ASUS HD7770-DC-1GD5 Pro Reviews

We’ve seen these cards from a few different vendors now and some have had standard cooling and asome gave not. The ASUS HD 7770 isn’t as highly overclocked as some of the other cards that we reviewed previously, but it does offer superiour cooling and a totally non referance design. One thing to remember though is that these cards feature the respected ASUS name and feature set that puts them at the top of their class. These cards have proven to be no different in respect to all the quality Direct CU cards we have ever seen. One of the things about these amazing cards is that look as good as they perform. ASUS has been using this thermal design for a while now and there’s no question as to why, it works. These cards never once went above 50 degrees Celsius during our testing and you could hear the PSU fan over these cards while I was gaming and running tests. That’s pretty impressive and should also help to make these cards very popular. Without a doubt these cards are very well deserving of our Editor’s Choice Award here at Motherboards.Org. If you are a fan of AMD video cards then a pair of ASUS HD 7770 Direct CU II cards is a serious gaming solution that costs under $400.00 and performs very well while staying cool without making hair dryer type sounds to stay that way. If you do not care about sound levels you can crank the fans up to full and you will have plenty of overclocking headroom in addition to what the card comes clocked at.

Overall the HD 7770 is a good product with lots of potential, if there weren't the sky high price. AMD's officially suggested retailer pricing is "starting at $159", so we'll probably see retailers cashing in on these cards with inflated prices, like on the HD 7970 and HD 7950. Even at $159 the cards are way too expensive. They are up against the GTX 460 which is 20$ cheaper and delivers similar performance. HD 6850 ($135) and HD 6870 ($155) are faster, and give you much more bang for your buck, up to 30% more! If you are willing to shop used, you can find HD 5770 cards for well below $100, that have all the same major features and better price/performance, too. It seems that in its lower mid-range segment, the HD 7770 is the most expensive, least money-efficient card. However, I'm confident that AMD has lots of headroom on pricing for future price wars with NVIDIA. In my opinion a fair price for the HD 7770 would be below $130.