XFX & Sapphire Radeon 5750 and 5770

- 13th Oct 2009

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Conclusion

The 5870 launch has been a success for ATI, they released a product which provided major improvements over their last generation of cards in regards to both features and performance and they did so at the sub £300 price level. As performance figures for the 5850 became available there was also a real buzz as it offered all of the great features of the 5870 but for considerably less money. Now with the release of the 5700 series ATI bring the same great architecture and features to an even more affordable sector of the graphics card market.

There are many positive aspects when looking at the 5750 and 5770. First of all they feature full DirectX 11 and DirectCompute 11 support. Next we have some great power consumption figures which drop as low as 16w when idle and then we have the great media features. It is hard to fault a card which supports Blu-Ray acceleration, HDMI 1.3, HDCP, DTS Master Audio and Dolby True HD in addition to DirectX11, especially for under £110 (5750 RRP).

There is however one niggling issue with the Radeon 5000 series, we are yet to see just how good it can be with DirectX 11. BattleForge and Call of Pripyat (with some tweaking) let us know that some of the features work but unfortunately We really need to wait for games such as Dirt 2 and Alien Vs. Predator to see what the 5750 and 5770 can really do.

In terms of the cards being tested today the two 5770's are very evenly matched - both have a 2-year warranty and use the same hardware. They also have very similar bundles, though someone in XFX has made a mistake of choosing BattleForge for their free game when almost every other manufacturer, including Sapphire, adds a voucher for the much more desirable DX11 supporting Dirt 2. If these games don’t appeal to you then base your purchase merely on price when you are ready to shop.

For the 5750 it is a slightly easier choice to make. Sapphire gives us an enhanced cooler, full bundle and the Dirt 2 voucher. XFX offer the reference design and a very basic bundle. Once again it could come down to price on the day of purchase but we feel the Sapphire card offers better value and more desirable thermal performance.

Summary:
ATI now have a product range available which makes it hard to recommend any other product from £100/$130 upwards. We can’t wait to see what they have in store for their budget range.