Sapphire Radeon HD 6770

Examination:

Beyond Sapphire squeezing an extra 50MHz out of this rebranded Radeon HD 5770 "Juniper" graphics processor, they also are shipping the HD 6770 with a new graphics card cooler. The cooler on this Sapphire Radeon HD 6770 isn't as advanced as the one found on the Vapor-X models or on the higher-end Radeon HD 6000 series graphics cards, but it should be more than adequate with its large size, heatpipe-based, and aluminum fins. The cooler even extends over the length of the graphics card. Fortunately, the fan is also very quiet and we have no noise complaints when using the Sapphire Radeon HD 6770 with the proprietary Catalyst Linux driver.

The Radeon HD 6770 has 800 stream processors, built on a 40nm process, PCI Express 2.1 support, DirectX 11 / OpenGL 4.1 compatible, supports Eyefinity, boasts a UVD2 video engine for XvBA acceleration on the proprietary Linux driver, and can be paired with other Radeon graphics cards via CrossFireX to scale for the few demanding OpenGL Linux games / applications. There is also the original Radeon HD 5770 review from October of 2009 for more details on this Juniper ASIC.

A single PCI-E 6-pin power connector is needed to supply this graphics card with necessary power to function. There are also the CrossFireX connectors for those wishing to pair the graphics cards.

The Sapphire Radeon HD 6770 (100328L) that we were sent over (non-Vapor-X) has one dual-link DVI, one DisplayPort, and one HDMI output. There is also the included VGA dongle for anyone that still may be using VGA-based displays or projectors. The second slot of this graphics card is just for the warm air to escape. The Vapor-X HD 6770 provides an extra dual-link DVI connection while some HD 6770 models will even ship with two dual-link DVI, one HDMI, and two mini DisplayPort outputs.