diamondM5770_1When putting together a gaming rig, unless you’re rolling in the dough you have to make compromises with every part of the build. If we didn’t everyone would be running around with systems like this, and ATI and NVidia wouldn’t be putting out budget cards like the 5770 from Diamond Multimedia that we are going to take a look at today. With a low price point and low power requirements this may be a perfect card for my portable LAN rig.

Product Name: Diamond Multimedia 5770

Review Sample Provided by: Diamond Multimedia

Review by: Wes

Pictures by: Wes

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Specifications

Performance

GPU :

Juniper

Core Clock :

850 MHz

BUS :

PCI Express x16

Ports :

2 Dual-Link DVI,HDMI,Standard Display Port

Cooling :

Active - FanCooler

MFG Process :

40nm

Transistor Count :

1.04 billion

Stream Processors :

800

Power Consumption :

108 Watts Max

Video Quality

CrossFire :

CrossFire X

Direct-X :

8.0,9.0,10.0-10.1,11.0

Open GL :

OpenGL 3.2

Video Acceleration :

MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, WMV9, VC-1, and H.264

Max Resolution Analog :

2560 x 1600

Max Resolution Digital :

1920 x 1200

HDR F.Point Rendering :

128

Standard Slot Solution :

DOUBLE

Anti Aliasing Modes :

Up to 24x multi-sample and super-sample anti-aliasing modes

Antisotropic Modes :

16x angle independent anisotropic texture filtering

Texture Support :

HDR texture compression

Package Content

 

5770PE51G

DVI-TO-VGA ADAPTER

CROSSFIRE Bridge Interconnect

INSTALL CD

Quick Start Guide

Memory

Memory Clock :

1.2 GHz

Memory Type :

GDDR5

Memory Bandwidth :

76.8 GB/sec

Memory Size :

1024MB

Memory Interface :

GDDR5

RAMDAC :

400 MHz

Display Support

HDTV :

YES

HDMI :

HDMI 1.3 / HDMI Ready

HDMI MODE :

Integrated HDMI 1.3 output with Deep Color, xvYCC

Native Display Support :

YES

3D Resolution :

2560x1600

Dual Display support :

YES

System Requirements

Operating System :

WINDOWS 7 32 , WINDOWS 7 64
WINVISTA32 , WINVISTA64
WINXP , WINXP64
MCE
LINUX32 , LINUX64

System CPU :

Pentium Intel Duo, AMD X64 or higher

CPU Speed :

2.4 GHz or higher CPU

System Memory :

1024MB

Power Supply :

PCI Express® based PC is required with one X16 lane graphics slot available on the motherboard 450 Watt or greater power supply with one 75W 6-pin PCI Express® power connectors recommended (600 Watt and two 6-pin connectors for ATI CrossFireX™ technology in dual mode)

Hard Disk Space :

480MB available hard disk space

CD DVD :

YES

BUS :

PCI Express x16

Available Slot :

DOUBLE

Chassis :

ATX

Monitor :

Digital flat-panel (DFP) displays or DVI-I Compatilbe or digital CRT display or High-resolution VGA monitor or Display Port

General Product Information

Form Factor (Profile) :

Standard Profile Full-Height

Product Dimension :

8.6 x 4.4 x 1.5 inches

Package Dimension :

12.5 x 6.5 x 4.125 inches

Product Weight :

1.2 lbs.

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Packaging

Diamond packed the HD 5770 in a box with a nice rendering from Dirt 2 on the front. Around back there is a nice picture of an Eyefinity setup running on three monitors. Outside of that picture there was nothing important on the back, other than some marketing fluff. The side of the box has all the need-to-know along with pictures (adapters included, all available connections, and a picture of a PCI Express slot). Inside there is another box with containing everything. The video card itself is inside a static bag and protected by foam on both the top and bottom. They also included the manual, driver disc, DVI to VGA adapter, and a crossfire bridge.

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Installation

As I said before I am hoping the 5770 will be a perfect card in my LAN rig. Using a Shuttle SP45H7 as a base, the goal is to keep it small and easy to carry. Being this small does have a couple concerns; will the 5770 fit into the small frame of the SP45H7? Also, will the small 300 watt power supply power it? Installing the card was easier than I thought, the 8.6 inch card slipping in without any problem. In fact, as you can see in the pictures, I had more than enough extra room after everything was said and done. Plugging in power was fine: the 5770 only has one 6 pin plug, much better than most of the high end cards on the market. I skipped installing the drivers off the disc and went with the most up to date driver from ATI’s website. With everything installed and ready I couldn’t wait to take it out to a few LANs.

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Our Test rig

Shuttle SP45H7 Barebones

(includes case, motherboard, 300w PSU, and CPU heatsink)

Intel Q6600

Mushkin DDR2 800 4gigs

Samsung DVD Writer

Tested in 1920 x 1200

 

Performance

To test out the 5770 I wanted to take it out to a few lans and put it to the true test in game. Of course you can’t graph satisfaction with game performance, and because of that I also put the card through a few synthetic benchmarks to get an idea of where the card stands against other cards on the market.

First 3dmark Vantage

graph1

Of course we can’t just run a synthetic benchmark and call it a day. Here are our numbers from Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (average FPS recorded using FRAPS, these numbers are an average over the first level in single player. These are NOT max FPS)

graph2

As you can see both of our tests give us similar results. The 5770 falls in with the NVidia 260 and ATI’s older 4870’s. This is impressive given the 213 watts used while gaming (this was tested using a Kill-A-Watt and is for the total rig), still under the 300 watt limit on the Shuttles power supply.

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Overall

The 5770 from ATI isn’t the most powerful card, nor is it the cheapest. It does however fill the very important role of being one of the best values. Not only will it play anything you throw at it, it will do it at a price lower than anything else. The 213 watts of total power used with this Shuttle system is very impressive also, still under the 300 watts available with the shuttles PSU. This video card is a must buy for anyone looking for an upgrade for their tired old 8800 GTS, and with the price you could afford to pick up two and still have money left over compared to the 5870.

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Author Bio
garfi3ld
Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org
Editor-in-chief
You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.

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