Closer look
The HD 5770 gets all the features and benefits of its bigger brothers, the HD 5850 and HD 5870. This includes the infamous Eyefinity technology. I will not get into the feature much as I am sure you have read about it on the various website that have experimented with it. In brief, the feature allows the user to hook-up three monitors to one HD 5XXX series card for the ultimate gaming experience.
What you don't get with the HD 5770 that you do get with the more powerful cards is the size. The HD 5850 and HD 5870 each measures nine and eleven inches respectively. The HD 5770 comes in at eight inches making it idea for SFF cases as well as smaller HTPC enclosures.
For specifications the HD 5770 has some very decent ones. We begin with the core and memory clocks which are 850MHz and 4800MHz respectfully. This is right in line with the past generation HD 4890 which is still a very popular card. In reference the HD 5770 comes in two variations: a 512MB and 1GB models. Gigabyte themselves have three models all based on 1GB of ram. Based on reference and non-reference cooling designs.
The GV-R577UD-1GD which we as reviewing today has a non-reference coolers that has a serious love it or hate it sense about it. Personally, I was digging it. It is not a large cooler like we see on the higher-end models but a smaller plastic one that houses a 80mm cooling fan. Similar in shape of the Bat mobile the cooler on the HD 5770 does require dual slots. Underneath is an aluminum heat sink covering the core and most of the ram chips. Gigabyte decided to use a blue PCB the same color as used on their motherboards. This is good for Gigabyte fan boys who want things to match.
The rear of the card consists of two DVI, one HDMI and one displayport connection. In order to use the Eyefinity feature one of the three monitors must be connected to the display port. These types of monitors can be hard to find and once found could be expensive. So an secondary option is to use a powered DVI to displayport adapter. On the opposite end is a single 6-pin power connector. According to AMD, a 450 watt power supply is required or 600 watts when using Crossfire.
