AMD Radeon HD 7700 series performance overview

Lets take a look at some reviews to see how AMD's new Radeon HD 7700 series fares.

AnandTech notes the 7700 family is a fine lineup of cards, but that AMD shot itself in the foot with its conservative pricing. The Radeon HD 7750 offers some nice value at $109 thanks to its sub-75W power consumption, but the Radeon HD 7770 makes little sense because you can get the faster Radeon HD 6850 for less money.

Now to be fair there’s more to consider than just performance in existing games. The 7770 supports DX11.1, VCE, PowerTune, Fast HDMI, and other features the 6800 series doesn’t have, and it does all of this while consuming around 25W less than the 6850. But that’s just not enough. DX11.1 is a point update that’s still the better part of a year away and will only offer a tiny number of new features, while VCE is AWOL and cannot be evaluated, and Fast HDMI will be a niche feature for use with extremely expensive TVs for some time to come. This is not like the 4000/5000 series gap – today and tomorrow the 7000 series will only offer marginal feature benefits. The best argument for the 7770 is the power difference, but considering that both the 6850 and 7770 require external power anyhow that 25W difference is unlikely to matter.

The Tech Report also concludes that the Radeon HD 6850 is the way to go because the Radeon HD 7770 costs too much, while the Radeon HD 7750 is a bit more compelling although it suffers from a poor stock cooler.

So, there you have it. I hate to end on a down note, but two years after the Radeon HD 5770's debut, AMD could have done a lot better. The Radeon HD 7770 isn't a bad product by any means; it just costs way too much. This is a card that belongs at around $130, just below the Radeon HD 6850. It has no business anywhere near $159 or, heaven forbid, $179 like our snazzed-up XFX entrant.