HIS HD 5770 1GB

The HIS HD 5770 1GB card follows the reference design, but of course HIS have their own unique package and extras. This mid-range card aims for the 4870 performance area, but with less power and more features.

Specifications

As I mentioned in the introduction, the HD 5770's Juniper GPU is basically a halved Cypress, so while it supports the same of it's bigger Cypress sibling, it is reduced somewhat. We have a single shader partition with 800 Shaders. 16 ROPs (compared to 32 on the Cypress) and therefore a 128bit bus. We do however get GDDR5 memory, which helps when it comes to the lower 128bit bus, and this memory runs at the same speed as it's 5870 bigger brother. Eyefinity displays are not halved, but reduced from a possible 6 to a possible 5. When you look at it like this you can easily be forgiven for thinking that you are missing out on quite a lot, but to put it into perspective, this is a mid-range part aimed to be the match of the high end 4850-4870 of the previous generation. Also worth mentioning is that the power consumption only reaches 108W (minimal usage is only 18W!) compared to the HD4870's 160W of maximum power consumption and 90W minimal; that's quite a difference, and is going to appeal to those wanting to run in Crossfire.

Another big thing, especially if you're an HTPC user, is that the 5xxx series can do bitstreaming of audio or if you like, you can use the HD audio formats (Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD) found on Blu Ray films with your amp. That's pretty big; previously we had to do without or settle for compromises (lower bitrates) or buy a very expensive sound card capable of HDMI 1.3a audio, but the 5xxx series can do this onboard. As before, you will need the right software (Cyberlink's PowerDVD 9 Ultra is being patched to support it) and hopefully as time goes on, more software will also support this. We now have proper Blu Ray playback for the PC for the masses.

The box for the HIS HD5770, whilst following the usual black and blue theme with box art of the usual style, changes its aspect to that of a vertical design. I like it; the artwork itself is really nice and has the expected HIS information logos adorning the box on the front and all the pertinent information to the rear.

Included with the HIS 5770 card is a DVI-VGA Adapter, two 4 Pin Molex to one 6 pin PCIe adapter, a Crossfire Bridge connector, a DVI to VGA Adapter, a coupon for the DirectX 11 game Dirt 2 (via Steam, out Dec 11th 2009) and the Driver/Software CD and Manual in its own HIS branded pamphlet/folder. I really like the idea of HIS including games via digital distribution; it keeps costs/weight down in the packaging, and it means I'm not stuck with a game gathering dust if I don't want it. I've not looked into Dirt 2 as yet, but if the first game is anything to go by, I'll be making full use of the included coupon.

The HIS HD5770 card itself follows the reference design, with just the sticker on the fan indicating the manufacturer. We have the reference 60's 'Batmobile' styled Pheonix cooling arrangement which gives the card a very similar appearence to the 58xx cards. The 5770 is however a bit shorter at 21.5cm (8.5in). I want to point out that, when I first saw the cooling setup in pictures on the web, I thought it looked quite flimsy, but when you get one in person you can instantly feel and see how solid the shroud actually is. The card feels quite heavy too.

The cooling fan is the same 70mm as found the 58xx series cards, and the HIS HD 5770 1GB it isn't a particularly loud item. Assuming you have good airflow in your case, the noise levels don't change overly much between idle or load. No doubt there will be single slot solutions in the future.

I want to go to the rear of the card right now. If you've not seen this new cooler before on the 58xx series cards, then you should notice that here are 2 red rimmed vents which while not really feeding air to the fan, do help to cool the power components in this area somewhat. However, what I really want you to see is that this is also where the PCIe power connector is and because it's inside the vent, it can make removing the power cable quite tricky (but not impossible).

Along the side of the cooler is a red strip which also has breathing holes and helps to break up the black. Also along the side are the obligatory Crossfire headers. Turning the card over to see the back shows the bare GDDR5 and the cross brace which helps support the cooler. The memory chips are Hynix GDDR5, specified to run at 1250MHz (although this card is running at 1200MHz on the memory). You get a pretty big boost when upping GDDR5 clock frequencies, and it looks like we should at the very least be able to get another 50MHz out of the box.

The IO panel is quite different from previous generations. We have a Dual slot design but rather than using the top slot solely for air vents, we can see that there is one of the two DVI-I ports here. The bottom slot has the other DVI-I port, an HDMI port and also a Display Port ... er ... port. This is just one possible configuration you will see on 5xxx cards but is likely to be the most common for now. As mentioned before, this a fully HDMI 1.3a compliant card.

Testing

Testing the HIS HD 5770 1GB consists of putting it through it's paces in a few games and also seeing how far we can overclock it. For comparison, I'm using an HIS 4870 1GB card and in some tests an MSI 4850 512MB card. The comparison cards sit in the same area for performance, although at the moment of writing, a 4870 1GB can be had for cheaper than the $159 launch price. I would however expect that prices of the 5770 will drop in the near future.

Test Setup: Intel Core 2 Duo 6420 @ 3.00GHz, 4GB of OCZ PC2-6400 Ram @ 900MHz, Asus Blitz Formula, Maxtor Diamondmax 10 7200 250GB HDD, Asetek Waterchill Watercooling, Hyper Type M 730w PSU. All latest drivers as of October 2009 and the OS is Windows 7 RC1.

Software

Left 4 Dead – Recording a custom demo on the No Mercy – Sewers level (outside in the rain), we used FRAPS to record frame rates as we played back the demo on all cards at same settings.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars – ETQW gives us our OpenGL test results as we run through a recorded demo on the Slipgate level. Settings for all cards were the same.

Crysis Warhead – We used the Framebuffer benchmark tool to run through the Ambush demo and recorded the results with FRAPS. Settings for each card were set to highest possible for that card.

Racedriver: GRID – Grid has some very good looking visuals. We used FRAPS as we took a Skyline for a test drive around the Ring. Settings for each card were set to highest possible for that card.

Assassin's Creed – We headed for the nearest tower from the bureau roof in Acre and repeatedly climbed to the top. With 2 leaps of faith and a good look of the city from on high, we once again used FRAPS to record our framerates. Settings for each card were set to highest possible for that card.

Batman: Arkham Asylum - This is a new game to our testing, and we used FRAPS along with the games inbuilt benchmark to gather our scores.

Devil May Cry 4 (Benchmark) – DMC4's benchmark provides a nice way of testing that anyone can do. Results are all from the benchmark itself, and include average framerates as well as 4 graphs for each level tested. Settings for both cards were the same.