MSI R7770-2PMD1GD5 Pro Reviews

MSI's Radeon HD 7770 OC represents a slight overclock on the reference card. Fitted with an excellent cooler and able to provide decent numbers under optimum conditions, we still reckon that better value can be found elsewhere.

What I like about MSI Power Edition video cards is the same thing I like about Hawk and Lightning series video cards. They're just more fun than your typical design. Combined with MSI Afterburner, the larger choice of voltage options make for a video card that you can push much further than others. Moving away from just the overclocking side of things, you've also got the fan configuration options which are cool and really easy to setup. I didn't even have to read the manual to figure out the options. AMD's Radeon HD 7770 is still far from a model that we're in love with like the other HD 7000 offerings that sit above it, but it's nice to see companies starting to do something interesting and creative with the HD 7700 series. If there was ever going to be a HD 7770 that took our interest it would've been from MSI and it would've been part of something like the Power Edition series.

MSI's HD 7770 OC introduces a new thermal solution for the company that brought us TwinFrozr and HAWK coolers before. The new cooler does its job well and the card runs cool and quiet in idle. Noise under load is more than on other products tested today, but not by much. We also liked that power consumption is not increased despite the overclock out of the box, but the overclock is also quite small. Additional manual overclocking potential is among the best we have seen today, but other cards tested today offer a bit more when looking at the sum of improvements. 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.