MSI R7770 Power Edition

MSI HD R7770 Power Edition Review

AMD has begun to fill in the mid-range ranks for the 7-series line up. Currently available are the 7970, 7950, 7870, 7850, 7770, and 7750. The 7770 has half of the number of Stream Processors as the 7870 with 640. AMD has stepped away from the VLIW architecture used on prior generation cards to a new design called Graphics Core Next. This architecture is specifically designed for general computing and is produced on a 28nm fabrication. DirectX 11 tessellation performance benefits greatly from the new architecture. These new graphics cards are also able to properly deal with C++ and OpenCL. MSI has provided a factory overclocked GHz Edition graphics card model dubbed the Power Edition. The full name for this card is MSI R7770 Power Edition 1GD5 / OC. This card runs at 1.1GHz core and 1125MHz memory frequencies! Thermal design power is under 80W and the memory bus is 128-bit. For video output there is a DisplayPort, HDMI, and Dual Link DVI-I port available. This card is designed to be overclocked further with triple-voltage options enabled through MSI Afterburner. Military Class III capacitors, Hi-C capacitors, and chokes further stabilize overclocking, longevity, and efficiency. The unique heat sink design called TransThermal offers great cooling performance with the ability to add a second fan that is included for additional cooling if space allows.