AMD has finally unveiled its Radeon HD 7700 series cards based on the 28nm GCN Cape Verde GPU. AMD launched a total of two graphics cards based on either Cape Verde XT, Radeon HD 7770, or the Cape Verde Pro GPU, Radeon HD 7750. The newely launched graphics cards do look good but, according to reviews, have a rather high price tag considering their performance.

In case you missed all the previous articles regarding Cape Verde GPU, it features a total of 640 stream processors, or simply 10 Graphics CoreNext Computing Units (GCN CUs) as AMD likes to call them these days. The rest of the specs include 40 TMUs and 16 ROPs. On the other hand, the Radeon HD 7750 graphics card features Cape Verde Pro GPU that has eight out of ten GCN CUs enabled, leaving the card with a total of 512 stream processors, 32 TMUs and 16 ROPs. Both cards pack 1GB of GDDR5 memory paired up with a 128-bit memory interface.

As far as the reference clocks are concerned, AMD was more than keen to advertise the HD 7770 as the first card to hit 1GHz GPU clock on reference card, while memory ended up at 1125MHz (4.5GHz effective). The HD 7750 also has a slightly lower reference GPU clock speed set at 800MHz while memory ended up clocked at the same 1125MHz (4.5GHz effective).

Interestingly, the main competitor of the new Radeon HD 7770 graphics card ends up being AMD's own Radeon HD 6850 and the Radeon HD 6870. The Radeon HD 6850 is simply faster and currently cheaper than the HD 7770, which makes it a better perfromance/price card. The same story goes for the lower priced Radeon HD 7750 that currently, according to its price, goes against now quite old Radeon HD 5770, rebranded to HD 6770, that simply has similar performance but a bit lower price.

When it comes to performance per Watt, the story is a bit different as the 28nm GCN really shines there as we had a chance to see with the Tahiti cards. The HD 7770 and the HD 7750 are pretty much one of the best performance per Watt cards currently on the market and with idle/load of 7W/70W for the HD 7770 and 5W/45W for the HD 7750 they are pretty unmached. For example, Radeon HD 6850 is indeed faster than the HD 7770 but at a price of need around 20W in idle and easily over 100W under load.

Most reviews agree that, although quite promising, the Radeon HD 7700 series is simply overpriced. With price tags set at US $159 for the Radeon HD 7770 and the US $109 for the HD 7750, there are too many better options on the market, and interestingly, those better options come from AMD.

You can check out our review of the factory-overclocked XFX Radeon HD 7770 1GB Black Super OC DD graphics card here and you can find some more reviews below.

- Fudzilla.com
- Anandtech.com
- Techpowerup.com - Radeon HD 7770 - Radeon HD 7750
- Neoseeker.com
- HardOCP.com
- HotHardware.com
- HardwareCanucks.com
- Hardwaresecrets.com