS. I purchased both (the 5750 for one system at $65 and the 5770 for another at $99) about 6 months after introduction. Two years later, there is no compelling reason for me to upgrade. That means AMD is only going to be selling these to new desktop purchasers.... a quickly shrinking market. This cannot be good for AMD. Reply
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - linkSince fps is your only metric, itself being a murky and disturbed error filled easily biased mess based upon game set, driver cheating, resolutions, and in game settings chosen, the entire price/perf chart is EPIC FAIL.
When your drivers crash, when your game doesn't work, when new games don't work for weeks and months, when dual card drivers are absent, when features like PhysX are no can do - NONE OF IT IS ACCOUNTED FOR....
Obviously all amd has to do is follow the simpleton idiot fps/per dollar formula for all the stuck cursor gsod fanboys to bloviate and screech they saved 20 cents... then the amd forum masters casn continue to lock them out, lock user problem threads, and smart off that "it's works for them on their eyefinity setup theya re starig at right now"...
When a crazed, worship filled, religious zealoutry claims the heavens have opened on the cheap and the devil competition has lost all, beware...
Oh.. wait... sorry talking to the wrong person... Reply
Roland00Address - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkI am curious how high these cards will go before they hit the powertune limits. Reply
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkI'm still writing up an addendum, but here's what I have for the 7770.
Ref 7770: 1125MHz core, 4.8GHz memory
XFX 7770: No meaningful overclock on top of XFX's factory overclock. Crashed at 1160MHz core
As for performance, basically look at the XFX card. Reply
Roland00Address - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkPersonally I find that the more interesting card Reply
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkWe didn't do any overclocking tests on the 7750. It was necessary to quickly test it in order to be able to ship it to Ganesh for HTPC testing. Reply
DarkSynergyt - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkMight be a stupid question but can the 7750 output audio over HDMI? I'm in the process of building an HTPC and this is the final piece to the build. Reply
evilspoons - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkMy 6570 can and I'm pretty sure they said in the review that it has all the same features as previous generations for video features. Reply
ganeshts - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkYes, it does. With full bitstreaming options too (even WMA Pro). 7.1 channel LPCM support is also there. No worries. (Of course, hot plugging [ say, moving from a direct monitor connection to an AV receiver input ] causes the audio output to act crazy, but that is the case with every card. Reboot fixes the issue) Reply
evilspoons - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkThis really drives home how obsolete my GTX 285 is. The 7770 has about equivalent performance and uses *130 watts* less.
I need a new video card, but I want to see what Nvidia has for us next - I'm not a fanboy (in spite of all my gaming cards since the 3dfx Voodoo 3 being Nvidia), I'm just genuinely hoping for either some competition to drive prices down or something better to blow us away. Come on guys, get a move on already! Reply
Dug - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkFor the cost of one game you could just get the nvidia 560. In fact you could of gotten it a long time ago and still be way ahead. Reply
beginner99 - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkWell seeing this makes me feel a little less bad on how much a paid for my 5850 1.75 years ago. Absolutely 0 reason to upgrade...
However now it seems AMD GPU division is starting to blunder too... Reply
solarTermination - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkI really don't understand what AMD is thinking here. The 7770 is preposterous at this performance/price level, and it boggles the mind that they designed it this way. I'm really stumped here, it's like they're spitting in all of our faces to release a card that has less performance and costs more than a widely available 2 year old part.
They must take us for fools. Nothing else could explain this. Technology is supposed to improve as the years go by, not tread water, and certainly not get worse. You see this kind of bs and the revolving door of talent at AMD starts to make more sense. There must be some real pieces of work running that place.
I think it's finally time to join them. Nvidia, here i come. Reply
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - linkIt's obvious isn't it ? They are a collapsing wreck that have culled with the ax their dwindling workforce as they've sold off assets to leave them with nothing but ip.
Now after striking away Bain Capital style at the failing red bottom line - in the deep debt for endless years under the tightwad whining fan base and OCD focused complaint review sites meshing pennies and fps to an insane nuovo art form that should embarrass it's fans rather than fill them with false self esteem and self congratulating "I'm brilliant" mirror apprasials, they must further the save their life goal and actually ask their tenderly coddled and deceived rabid fan base to cough up some survival dollars...
Unfortunately, the years of low price bragging filled with lies albeit effectiveness as an ignorant fool lives in bliss, has come to backfire on them at the worst time possible, the end of the line.
As Mr. Smith said, it was inevitable.
Now amd needs a hero to save it's collapse and absorption into the wider market matrix. Reply
shin0bi272 - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkI have a gts250 and I get about the same fps as the 7750. I paid just over 100 bucks (109 IIRC) for it and its almost 3 years old and keeps up with these brand new cards. I cant decide if that's funny or sad. Reply
Menoetios - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkWhile these cards definitely deserve flak for their starting prices, I'm not nearly as disappointed overall as many here seem to be. I have no doubt that their prices will come down in time. Consider that the 7750 is the absolute slowest GCN card. I fully expect to see a tastey sub-$90 price for the 7750s by the time Nvidia gets their 28nm line out. The 28nm process is still extremely supply constrained; it wouldn't make sense to price the cards out any lower to increase sales when there simply aren't any to sell. Whether Kepler trounces GCN or equals it, its introduction will be when the real shift in the price/performance shift occurs, both from competitive pricing as well as the 28nm ramp up. Reply
kmmatney - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkWell, I'm glad I was able to pickup an HD6850 for $139 shipped (no rebates). I can see why the 7750 would be great for notebooks, but I don't see much point in this card for the desktop. Reply
CknSalad - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkI think it's safe to say that ever since the release of bulldozer, AMD has been hit hard financially. They spent a lot of R&D and probably put all their eggs in one basket in that project. As much as their efforts can be admired, it seems that this has taken so much of AMD R&D money that now they don't have much to offer for even their gpu lineup.
I understand that there is little competition and that this is the 'first gen' of 28nm cards, but there should seriously be at least 10-15% performance boost for the whole lineup. Going from 40nm to a 28nm process is a big jump. The 'there is little competition' so these cards are priced this way is still unacceptable. I'm starting to be wary of the 7800 series cards as I'm looking forward to buying a card no more than the low $300 range.
Hopefully Nvidia has something up their sleeves and can give us true 28nm performance we should be seeing. I am in no way an nvidia fanboy as I have had both ati and nvidia cards. The only thing i worry for nvidia's kepler cards is the power consumption. However, if the performance gain more than makes up for the minor increases in power consumption, then it will be more than worth it. Reply
Sttm - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkYes they are price gouging for the next 3 months because they can. Also the 7700 series is complete shit performance wise and will only find its home in the hands of the uninformed and the low power systems built by Dell and HP.
Nvidia is the only hope of seeing a good price/performance boost now. Reply
Sttm - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link"and at that point, this card at 159$ would make sense."
No it wouldn't actually, since with the move to 28nm you should be seeing a performance increase per dollar not the same. The performance of a 6850 should be around $79 this generation, with the $160 cards offering almost 6950/560ti level of performance.
This is what Nvidia will most probably be offering with their next gen parts, and what AMD will have to lower their costs to if they expect anyone outside of the fanboys to but them. Reply
KaDomoT - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkSoemthing went very wrong during your Skyrim testing. I ran a 6870 in a similar rig (X4 955 @ 3.5ghz, 4gb ram, no ssd) @ 1920x1080 with 4x AA / 16x AF and A LOT of texture mods and my fps was MUCH higher than that. Not only that, but this was before the big performance boost in patch 1.4 / before I had even heard of SkyBoost!
Admittedly my card was overclocked a good chunk (955 core / small mem oc) and my cpu had 600mhz on yours but no way that accounts for some massive 35+ fps difference especially when you guys have the performance patch and no mods. Reply
takeship - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkI think what everyone is missing here is that neither the 7750 or 7700 is really a card for builders, but for the OEM system builders, local shops, etc. For that segment, these cards are fastastic. Just look at the power and thermal loads - if you're HP, now you know you can sell the end customer a 7750 "HD Video" build for cheap, or a push the upgrade to 7770 based "HD Gaming" system without changing the power supply or cooling! That's huge for those guys. Simplification of the assembly line, part variety, etc etc. Same thing with Dad at home. Kid wants to play Battlefield? Buck at the shop around the corner knows that 7770 will get him there and then some playing on their "old" 1080p monitor without worrying that he'll see them back in 4 months when the system melts. Reply
CknSalad - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkI think it's best to wait for kepler. There's really no point to be an early adopter of ati's 28nm cards. I'm sure the price will be fixed as the way it should comparable to nvidia's offerings. I just hope that nvidia is really taking the time to actually make quality gpus that are fairly mature. I wonder when there will be stable, legitimate drivers for ATI's 28nm cards. Hopefully that will give a decent boost in performance. Reply
haukionkannel - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkWell this seems to be the trend. Older cards allways seems to better in bang for the buck department.
It has been very slow time in GPU selling, so there are a lot of those old 5xx and 6xxx cards, so they have to sell those out before they can recure the prices for these new... Or nobody would buy those older allready produced cards. It is pity to us consumers, but a must to GPU manufacturers.
At this moment there is allmot none reason for AMD to make old 6xxx series cheaper, because the Nvidia is not making enough pressure. So they release new cards at extreme prices and sell those old card first. Reply
Nogib - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkI have been looking for an upgrade for my 4850 512MB card with a similar great bang for the buck that this card has given me all these years. Guess I'm still going to be looking. 7770 is close, but not enough of a leap to be honest. And while I'm sure the 78xx series will be great, I'm guessing it will be at a $250-$299 price range which is far beyond what I would ever consider spending on a video card. Sigh. Reply
Mathos - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkYou're right about the price/performance thing for a release.
But, you also have to take some things into consideration. Some of the performance difference is likely due to the 6800 cards having a 256bit memory bus, as opposed to 128bit. Even with that standing I'm amazed the 7770 gets as close as it does. The main reason the 7770 is more expensive, I'm thinking is more likely so they can cease production on the 6800 series and dump inventory. The 68xx cards have been out for a while, and have benefited from many driver optimizations, but, you're not likely to see any more performance out of them from driver updates than what they already have. The 77xx cards are still based on a new core, which through driver updates will likely get much better performance over time.
Bottom line for me though, is, does it perform better than the 5770 that I currently have. Which, it does so considerably. More than could be said for the 6770. It also makes me wonder if they aren't gonna end up doing a 7790, basically a cut down pitcairn with a 256bit bus, like they did with the 6790. Reply
chizow - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linklol Hi rarson. :)
Looks like you almost get it. Don't worry once the 7800 parts launch it'll fill in the blanks for you. The entire 7-series product stack pricing fails, top to bottom. Reply
marc1000 - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkactually the 7850 is the real star here. a board that does not require pci-e power and is able to almost match the 5770 in performance on most of the games. that was a 100w card.
in the other hand, this makes me a little worried about the power requirements of 7800 series. i am hoping that both 7850 and 7870 will require only 1 pci-e power plug. my case is not big enough to handle more heat than that, and this is why i dont upgrade to a GTX560 (2x power connectors). Reply
mczak - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - linkI think for the 7850 there is a possibility it would only have 1 power connector.
The expectation is that Pitcairn is roughly "2xCape Verde", which means it should have roughly twice the power draw too. Twice the 7750 power draw is easily under 150W, whereas twice the 7770 power draw is not (well close actually according to measurements, but clearly these cards want to allow powertune +20% settings and overclocking).
That would be similar to HD6850/HD6870 where the 6850 only has one pcie power connector but the 6870 has two. Reply
marc1000 - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - linki meant 7750 is the star here. Reply
PatrickSteamboat - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - linkWill there be any testing on Cape Verde's Crossfire scalability in the near future? I'm really interested to see if dual 7750s can fill the gap between it and the 6950. Unlocking a hidden, low power 6900 variant, the missing 6930, without having to match and compare more than three SKUs sounds too good to be true. Reply
Roland00Address - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link7750s can't do crossfire since they do not have a crossfire bridge.
7770s can do crossfire since they have a single crossfire bridge (can't do trifire though). Reply
PatrickSteamboat - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - link
power, and cementing its position as the replacement for the 6670 there isn't a CrossFire connector on the card
Can't believe I missed... anyways, thanks for that.
I found a preliminary benchmark with dual 7770s. Numbers look great so far, but at $318 for two, I'll be waiting until I can have both for less than $279. One now @MSRP, the second discounted once Kepler is out. Reply
mczak - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - linkThat isn't true. 7750 don't have a crossfire connector but they can do crossfire just fine, by transferring the data over the pcie bus.
According to techpowerup benchmarks which tested that there's not even really a performance hit due to that (though they used a board with 2x16 pcie lanes, albeit only pcie 2.0, so should be similar to ivy bridge lga1155 which will have 2x8 pcie 3.0, and it might be worse on sandy bridge lga1155 which only has 2x8 pcie 2.0), though they say there were some stability issues, which certainly are driver fixable.
I usually question the viability of low-end CF setups however, I think you'd be far better off with one HD7800 card instead (you shouldn't need to wait that long for it after all). Reply
Belard - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - linkIts been almost 4 years since the ATI 4850 was released. Within about 6~8 months of being on the market, it became a $100~110 card.
The NEW 7750 is also a $100~110 and from looking at these reviews, it performs no better than a four year old gaming card that sold for $100. Reply
Menoetios - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - linkNvidia is as much to blame for the lack of shift in the price/performance curve as AMD. That's just the nature of competition. If you look at the 7770 and 7750 pricing compared to what Nvidia currently has available, it falls right in line. AMD doesn't care that you buy a 7770 or a 6850; with the former they'll make a nice margin, with the latter it'll help clear out the channel. They only care that you buy one of their products, and their products are priced just fine to that end. With only 123 mm2 die size (it's quite tiny), the 77** cards have a lot of room to get cheaper when Kepler is released. And I hope Kepler is REALLY good, because that's when we'll see the true price/performance shift. Reply
chizow - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - linkHow so? Nvidia is not the one pricing their next-gen parts based on last-gen performance and pricing, AMD is. If Nvidia does that with Kepler, then you they share in equal blame. But AMD had the chance to fire the first salvo this generation and they whiffed, badly, on all 3 volleys now (7970, 7950 and now 7770). Reply
Menoetios - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - linkAMD have set their prices according to what's available on the market from Nvidia. Reply
chizow - Friday, February 17, 2012 - linkAnd that's exactly the problem! They're pricing new 28nm next-gen parts based on old 40nm last-gen price and performance levels. Nvidia's pricing was justified 14 months ago because the performance was there. It would not be satisfactory if they came out with a "new" part tomorrow and priced it the same as their old parts, would it?
Blame lies squarely on AMD for this because they set the pricing on their parts and they were first to market. Look at it historically over the last 2-3 major generations, never once has Nvidia done this with a new architecture (not refresh) in terms of moving the performance bar so little while expecting the same top of the line premium pricing. Reply
Hellbinder - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - linkOk, Anand continues to amaze.. he/they are either dumber than a box of rocks or intentionally biased against AMD and simply looking for any excuse to skewer them. Personally i lean towards option number 1.
The author of this review has completely buffooned the entire thing by getting the basic workings of AMD numbering & performance scaling WRONG.
yes the naming convention changed. but not in the way anand seems to think. This should be no brainier information for a site like this.
Top 7900 next 7800 next 7700 next 7500 next 7400 and so on.
The 6000 series was identical
Top 6800 next 6800 next 6700 next 6500 next 6400 and so on
the older models were different.
IF you want to compare apples to apples you compare the 6700 series to this series. The 6800 series is an entire tier above this card and should outperform it.
This site needs to get its crap together because nearly every other tech site makes this one look foolish, because they are foolish. or fire this reviewer and the editor and get some people who know what the hell they are talking about. Reply
Hellbinder - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - linksorry for the type the 6000 list should have started with 6900 Reply
Belard - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - linkThis modern new 7750 at $110 performs about the same as a 4 year old 4850... which was selling for $100 about 3 years ago. The 4800 series was more expensive to produce and drink more power.
The names don't mean much anymore, they were stupid to change the stack names which were fine from the 3000~5000 series. Reply
delirious_nomad - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - linkthere are reviews out there and 7770 X-Fired smoke a single 580 and for $300 some odd dollars...
I have been out of PC gaming for along time and these are going to be my cards of choice.
reasons why... I don't care what the Jones do...
I play at 1080p on an adequate LCD TV... and I don't need graphics maxed to the gills...
I have older games Half Life, Jedi Knight, Knights of the Old Republic, Diablo, Morrowind, etc etc that I still want to play and the power down features and low power usage are great boons for me.
from the X-Fire reviews I've seen so far they scale at about 2x so just double the numbers and they smoke a single 580 while using less power and running nice and quiet...
also it gives me a year or so before I build my second system and who knows what will be out then. then this gets handed down to my son and off we go. and it should be plenty fast enough for Minecraft
the only card that comes really close for me is the 560 Ti 448 Core... and one of them is more expensive and doesn't beat a 580...
here is link to techpowerups' X-Fire review... http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/HD_7750_777... Reply
KineticHummus - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - link"offers performance close to NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 570."
That is straight from the techpowerup link you gave, on the conclusion page. Close to gtx 570 isnt smoking the 580 which is what you stated cf 7770s will do... Reply
CeriseCogburn - Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - linkLOL - man ... thanks.
Anyway there's a triple fan GTX 580 on egg for $359.
I said it to you so I won't get attacked but maybe the gentleman would like to reconsider in light of our helpful posts. Reply
papapapapapapapababy - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - linkthis is all nice but sorry, I got burned waaaaaay to many times by AMD BS to even care! having to wait for months for proper support, faulty drivers and mind bogglingly piss poor performance per dollar in the latest games = never again going to buy or recommend any sort of AMD graphic solution. Im going to wait for the next gen consoles to launch, and then im going to get the absolutley cheapest and most efficient nvidia solution that offers me twice the performance of whatever m$, sony chooses to put inside their lil crappy casual boxes. Just like i Always DO, but his time AMD is out of the peculation for good! se ya. Reply
BoFox - Friday, February 17, 2012 - linkThe only source of this is a slideshow from AMD regarding the launch of Barts GPUs.
And then AMD launched Bulldozer with a slideshow saying that it has 2B trannies. A few months after launch, AMD admitted that it was an error, saying that it has only 1.2B trannies.
I've done such an extensive performance analysis to conclude that all Barts-based GPUs (6870, 6850, and 6790) are VLIW4-based just like its Cayman cousins.
GCN appears to be around 10% more efficient than VLIW4 for games overall, but it's very hard to say exactly how much. If a 78xx card that comes out next month has very similar specs to a VLIW4-based card (heck, or a VLIW5-based one), it'd be much easier to say. Still researching on this... Reply
CeriseCogburn - Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - linkMan it's just amazing...
" And then AMD launched Bulldozer with a slideshow saying that it has 2B trannies. A few months after launch, AMD admitted that it was an error, saying that it has only 1.2B trannies. "
I see that now...
" Update: AMD originally told us Bulldozer was a 2B transistor chip. It has since told us that the 8C Bulldozer is actually 1.2B transistors. The die size is still accurate at 315mm2. "
Ok, there's just no way this core transistor miscount is a mistake. The level of incompetence requried for that to be a mistake and not a PR plot is staggering.
For that reason BoFox I don't doubt what you are saying about Barts 68xx's and 6790...
I'd sure love to see that exposed far and wide as well if true. It's just amazing to me, a staggering "error" on the most basic bulldozer spec... and we're supposed to just pretend it never happened and no explanation is ever given.
Yes there's a chance you are correct Bofox on your calculations, certainly cannot put it past amd given the track record. Reply
maree - Friday, February 17, 2012 - linkFrom the consumer's point of view, the 7750 is the best card which doesn't require external power connector and hence can fit in with standard case and SMPS. The 7770 makes sense for those who crossfire, esp with long idle and compares favourably against the 6950/6970, esp for somebody who plans to buy only 1 7770 now and another one later when a better deal is available
From AMD's point of view, the 7750 seems to be targeted at the 80% of the Market who buy Intel PC, but are envious of the graphics capabilities of the puny Llano and even tinier Brazos. The 7770 seems to be targeted at the same folks for whom the BD was targeted. If somebody was prepared to buy a product(BD/7770) which is priced closer to competition(Core-i5/Gtx560) but gets beaten in all benchmarks and is priced more than old generation(PhenomII/6850) but still loses to it in many benchmarks. In short the 7770 is a Bulldozeresque disaster.
The situation would have been much better, if they had marketed these cards as 7670 and 7750, because that is were they belong based on die/transistor size and performance. Definitely a slip-up from AMD graphics Marketing dept. Reply
Galidou - Sunday, February 19, 2012 - linkLoL rarson, let's not get into that kind of argument with chizow, you'll end up in WW2 history of tanks pricing failure due to the fact they were not double the raw power of last gen tanks from x company vs y company... history, history, history...
Be careful with Chizow's arguments, he lives in the past, nothing new to reading his comments, it's already in the books and ready for anyone that reads it to perceive it the way they want(different from an ATI or Nvidia fanboy point of view)... :P Reply
chizow - Sunday, February 19, 2012 - linkThose who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
There's a reason we look at the past, because chances are, what's already in your rig performs the same or better than what AMD is trying to sell you at the same or higher price than what you paid "in the past".
Everyone needs to set the bar for themselves in terms of what they are willing to pay for an "upgrade", and given there is negative scaling with these parts, its pretty obvious they fail on all fronts. But hey, even you acknowledge this. Reply
Galidou - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - linkThose with a choosen side should not try to explain whatever the history tells us because they have a biased opinion. They can't see both side of the medal as objectively possible as someone with an impartial view and form the beginning you've proven to be on nvidia's side.
End of the discussion, you can try to explain history but it's YOUR perception. I never said history wasn't worthy of anything the thing is you always are on the same side which means it's worthless from the very beginning. Reply
Galidou - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - linkI do not think it's a TOTAL fail, the 7970 and 7950 isn'T very well priced, but it's not a fail like those. From your point of view a fail is from historical pricing. From my point of view and ALWAYS was like that, it's from a performance/price standpoint and I won't change because you tell me we should look at everything things from the past. Sure we can learn from it.
There was once a man that beleived the earth was round. But the historians and everyone else beleive it was flat so they killed him. No need to put names in there... History used as an argument makes that sometimes.... You've got to renew your point of view else, you can't see further from what you know.
AMD is trying to sell you at the same or higher price than what you paid "in the past".
Like we said before, nothing new here, it's always the same with x2 parts from last gen for years now... And it's only an example from many others of rebranding older designs selling at higher price point which AMD and Nvidia are both strong at. Reply
Galidou - Sunday, February 19, 2012 - linkThe price is a failure from my perception, 7770 and 7750 is a big fail..... Unlike 7950 and 7970 non-attractive price/performance but still a little justified by it's performance compared to parts that are out NOW and not compared to freaking history of pricing or future video cards...
People out there will buy the 7770 and they'll be totally satisfied for as long as they'll own the thing. If you spent 4 hours on the internet looking at video card prices and benchmarks and realize you're way better off with a 6850 you might find it a bargain. But for others, if you tell them what you did to get to that conclusion, they'll maybe end up being happy with their choice without searching because they had 4 hours of playtime outside on a sunny day and that's worth it, while you're on the computer looking to spend your money on the best you can find.
So in the end, whatever we might say, perception is the key in life, we can take a whole day speaking about that and in the end, everyone will be right, because each of us create it's reality by thinking and seeing it the way THEY want... You want to live in the past and the future analyzing everything, you'll end up loosing the present which is the only thing that exists... Reply
chizow - Sunday, February 19, 2012 - linkYes Rarson, its proof stupid people have low standards and will buy anything. How's your 7700 treating you?
Plenty in stock actually: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Sub... Reply


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Napkins - Set of 5
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HighPoint's RocketU 1144A PCIe x4 USB 3.0 Controller: A Big Back-endby Zach Throckmorton on 8/30/2011 8:26 AM EST
38 Comments
Back to Article
fancarolina - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - linkThe first picture says it all. You can tell they never tested the card with any real world USB 3.0 Devices like eg. those flash drives. When you have to force them in place to connect them. That is bad, you can't help but believe with a bit more testing they could have found better spacing for the ports. So that devices could plug you know plug in. Reply
StealthX32 - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - linkOn the other hand, people rarely use two USB flash drives simultaneously.
If you do it a lot, then fork up the $2 for an extension cable. Reply
Googer - Thursday, September 08, 2011 - linkWith 4 ports, i think its stupid to call this anything more than a minor flaw. I doubt anyone will ever have 4 thumb drives attached at any given moment. Persoanlly, I'd rather see them cram an extra closely spaced port in than to have few more widely spaced USB ports. Just like when a wall wart blocks some of my outlets, I grab the trusty old extension cable and free them up. (in this case, a usb3 hub would suffice) Reply
rtallmansu - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - linkThis is not a lack of testing at all. While I agree that it would be nice if the ports were spaced out more for these larger flash drives, you have to understand that there is a specification that HighPoint is following for the distance that two USB ports are apart. This is why all USB ports that you see in either the vertical or horizontal position are always the same distance apart from any manufacture. The problem really lies with the flash drive makers that are building devices out of USB connector specs, because people want larger capacity drives that can't be fit into the proper form. If you want a larger capacity drive that requires a larger form factor then buy a couple dollar adaptor cable or a drive that comes with one. Reply
PyroHoltz - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - linkI think your point is a little unrealistic. The card has 4 ports across the back plate. If someone wanted to use two highspeed(read:wide) thumb drives, then they could easily just move to another port. I think the author was making a very specific point while also trying to saturate one leg(side) of the bus. Reply
fcx56 - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - linkI agree completely, however I feel I should point out that each slot has it's own 3.0 controller, so your conclusion that the author was attempting to push "one leg(side) of the bus" is flawed. Reply
JohnMD1022 - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - linkI keep USB cables in an assortment of lengths, from 6 inches on up.
Problem solved. Reply
mino - Wednesday, August 31, 2011 - linkHow many of those are USB3 ... just noting as USB3 cables are nowhere as cheap as USB2 ... Reply
Spazweasel - Wednesday, August 31, 2011 - linkThumb drives are not the targeted devices for this product. External drives and drive arrays, video sources, and high-end scanners are. Such devices are attached with cables which will live side-by-side without issue. For people using thumb drives and who want to use the same controller at the same time as their other devices, NewEgg has USB 3.0 extension cables for $4.99. (as a point of comparison, the cheapest USB 2.0 extension cable they list is $2.99, so it's a $2 premium).
Cost is not an issue. Reply
Lohkay - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - linkWould it possible to verify if you can select from the bios a device connected to that card for booting? Almost every card out there and motherboards uses the NEC chip which doesn't allowing booting off USB3. Reply
damianrobertjones - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - linkIf you have the correct driver you should be able to boot... if not... Windows will ask you for one. Reply
ggathagan - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - linkLohkay's question had nothing to do with Windows drivers.
The question was whether or not a device connected to the Highpoint card would be recognized *in the BIOS* as bootable.
It's probably entirely dependent on the motherboard chipset.
Highpoint's manual makes no mention of booting capabilities, and Asmedia makes no mention of it in their description of the ASM1042 controller. Reply
LauRoman - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - linkI can boot from an sd card connected to my usb printer. But then again that is usb 2.0. Reply
peterfares - Thursday, September 01, 2011 - linkThat's because your USB controller allows you to boot from connected media. Once again, the OP is asking whether this USB controller card allows you to boot from something connected to it. Reply
HibyPrime1 - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - link"The SATA II interface's maximum bandwidth is 3Gbps, and the latest SATA III standard maxes out at 6Gbps. While most devices are incapable of saturating these interfaces, higher-performance SSDs and SSD arrays can sometimes deliver in excess of 1Gbps."
Almost all SSDs and most hard drives are able to exceed 1 Gbps, 1 Gbps = 0.125 GBps. Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - linkYou're correct on the definitions of Gb vs. GB, but read the statement: "While most devices are incapable of saturating these interfaces, higher-performance SSDs and SSD arrays can sometimes deliver in excess of 1Gbps."
Very few consumer SATA HDDs will saturate even a 1Gbps link (125MBps), let alone a 3Gbps link (375MBps)--though SATA uses 8/10b encoding, so really it's only capable of 300MBps maximum throughput on "SATA II". Move up to 6Gbps/600MBps and the only devices capable of hitting that right now are SSD RAID sets. But we're talking about USB 3.0, which is a 5Gbps link capable of up to 625MBps (in theory). And we're looking at sequential (i.e. best-case) throughput; for other workloads you'll be more like ~85% of the sequential performance on average.
That is why he states that high-performance SSDs and SSD arrays can "sometimes deliver in excess of 1Gbps." Good SSDs can certainly hit that mark and exceed it (even on random accesses for some), but if we're talking real-world usage I'd say it's accurate as Zach has it right now. We could say that "high-performance SSDs and SSD arrays can sometimes deliver in excess of 3Gbps" as a more specific statement, and in the future I expect a single SSD will even saturate 6Gbps links. HDDs really need multiple drives and sequential access to break 2Gbps though, and on random workloads they'll drop to <2MBps.
Anyway, in light of the preceding paragraph where Zach points out that a single USB 3.0 controller with a x1 PCIe link will give 1.25Gbps to each of the four ports, putting SSD performance requirements at that level makes sense. I did however change the "sometimes" to "often", as just about any modern SSD will be able to push more than 1Gbps for sequential transfers. Reply
HibyPrime1 - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - linkI guess I misinterpreted what he was saying then, I assumed he was saying that very high end SSDs (revodrive and the like) and SSD arrays were able to hit 1GBps (which is true), and thought the headroom from 6GBps SATA (which isn't true) was still sufficient. It would be a terrible SSD array that couldn't deliver well over 125MBps :) Reply
Jambe - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - linkWhat method (and specific hardware) did you use to hook up the SSDs? Reply
Z Throckmorton - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - linkEach drive was on its own port (USB 3.0 hard drive docks). I did not have a multi-drive external RAID enclosure that would've utilized only one port on hand for this card's write-up. Edited the article to clarify this useful point. Thanks! Reply
bji - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - linkWhy would you write that? What logic concludes that two drives used in RAID 0 cannot transfer data as fast as the two individual drives? If both drives are loaded with I/O then I don't see why you wouldn't get more total throughput from two drives used individually than in RAID 0, given the (very slight) overhead of RAID 0 but more importantly, the fact that every operation then has the maximum latency of both drives' contributions to each operation.
And your graphs even bears out the fallacy of your statement; total throughput with two individual drives was 589 MB/s, whereas the RAID 0 configuration only gave 578 MB/s. Reply
bji - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - linkSentence two should have been written as:
"What logic concludes that two drives used drives used individually cannot transfer data as fast as the two drives in RAID 0?" Reply
bji - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - linkObviously I have a typo even in the correction. Man I am tired today. Reply
Z Throckmorton - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - linkOf course you are correct, you simply misinterpreted what I wrote. Individual implies one. That is, an individual drive isn't as fast as multiple drives in RAID 0. That's why I said individual instead of summed or total. Reply
bji - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - linkThere was no reason to put the drives into RAID 0 if it was not going to make their throughput higher since the purpose of adding devices and changing their configuration was to try to increase total throughput to stress the USB card. Therefore putting the SSDs into RAID 0 was counter to that purpose since it reduced the overall throughput of the devices.
Also the comment that "Even the two of the fastest SSDs in RAID 0 and two of the fastest USB 3.0 flash drives don't choke the RocketU" further implies that the RAID 0 array of two drives was expected to have higher throughput than the two drives working individually.
Unless you were trying to test the throughput on one individual USB port, but that's not how the article was written.
Anyway, I'm being pedantic. It was a fine article. Reply
ltcommanderdata - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - linkIt might be useful to include a direct comparison against a motherboard's own USB3.0 ports to show whether bandwidth saturation of PCIe x1 is common and significant in these scenarios. Reply
peternelson - Wednesday, August 31, 2011 - linkAsus suggest that it could be a restriction when using fast peripherals across a single lane backplane connection and I do find this plausible.
That was the thinking behind their Asus U3S6 expansion card which has some similar features to this product and has been around a while now.
As well as increasing the link speed and going full duplex, the USB3 standard also increased the current available to devices.
I would quite like to see some supplementary power connector on the card (perhaps Molex) to avoid needing to draw all that power from the system backplane. Reply
Radnor - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - linkHi Zach T.
If you really want to test this controller, just Install a WS2008R2 ( Free Evaluation from MS Technet ) and assemble a Software Raid 0, with 4 decent Pen Drives. Might not be good for booting but some of would love to use a fast drive for alot of things. Or for just the sake of saturating that bus.
Thanks Reply
blckgrffn - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - linkSeriously, this looks good to go for a nice external disk array without all the fun and expense of a Thunderbolt setup. Reply
repoman27 - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - linkWell, a single Thunderbolt port with two drive arrays connected to it would yield ~19% more throughput than this card with four individual SSDs connected to it.
But since the cheapest Thunderbolt drive array is etailing for $949 right now and the only cable is going for $49, you're looking at $1996.00 worth of enclosures and cables. Or you could get four appropriate drive enclosures with cables and the HighPoint card for $205.91...
81% of the performance for 10% of the cost? Bah! I might need that extra 19% of bandwidth someday... or the ability to attach a high resolution display... or the ability to fit the card into a laptop... Reply
repoman27 - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - linkUSB 3.0 and PCIe 2.0 share the same nominal data rate of 5 Gbps and both use 8b/10b encoding thus they are really 500 MB/s interfaces. However, the protocol overhead for USB 3.0 in a best case scenario is still way higher than that of PCIe 2.0 under normal circumstances (at least 20% vs. less than 10%). Therefore one dedicated PCIe 2.0 lane will always provide more than enough bandwidth for one USB 3.0 controller.
A single SF-2281 SSD connected to a good SATA 6 Gbit/s to USB 3.0 bridge can saturate a single USB 3.0 host controller, as you demonstrated. The numbers you posted for the Corsair Force GT are much lower than the > 400 MB/s which that drive is capable of when connected directly to a SATA 6 Gbit/s controller. They are in fact though, some of the highest numbers I've ever seen posted for USB 3.0 throughput. You've saturated USB 3.0 way before coming close to the marketing bullshit number of "5 Gbps". As controllers and drivers mature and are further tweaked we might see throughput closer to 400 MB/s over USB 3.0, but for now it looks like 326 MB/s is all she wrote.
I'm not sure why you bothered with USB flash drives for this review, or why you tried to cram them into adjacent ports. It would have been more in keeping with this site to use four separate SF-2281 drives, each with their own SATA 6 Gbit/s to USB 3.0 bridge, connected to each of the 4 ports on the RocketU 1144A to see what this card was really capable of. Also, this could have been used to demonstrate the further impact of USB 3.0 on storage system performance beyond just sequential reads and writes. Reply
howardC - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 - linkit appears that the driver for this card at the official HighPoint support site has issues. can someone else confirm if that is the case?
thanks. Reply
alfredska - Wednesday, August 31, 2011 - linkI'm with many of the other user's comments: "Just use a USB extension cable". I mean really, if you're buying a card with 4USB slots on a single expansion card bracket, you can't expect them to be widely spaced. Reply
howardC - Wednesday, August 31, 2011 - linki'm looking at the silly thing right now. it's a design flaw.
it's not about available space on the expansion card bracket. it's really about how they are spaced. if all four ports were evenly spaced and further apart there would not be any issues. but then again HighPoint would have to rethink how they're gonna attach the board to the bracket or put in another way, find another place (or another way) to do it because the mount points and screws and whatnot also took up space.
this is not exactly an el Cheapo Card and yea, i do expect some 'engineering.' Reply
ctgoodman - Wednesday, August 31, 2011 - linkI have one of these cards on order. What I plan to use it for is to transfer a weekly backup offsite to multiple 2Tb hard drives. I will post back my numbers. We are using some SATA3 and SATA6 7200RPM 3.5" drives. I will have each one in a startech USB3.0 dock each connected to it's own USB port. Right now, using a single drive and acheaper 2port controller, I am getting transfer numbers ranging from 108MB/s to 125MB's in real world copy jobs using a single drive. All my files are larger than 20GB each. I agree this review wasn't the most useful. the USB flash drive test was pointless. The SSD test was nice to know maximum throughput but I need large drives and a 7200RPM disk should have been in your test. I'll post back my findings. I will be running three drive simultaneously and will post the throughput numbers middle of next week. Reply
buster2003 - Wednesday, August 31, 2011 - linkHi Zach, I really like your article. Quick question - how did you RAID those SSD USB devices in Windows 7? I have tried to setup a RAID with USB HDD's but have I have not been able to convert the USB 3.0 HDD's to dynamic in windows Disk Management in my Win7 system. Reply
repoman27 - Monday, September 05, 2011 - linkI was looking at some block diagrams of the ASMedia ASM1042 used on this card, and it only utilizes a PCIe 2.0 x1 connection anyway. This seems to be the case for every USB 3.0 host controller currently on the market, regardless of whether they support 2 or 4 USB 3.0 ports. This card only uses one port per controller and hooks the four PCIe 2.0 x1 connections coming off of the four ASM1042 host controllers to a 4 lane PCIe 2.0 connector via a PLX PEX8609 PCI Express switch. The PEX8609 is actually an 8-port, 8-lane switch, so it should be more than adequate for the task at hand. Since USB 3.0 and PCIe 2.0 both offer raw bandwidth of 500 MB/s, and PCIe 2.0 has lower latency and protocol overhead, a single PCIe 2.0 lane should always be able to keep pace with a single USB 3.0 host controller. The limitation of this card is therefore not at the back-end at all, but right at the front with the performance of the USB 3.0 host controllers.
As far as this was tested, I have several questions.
1. What drivers were used and are they (and the ASM1042 in general) capable of UASP, or were these speeds achieved using BOT?
2. What kind of SATA 6 Gbit/s to USB 3.0 bridges were employed to connect the SSDs, and were they themselves potentially a bottleneck?
3. What was CPU usage like during these tests, and is there potential for this card to be CPU bound?
4. Was the PCIe slot used pulling its lanes directly off the CPU or was it connected instead to the PCH?
5. How does the USB 3.0 connected performance of these drives compare to a direct SATA 6 Gbit/s connection on the same system?
6. What speeds are achievable when copying data between two SSDs, each connected to a separate port on the RocketU 1144A? How about when they are sharing a single port through a hub?
7. What testbed was used for benchmarking? (The sequential write speeds for the SSDs were higher than the sequential reads, which I presume was because compressible data was used in conjunction with SandForce SSDs.)
I came across some ASMedia marketing literature depicting a Crystal DiskMark 2.2 run with an SSD connected to an ASM1042 showing sequential reads of 356.2 MB/s and sequential writes of 229.5 MB/s. Renesas claims that with their new controllers and UASP driver they have achieved 370 MB/s according to ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46 with a USB 3.0 connected SSD. I feel like it would take a couple 240GB OCZ Vertex 3 MAX IOPS drives and a couple 250GB Intel SSD 510s, potentially in RAID 0 enclosures, to really lean on this thing properly. Reply
Googer - Thursday, September 08, 2011 - linkHow about posting some benchmarks which compare the highpoint with other usb3 options, including integrated motherboard and PCi-e USB3 solutions from other vendors and other USB3 chipsets too. Reply
ruggb - Monday, October 21, 2013 - linkThere appears to be a number of issues with USB3 add ons.
The boot issue involves the fact that the BIOS must load the USB3 drivers prior to trying to boot. Some do, some don't. My new ASUS MB has a switch in BIOS to bring up all USB or just some prior to booting.
The other issues (most all of them) apprear to be a result of interference created by the USB3 signals in the 2.4 GHz band. Read this intel white paper
Since my problems acted like noise I have done and posted the following everywhere I see the problem posted --------- As it is appearing more like the solution every hour it stays up. It woke up this AM still connected. It has not done that in the past.
There r a lot of posts about this problem. No answers - until now - maybe.
I read a post about a problem with a wireless mouse. Someone posted an answer ref to an Intel white paper RE USB3 noise in the 2.4GHz band. The problem was only helped using some copious shielding of connectors and components. This was done on a laptop.
OK, my problem is on my desktop... after trying every driver update and fw update I could find, I decided my issue with my PCIe to USB acted like it was a noise thing so I pulled it out, disassembled the PCIe connector, lined it with copper foil tape and connected it to a grd pin on the PCIe connector. Then I wrapped the tape around the cable up to the front panel box and connected that foil to the foil in the connector.
It has not been a long time 2 hrs maybe, but it never stayed up this long from a boot.
I am hopeful.
If u try this, other methods and other metal foil may work. I have had this copper tape for a long time. Make sure ONE end it grounded preferably close to the MB. If u ground both ends u will get a ground loop and maybe make things worse. I might cover it with scotch tape to prevent the cable from touching the chassis, though the cable is much stiffer now.
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