Radeon HD 6770

In the last couple of weeks that we’ve been testing graphics cards, there’s one thing that most of us agreed upon, which is - you do get a good amount of performance from graphics cards that are designed to be budget offerings. With many enthusiasts wanting to game at lower resolutions and build systems under the Rs. 30,000 mark, there have to be some compromises that need to be made. We’ve learnt that you can still manage to game at decent quality settings with graphics cards priced under the Rs. 8,000 mark. Here’s one graphics card that caught our eye when we reviewed it recently in our budget graphics card comparison test.

Features
The XFX Radeon HD 6770, like the rest of the Radeon 6000 series of GPUs is based on the 40nm fabrication process. The GPU runs at 850MHz and has 800 stream processors under the hood. XFX has gone with 1GB of Hynix’s GDDR5 memory. This isn’t an overclocked card, so most of the specifications as exactly the same as the reference card.

Basic connectivity options - D-Sub, HDMI and DVI

In terms of connectivity, there’s a D-Sub, a DVI and an HDMI port at the rear. In terms of power requirements, the card demands a single 6-pin connector. CrossFire is support and this card can be used in a 3-GPU configuration. Stereoscopic 3D is supported and inherently, so is HDMI 1.4a.  DirectX 11 support is present, like it is on all modern GPUs.

Design
The XFX Radeon HD 6770 is different from the stock Radeon design. This card, however is smaller than the Radeon 6800 line of cards. XFX has gone with the standard black PCB and a large heatsink on top of the GPU. Although, the design of the heatsink is basic, but it is very effective.

A compact card

There’s no fancy designs and graphics on the card, either. The only visible sign of XFX is the logo on the fan. Although the card uses only one external slot, inside the cabinet, it’s likely to block the adjoining slot on the motherboard.

Performance
We reviewed a whole bunch of graphics cards using the budget graphics card comparison test. The XFX Radeon HD 6770 manages to get very close to the HD 6790 in most game titles. It’s as fast or faster than the Galaxy GTX 550 Ti, too. Across all benchmarks, the XFX HD 6770 trails behind by roughly 5 to 10 percent, which isn’t too shabby.

Comparison with other GPUs in the price and performance range

In terms of operating temperatures on idle, it settles down to around 40C and under load, that number rises to 56, which is still very commendable. The faster Radeon HD6790, for example will peak out at 77C, which on the other hand is pretty high.

Verdict
The XFX Radeon HD 6790 was the fastest card around followed by the GTX 550 Ti cards from Sparkle and Galaxy in the last comparison test.

A relatively large and effective heatsink

What the XFX Radeon HD 6770 does well is offer a good share of the performance at a lower price of just Rs. 6,785. So for those, with tighter budgets and demand most of the performance of the best performer, the XFX HD Radeon HD 6770 hits the sweet spot.