KitGuru KitGuru.net – Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards
If the emails we have been receiving for the last month have been anything to go by, the enthusiast gaming audience is warming to the thought of low cost multiple monitor configurations. We recently reviewed the mouth watering XFX HD5970 Black Edition Limited 4GB in CrossfireX, but as many people have pointed out, this is merely a toy for the rich.
A few months ago we looked at the Sapphire HD5770 Flex Edition which brought affordable multi monitor computing to the masses. On a gaming level, it goes without saying that at 5760×1080 a single HD5770 struggled with specific engines, but we were pleasantly surprised at the decent performance for the modest £170 asking price.
With the release of the nVidia GTX460, prices of the AMD HD5770 cards have dropped recently so we thought now would be a good time to try the Sapphire HD5770 Flex in a CrossfireX configuration – The Sapphire Flex HD5770 for example is now £140 inc vat, a great price. We are using three liyama ProLite E2472HDD LED screens for our testing today, fantastic quality screens which can be picked up today in the UK for £150 inc vat. Three 24″ LED screens for £450? Yes, please.
This means for around £700 you could buy yourself a Sapphire HD5770 Flex CrossfireX solution with three iilyama 24 inch LED screens! Less than the price of one XFX HD5970 Black Edition Limited 4GB card.
Better still if you already have a HD5770, then you only need to get a few more screens and the Sapphire HD5770 Flex. This card incidentally was the first product on the market to deliver a true SLS (Single Large Surface) work area without the need for costly active adapters. The majority of HD 5000 series cards with ATI Eyefinity support demand that the third monitor is Displayport compatible, or that an active Displayport to DVI or VGA adapter is used.
FeatureSet
- SAPPHIRE Flex Technology supports 3 displays without the requirement of DisplayPort monitors or Active DP adapters, and can support up to 4 displays with the use of a DisplayPort monitor or Active adapter.
- Microsoft DirectX® 11 Support
- Shader Model 5.0 Support
- Direct Compute 11
- Programmable hardware tessellation unit
- Accelerated multi-threading
- HDR texture compression
- Order-independent transparency
- 1.04 billion 40nm transistors
- 800 Stream Processing Units
- OpenGL 4.0 support
- ATI Eyefinity Technology
- ATI Stream acceleration technology
- OpenCL 1.0 compliant
- DirectCompute 11
- Accelerated video encoding, transcoding, and upscaling
- 2nd Generation TeraScale Engine
- PCI Express 2.1 x16 bus interface
- Advanced 1GB/128-bit GDDR5 memory interface
- HDMI 1.3 support with Deep Color and 7.1 High Bitrate Audio
- On chip HDCP Support
- ATI CrossFireX™ multi-GPU support for highly scalable performance. (Use up to four discrete cards with an AMD 790/890FX based motherboard)
- ATI Avivo HD Support
- ATI Unified Video Decoder 2 (UVD) for Blu-ray™ and HD Video.
- Accelerated Video Transcoding (AVT)
- DVD Upscaling
- Dynamic Contrast
- Built-in HDMI with 7.1 surround sound support
- Support for H.264, VC-1 and MPEG-2
- Dual Stream 1080p playback support
- DXVA 1.0 & 2.0 support
Well this makes a lot more sense to me than 2 XFX 5970 Black Editions. you could basically get this setup and a full PC with screens for the same price as two of the XFX cards.
Sure performance is much higher, but is it really needed? not sure I could tell the difference between 2aa and 8aa and 50fps or 150fps.
Great idea, the HD5770s have dropped alot from 170 ish to 130 or so in recent months, makes for a good pairing.
Only thing that put me off the XFX cards (well apart from the price) was the power drain and noise levels. A great showcase of XFX engineering capabilities, but not very realistic.
Still, good for different audiences. Wonder how many Flex editions sapphire have sol,d I saw it took them quite some time to get them to market after the first batch of reviews.
I already have plans to sell my monitor and get three matching screens. Then next year get a new system. I dont think its a great time to buy HD5770, not with new range out very soon.
Any ideas if Sapphire will bring out a new 6770 (or whatever they will call it) with Flex support? I might hang on till the new cards are out. I already have a HD5770 but might sell it.
I really rate the flex. its all about pricing and they aren’t charging much more for the 3 screen technology support. Displayport monitors still cost major cash. This opens the path to cheap, but good panels.
It is hard to argue with the price of that system (well apart from the 980x). using a 920 or 950 would drop the system price by 500 quid. Overall well worth approaching this angle. I was impressed with XFX 5970 CFx article, but the money outlay was ridiculous.
Really like these cards, the price is right !
Its hard to knock the price for the performance. Just a bit time to be buying 5 series cards I think
The flex was destined to be 180-190 quid. months ago. 140 seems a good deal, especially for a work environment. While im not sold on it as a gaming platform, with 2 cards it seems quite good.
They are sure to make a 6770 with flex support like this. the 5770 flex came out too late really. a bit like the nvidia boards in recent weeks. its too little to late.
very good review, those screens look great for the price. Cant get over that for 150 quid. I remember spending 800 on a 22 inch crt years ago.
lol yah, I spent a grand on a CRT for my first macintosh, a long time ago. its a good time to buy tech
The GTX 460 killed the 5830 and caused probs for 5850. HD5770 seems to be doing well at this price.
What a great system idea. handles most games well too.
I think people who spend over 500 on a video card are nuts. you dont need it.
500? I think people who spend over 300 are nuts. its not needed unless you are waving the epenis or trying to break benchmark figures. most games run fine on a GTS450.