austrian otaku

 

(This article is one again PC hardware/software related. Sorry for that, but there’s not much going on at the anime-sphere that would be worth blogging at the moment.)

 

Spring is coming and it’s time for a change…

…and that’s why I’d like to introduce my new waifu: a Sapphire Radeon HD5770 Vapor-X OC

 

Inside this article you will find:

- My GPU history

- HD5770: Inside and outside

- A look at temperatures and the 2D mode

- Benchmarks: DX9, DX10, DX11 in 1680×1050 and 1920×1200 (including recently released games like Bad Company 2)

- Conclusion

 

Bought my last graphics card, a Zotac GeForce 8800GTS 512 in December 2007. Time to change it, if I consider my GPU changing schedule which is shown below:

Feeling quite nostalgic now for some reason…

 

Inside the box:

I bought the lite  version which comes for ~ 150€. The full retail version comes with Dirt 2 and Arcsofts SimHD plugin.

Inside the box you will find the graphics card (obviously), a quick start manual, a driver CD (who uses those outdated drivers anyway?), a Sapphire sticker, a Crossfire bridge, VGA to DVI adapter, 4-pin to PCi-e 6-pin adapter for… whatever.

 

The outside:

The HD5xxx series is around for a few months now and more and more AMD partners are introducing their own designs. So far the Sapphire Vapor-X and the MSI Hawk are the most unique looking ones.

My card is actually from the 2nd revision of the 5770 Vapor-X. Recognizable on the new, blue PCB designed by Sapphire ( which is also 1cm shorter), the letters “OC” in the cards name and the new number: SKU# 11163-05-20R

 

 

Some among you are probably wondering where there aren’t any heat pipes on that thing, but some might have noticed the “Vapor-X” in the cards name.

 

Vapor-X is a new cooling technology intruded with some Radeon HD4000 series card.

And that’s is how it works:

 

1) Heat source heats Vaporization Wicks.

2) Working fluid, pure water, is easily vaporized due to the extreme low pressure (<104 Tor or less)

3) Water vapor moves easily through the vacuum until.

4) It meets the Condensing Wick – adjacent to the cooled surface – and turns back to a liquid state.

5) The liquid is then absorbed by the Transportation Wick by capilary action and moved back towards the Vaporization Wick.

6) The recycled liquid is then reheated and re-vaporized by the Vaporization Wick and the process repeats.

 

 

To connect up to 3 monitors with ATIs Eyefinity technology the card features: 2xDVI, 1x Display port, 1x HDMI.

 

On the inside:

The GPU used on this card is ATIs Juniper XT (RV840) manufactured in 40nm.

800 shaders, 1024MB GDDR5, GPU clock 860MHz, memory clock: 1200MHz

 

Quite a leap forward compared to my old card. What’s weird is that they decided to use only a 128bit interface. Guess that’s because they didn’t want to make it too powerful. (Old 4870 and new 58xx entry level card stocks.) GPU-Z seems to have a problem with the new HD5000 cards, cause it shows the bus as PCI-E 1.1 (while it is actually using 2.0) and can’t show the changing clocks if the card switches into 2D mode.

The 5770 comes with a 2D mode, which means 860/1200Mhz 3D mode, 157/300MHz in single monitor 2D mode and 400/1200Mhz in multiple monitor 2D mode.

When decoding movies and such with ATIs Stream technology the clocks switch to 400/900MHz in single monitor 2D mode and for some weird reason to 400/900 in multiple monitor 2D mode.

The temperatures are higher than in some test on my card but I guess this is because of the cooling situation in my case.

Idle (single monitor): 38°C

Idle (dual monitor): 45°C

Gaming: 65-75°C

Furmark: 81°C

 

The temperatures are at least lower than my old card ones (8800GTS = 75°C idle!) and the fan isn’t noticeable.

 

Benchmarks: 8800GTS vs 5770

Did some benchmarks to compare the power of my old 8800 to the new 5770. I used some of the benchmark scenarios used by the chaps from the PCGH (a well known German hardware mag) with their settings.

 

System:

CPU: AMD Athlon X2 6000+ 3GHz (My CPU is limiting the GPU in some scenarios unfortunately.)

Mainboard: ASUS M2N32-SLI VISTA PREMIUM (Nforce 590-SLI)

RAM: 4GB DDR2-800

Primary HDD: WD Caviar Black 1TB

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64

Catalyst: 10.2, AI default

Monitor: 24” Samsung T240 (1920×1200)

Deactivated the second T240 while doing those benchmarks..

 

Farcry 2 benchmark tool settings:

DX10: AA 8x, Standard-AF, Ultra High, Performance Settings: Very High, Ranch Small, KI on

 

Starting of with a random DX10 game. Average FPS are higher than the maximum with the old card. –> WIN

(Benchmark download: http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=830 )

 

 

Heaven benchmark settings:

DX10: shaders high, AA 4x, AF 4x

DX11: shaders high, AA 4x, AF 4x, tessellation on

 

If you would like to see your graphics card suffer the heaven benchmark is the way to go at the moment. This benchmark is already using DX11 with the awesome feature called tessellation.

 

(Benchmark download: http://unigine.com/download )

 

Call Of Pripyat benchmark settings:

DX10 (DAY): Preset – High, Enhanced Full Dynamic Lightning (DX10), MSAA 4x (DX10 style), SSAO: Default – High

Dx11 (DAY): Preset – High, Enhanced Full Dynamic Lightning (DX11), MSAA 4x (DX10 style), SSAO: Default – High, tessellation on

 

The STALKER series is well know for using all of your PCs resources. The newest instalment uses DX11 with tessellation. The results above confirm that DX11 doesn’t need that much power if used right. On my old card the benchmark is unwatchable. ^_^

(Benchmark download: http://downloads.guru3d.com/S.T.A.L.K.E.R-Call-of-Pripyat-benchmark-download-2433.html )

 

Colin McRae Dirt 2 settings (PCGH save game Malaysia):

DX9: MSAA 8x, AF 8x, max settings

DX11: MSAA 8x, AF 8x, max settings

Dirt 2 is one of the games used by AMD to promote DX11 but the features aren’t really visible in my opinion.

 

Modern Warfare 2 settings (PCGH sequence “The Gulag” ):

DX9: max. settings (4x AA, 16x AF)

 

Modern Warfare 2 is only released in a DX9 version. The FPS numbers are obviously higher. \o/

 

Bad Company 2 settings (“Crack the Sky”):

DX10: max details, HBAO: on, 4x MSAA, 16xAF

DX11: max details, HBAO: on, 4x MSAA, 16xAF

 

The newest Battlefield instalments comes with DirectX 11 support and great graphics but needs some power of course. Performance wise the upcoming Catalyst 10.3 driver should bring us a few more FPS. Tweaking the settings a little bit can help too. Disabling the barely noticeable HBAO option for example improves performance around 12%. Setting the shadow quality to “low” gives you up to 30% higher frame rates.

 

 

Call of Juarez benchmark settings:

Dx10: shadowmap size – 2048, shadows – High, MSAA 4x, AF 16x

 

I remember seeing a not so awesome performance with this benchmark on a friends rig with an over-clocked 8800 GTX (95°C+ GPU temp ^^; ) in 2007. For a modern card it’s daily business of course.

 

 

Just when I finished all those benchmarks I received a package from Amazon with Metro 2033 inside. Released this week and using DX11 graphics. That game is a GPU killer!

PCGH benchmark with a HD5850 below:

For max. details on 1920×1200 and beyond you better get one of those 600€ Radeon 5970s. ORZ

I’m tweaking around a little bit for now cause 1920×1200 with max. details is just too much for a 5770.

 

Conclusion:

For some upcoming the HD5770 will be too slow if you  are gaming on 1920×1200. For now the card is fast enough for most games and the price isn’t that bad. The overclocking potential is great (around 980MHz/1425MHz is possible, at least on the old revision). The power savings are quite nice but unfortunately not really effective for dual monitor users. Catalyst should bring us up to 30% more FPS in some recently released games.

If you want higher frame rates in upcoming DX11 titles and got the moolah get a 5850 or 5870. (Or maybe a Femi, but those don’t look that promising for now.) You could also buy one now and get a second one later if needed.

 

And now please excuse me, I’m running around into a certain Metro for the next few hours…

TIP: You can get the Russian/English/German uncut version of Metro 2033 from amazon.de for 18,99€ by entering the code MTRO2O33.