MSI R7770 power edition review

MSI’s version of the AMD “GHz” edition range of HD7770 graphics cards is dubbed the “power edition”, offering unique voltage adjustments of various graphics card components for improved stability during overclocking. This is one of a long list of features on offer with the MSI power edition, but is it enough to stand out among the crowd of competing graphics cards?

Features

The R7770 power edition has a long list of features including the use of military class components on the graphics card. It also features TransThermal cooling technology with dust removal, and comes bundled with MSI afterburner software to control various aspects of the graphics card that affect performance.

Dust removal technology allows the graphics cards to reverse the fan rotation for 30 seconds during boot up, to blow out any dust that has settled during operation.

The power edition of the graphics card features the ability to adjust the voltage of the GPU, memory and VDDCI, for improved stability and higher potential overclocks.

There is also a bundled fan which allows one of three different cooling configurations to be used. The first is single fan cooling for quiet operation. The second is dual fan cooling to improve airflow over an increase surface area on the graphics card. The third allows the removable fan to connect on top of the installed fan for double airflow mode, increasing the airflow to the cooler.

MSI R7770 power edition

General use

The card remains relatively quiet throughout use even under high load. The single fan cooling mode is not louder than a mid range CPU air cooler, so for most case fans so it shouldn’t be a bother, unless you’re running an ultra-silent PC. Running dual fans on the card was also relatively silent and unnoticeable over other fans installed in the case. The dual fan mode with both fans installed on top of each other was mildly noticeable over other fans in the case, but not enough to become annoying. The card’s dust removal feature was effective during every day use, preventing a dust build up even after days of constant use in a garage LAN.

The MSI Afterburner technology also worked well and allowed the control of fan speeds and overclocking settings in windows, as well as the voltage settings of the GPU core, memory and VDDCI. The card would overclock well, though it had a problem with retaining the overclocked settings once a 3D application was launched. This turned out to be driver related, and once the GPU drivers had been updated, everything worked as it should have.

Performance

The R7770 Power edition card runs at 1.1 GHz core and 1,125 MHz memory frequencies – higher than the default clocks of most HD7770-based graphics cards. This allowed the Power edition to achieve higher scores than the regular edition by a fair margin.

The test setup used was an Intel Core i7 920 at 4GHz; 6GB of DDR3Team Xtreem RAM; at 2,000MHz CL9-9-9-24; Asus Rampage III Extreme; OCZ Vertex 4 256GB SSD; and a COrsair HX1000 PSU.

MSI R7770 power edition

Performance

Metro 2033

Known as the new Crysis, Metro 2033 is one of the most demanding games on your hardware currently available. We played through a set level three times, and recorded the average frame rate of the level using Fraps. These averages were then averaged to get the result below. All graphics settings were maxed, while tessellation was turned off. The resolution was 1920 x 1200.

Scores:

GTX570 – 24.5fps average
HD6950 – 25.9fps average
HD7950 – 35fps average
HD7770 – 19.7fps average
HD7750 – 14.2fps average
HD7970 – 40.4fps average
MSI HD7770 Power edition – 22.6fps average

The Power edition pulls a 14.7 percent lead over the standard HD7770 in Metro 2033, bringing it close to older generation HD6950 performance.

Unigine heaven

First up for the Synthetic benchmarks is Unigine heaven, a DirectX 11 benchmark that focuses on a variety of methods to stress modern graphics cards. We made use of the HWbot Xtreme DX11 pre-configured settings during testing, and the benchmark was run three times on each card, with the upper and lower samples disregarded.

Scores:

GTX570 – X1257.93
HD6950 – X885.89
HD7950 – X1406.308
HD7770 – X750.41
HD7750 – X582.45
HD7970 – X1879.34
MSI HD7770 Power edition – x793.93

The Power edition also pulls a lead over the regular HD7770 in synthetic tests such as Unigine, though less impressive than in Metro 2033, with an improvement of around 5.8 percent.

Trackmania

The now outdated DirectX 9.0c standard is often ignored in modern benchmarks, and for good reason. The standard is almost completely irrelevant for modern gamers, though as a quick and easy indication of real world performance for those who (like me) still enjoy the occasional classic title, so it was added in for good measure. Tests were run at 1920 x 1200, with all graphics settings maxed out, and AA set to 16x.

Scores:

GTX570 – 87.3fps
HD6950 – 65.8fps
HD7950 – 78.2fps
HD7770 – 50fps
HD7750 – 45.5fps
HD7970 – 85.1fps
MSI HD7770 Power edition – 54.7fps

An older DirectX 9 game that seems to favour Nvidia cards, the Power edition still improved over it’s predecessor by 9.4 percent.

3D Mark Vantage

3D Mark Vantage is still one of the best synthetic benchmarks to compare current generation graphics cards. While there are still a host of DirectX 10 titles on the market, performance in this segment will remain relevant.

Scores:

GTX570 – 25481
GTX570 – 20719 physics off
HD6950 – 20630
HD7950 – 22804
HD7770 – 14365
HD7750 – 11408
HD7970 – 24712
MSI HD7770 Power edition – 14928

The other synthetic benchmark in our comparison saw the power edition improve over the regular edition by nearly 4 percent.

3D Mark Vantage GPU

Scores:

GTX570 – 21661
GTX570 – 21657 physics off
HD6950 – 21511
HD7950 – 25845
HD7770 – 13441
HD7750 – 10114
HD7970 – 28172
MSI HD7770 Power edition – 13945

Bottom line

The MSI R7770 power edition offers improved performance over previous HD7770 cards thanks to factory overclocking, and has a long list of features that is sure to impress mid range gamers. The card is also priced well locally which makes it an attractive option for gamers who want a good mix of price and performance. The MSI R7770 Power edition comes recommended.