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For the review today we are using the latest Catalyst 13.6 and Forceware 320.49 drivers for the AMD and Nvidia oriented solutions. All cards were specifically tested in the last week for this review.
The HD7730 doesn't have a crossfire connector, but AMD drivers support software Crossfire – simply plug the cards into two PCI E slots and the Catalyst Control Center should offer the option in the performance tab. We didn't have a problem on our Rampage IV Extreme board anyway.
Test System
Processor: Core i7 3960 X Extreme Edition @ 4.4ghz
Graphics Cards: Sapphire HD7730 2GB GDDR3 and 1GB GDDR5
Cooler: Antec 920 H20
Memory: 16GB G.Skill 2,400mhz @ 10-11-10-30
Motherboard: Asus Rampage IV Extreme
Power Supply: Enermax Platimax 1250W
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive
Chassis: Lian Li PC-A77FR Aluminium Red Full Tower Case
Boot Drive: Patriot WildFire 120GB
Secondary Drive: 1TB Samsung
Monitors: Dell U3011
Other video cards:
VTX HD7750
Asus GT630
eVGA GTX650
Sparkle GTX650Ti
Software:
Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
Unigine Valley Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
3DMark
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark
Games:
Alien V Predator (Direct X 11)
Sleeping Dogs (Direct X 11)
Total War Shogun 2 (Direct X 11)
Tomb Raider (Direct X 11)
Dirt Showdown (Direct X 11)
GRID 2 (Direct X 11)
Metro Last Light (Direct X 11)
All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.
Not bad really considering the price. ideal for a low power system with a weak power supply too as there are no demands placed on it.
You know, for that low performance, you might as well get an APU at that budget range. A10-6800K is $130 or so at this time, whereas this $60 + a CPU will be well over that.
The integrated graphics of an APU won’t be as powerful as a HD7730.