titleSapphires selection of cards for the HD 7000 series has been impressive to say the least. On top of having stock and overclocked versions of every model, they also have a few different models like the Vapor-X and FleX, each serving a different purpose. The vapor-X models having ungraded cooling and their FLeX models have improved support for multiple monitors. We have taken a look at everything else from their HD 7770 lineup; it’s only natural that we take a look at the HD 7770 as well. We know that FleX cards can be great deals for people looking for a cheaper way to run multiple monitors without having to pick up active Displayport adapters or Displayport monitors, let’s take a look at the HD 7770 FleX and see if it holds up to the FleX name.

Product Name: Sapphire 

FleX HD 7770 GHz Edition

Review Sample Provided by: Sapphire

Written by: Wes

Pictures by: Wes


Specifications

Output

1 x HDMI (with 3D)

1 x Single-Link DVI-D

DisplayPort 1.2

Dual-Link DVI-I

GPU

1000 MHz Core Clock

28 nm Chip

640 x Stream Processors

Memory

1024 MB Size

128 -bit GDDR5

4500 MHz Effective

Dimension

220(L)x95(W)x35(H) mm Size.

2 x slot

Software

Driver CD

Accessory

CrossFire™ Bridge Interconnect Cable

DVI to VGA Adapter

6 PIN to 4 PIN Power Cable



Packaging

The packaging for the Sapphire HD 7770 FleX edition is similar to what we have seen Sapphires other HD 7770’s come in as far as size and shape. But the design is all FleX, with its black and blue look and Ruby is dressed up in her tight fitting camo. Beyond the FleX edition under the name, you also have a section in the top right corner that quickly explains what FleX means along with a picture of four monitors running in Eyefinity.

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Around back we have the same layout that you would find on any Sapphire box. They have a short “what’s in the box” listing but it is missing the HDMI cable that a sticker on the front of the box advertises. Along with a breakdown of each of the HD 7770’s features you also have a view of Ruby from behind, be careful from this view we can see that she is carrying a knife.

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Inside cardboard is used to keep everything sorted out and the card itself is wrapped up in a padded static protective bag. Packed in under the card in its own box are all of your accessories as well. You get a CrossFire™ Bridge Interconnect Cable, DVI to VGA Adapter, 6 PIN to 4 PIN Power Cable, and a free HDMI cable. Sapphire loves including an HDMI cable and this is always a major plus in my book.

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Something new this time around, normally we would see a plastic sticker covering the heatsink to protect it from scratches. This time around they actually molded a plastic piece that fits over it perfectly. This is a thicker plastic meaning even more protection while being able to actually put it back on later on if you want to.

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Card Layout and Pictures

The overall style of the HD 7770 FleX edition is similar but still different than any of the other Sapphire cards we have had in our office. This time around they went with a single fan design and the fake carbon fiber weave look does actually fit with the style very well.

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From a different angle we can get a peek at the cards heatpipes. Unlike some of the other cards we have seen from Sapphire recently, there isn’t anything on the top that shows what model you are sporting. This is a little disappointing considering that is really the only area you will see once this card is installed in a typical case.

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Here is a better view of the top of the card; from here we can see the heatpipes completely as well as the cards heatsink. You will also notice that this card vents into the case completely as the fan shroud doesn’t reach the PCI slot or even the PCB.

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The view from the bottom is much like the view from the top. Only this time around we see the ends of both of the cards heatpipes.

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Around back you can see the four attachment points for the HD 7770 FleX’s heatsink meaning it should be easy to remove and change the thermal paste if you ever need to do that. Sapphire has stuck with their blue PCB, this seems a little weird to me considering that you can actually see the PCB more than the fan shroud once the card is installed.

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Being a FleX card, the main feature is the cards ability to be hooked up to three monitors without the need to use the cards display port connection with active adapters. That means you have full use of the cards two DVI and one HDMI ports as well as the display port for a fourth monitor if you would like. The two display port connections do include one single link and one dual link meaning if you are like me and sporting 2560x1444 resolutions, you do have an option to go with. As I mentioned earlier the cooling design for this card vents into the case completely, even so their cooling vents on the back of the card are especially efficient.

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Our Test Rig

Intel i7-3960X

Asus Rampage IV X79 Motherboard 

Seagate Constellation 2tb Hard drive 

Noctua NH-D14 SE2011

Cooler Master Gold Series 1200 Watt PSU

http://www.highspeedpc.com/ Test Bench

Kingston 1600Mhz DDR3 Quad Channel Ram

Kingston Hyper X 120 SSD

 


Our Testing Procedures

Batman Arkham Asylum (built-in benchmark; 1920 x 1080; Multi Sample AA 16XQ; Detail Level: Very High; Bloom: Yes; Dynamic Shadows: Yes; Motion Blur: Yes; Distortion: Yes; Fog Volumes: Yes; Spherical Harmonic Lighting: Yes; Ambient Occlusion: Yes; PhysX: Off)

F1 2011 (built-in benchmark; 1920 x 1080; Multi Sample AA 4x; Vsync: Off; DirectX: 11; Shadows: Ultra; Particles: High; Crowd: High; Drivers: Ultra; Distant Vehicles: Ultra; Objects: Ultra; Trees: Ultra; Vehicle Reflections: Ultra; Post Process: Ultra; Skidmarks: On; Cloth: High)

Super Street Fighter Arcade Edition (built-in benchmark; 1920 x 1080; Multi Sample AA: C16xQ; Vsync: Off;Filtering: 16x; Model Quality: High; Stage Quality: High; Soft Shadow: Extreme; Self Shadow: High; Motion Blur: High; Particles: High; Extra Effect: Off)

Dirt 3 (192x1080 - 4xMSAA - high settings, in-game benchmark)
Metro 2033 DX11 (built-in benchmark, 1920 x 1080; DirectX: DirectX 11; Quality: Very High; Antialiasing: MSAA 4X; Texture filtering: AF 4X; Advanced PhysX: Enabled; Tessellation: Enabled; DOF: Disabled)
Metro 2033 DX10 (built-in benchmark, 1920 x 1080; DirectX: DirectX 10; Quality: Very High; Antialiasing: MSAA 4X; Texture filtering: AF 4X; Advanced PhysX: Enabled; Tessellation: Enabled; DOF: Disabled)
Total War: Shogun 2 Direct X11 Benchmark High setting

Crysis 2 Using Adrenaline Crysis 2 benchmark two runs. The first set of runs set to ultra-settings, 1080p, 4x Anti-Aliasing, DX11, Laplace Edge Detection Edge AA, on the Times Square map, with hi res textures turned on. The second benchmark set to Xtreme at 1080p, no AA, DX9, Edge Blur, Hi-Res Textures turned off on the Times Square Map.

Battlefield 3 Using Fraps with the game set to Ultra settings with 4x MSAA Antialiasing Deferred, 16X Anisotropic Filter, at 1920x1080.

Sniper V2 Elite 1920 x 1080 resolution, graphics detail set to ultra

Dirt Showdown 1920 x 1080 resolution, 4x MSAA multisampling, vsync off, Shadows: ultra; Post Process: High; Night Lighting: High; Vehicle Reflections: Ultra; Ambient Occlusion: Ultra; Water: high; Objects: Ultra; Trees: Ultra; Crowd: Ultra; Ground Cover: High.

Synthetic Benchmarks For video cards our synthetic benchmarks are limited to 3DMark Vantage and 3DMark Vantage 2011. 3DMark Vantage is run with PPU turned off with results from both the performance and high settings. In 3DMark Vantage 2011 we run both performance and extreme benchmarks

Unreal Heaven Benchmark DX11 (API: DirectX11; Tessellation: Disabled; Shaders: High; Anisotropy: Off; Stereo 3D: Disabled; Multi Monitor: Unchecked; Anti-aliasing: 8x; Full Screen: Checked; Resolution:  1920 x 1080)

FurMark We use Furmark to push the video card to the limit and test its cooling performance. Keep in mind that FurMark pushes cards well beyond what they would ever do in game. Our tests are done using the built in 1080p benchmark. All testing is done with a room temperature of 70 degrees.

 


Cooling and Noise

For those of you who read our reviews all of the time you will understand how we do our cooling and noise benchmarking, but for those of you who are new here is a quick rundown. We do our noise level performance using the auto setting on the fan control. It’s entirely possible that you will experience more noise if you crank it all the way up. The idea behind this way of testing is how loud the card will get when put under more load than you can put it under in game. We want to make sure you aren’t going to have noise issues or cooling issues without having to manually adjust your fans.

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In the case of the HD 7770 FleX we found that the cooling was just a few degrees hotter than its faster brother the HD 7770 Vapor X. Even so it still came in cooler than the other HD 7770 overclocked that we had the chance to review from Sapphire. Our noise results were very similar as well. If you crank the HD 7770 FleX fans up to 100% there was enough noise to be very distracting, but when running your fans on auto like we did during testing I found that it was quiet on our test bench. There was a slight amount of noise, but it was equivalent to what we experience from our power supply and water cooling as well.

wm furmark

 


3DMark

With the HD 7770 FleX coming in at 100 MHz less than the Sapphire HD 7770 Vapor X, I didn’t expect it to be the top performing HD 7770 that we have tested. It did however still best the HD 6850 ever so slightly in both performance modes, but not in extreme and high as expected. That puts the HD 7770 FleX right in with the GTX 460. Clearly this isn’t the highest card on the market, but considering the size and power usage it is a nice improvement over the HD 6850 and GTX 460 that it tested near.

wm 3dmark11perf

wm 3dmark11extreme

wm 3dmarkvantageperf

wm 3dmarkvantagehigh

 


In Game Performance

In game performance once again falls in line with what we would expect from any HD 7770 GHz Edition. Those of you who haven’t seen how well they perform would be impressed with their overall performance in most games. Most of the benchmarks we ran show performance well over 60 FPS, the golden standard for smooth framerates. Battlefield 3 comes in at just under 30 FPS meaning at full settings and 1080p like we test you will see playable frame rates, but those who want things to be a little smoother would want to adjust a few settings down. I will say that in my testing I found it to be more than playable in BF3 for me.

wm batman

wm bf3

wm crysis2dx9

wm crysis2dx11

wm dirt3

wm f12011

wm metro2033dx10

wm metro2033dx11

wm shogun2

wm streetfighter

wm unrealheaven

 


Overall and FV

When you are shopping for a new video card you are going to have a lot of options to select from, even just when considering what models to pick from AMD and Nvidia. As always your budget will determine what you will be looking at. If you find yourself looking at HD 7770’s, even just from Sapphire there is a wide selection of models to pick from. In the case of the HD 7770 FleX, it’s going to take a very specific buyer to be looking at the card. Most looking for the best possible performance will see better cooling and a slight bump in performance with Sapphires HD 7770 Vapor-X. Having said that, if you are like me and running multiple monitors, you need to be able to hook them all up as well as see the in game performance you expect. In the case of the HD 7770 FleX, in its price range you just don’t have any other options. You won’t see 60+ FPS while running Eyefinity in most games, but you will be able to hook up all three of your monitors for work and then when you play you will see playable frame rates in just about every game on the market with the settings turned up. With a MSRP of $149.99, that is a deal and a half. Not long ago you would have had to spend twice that for the same performance, and even then you would have to buy an adapter to get your third monitor up and running. Sapphire has packed it all up into a good deal and even included a free HDMI cable to boot.

fv2recomended

 

Author Bio
garfi3ld
Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org
Editor-in-chief
You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.

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garfi3ld replied the topic: #27932 12 Sep 2012 19:29
Sapphires latest FleX model

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