Sapphire HD 5850 1GB & Sapphire HD 5770 1GB Review

A Closer Look at the Sapphire HD 5770 1GB

Product Number: 21163-00-20R
Manufacturer’s Product Page Click Here
Warranty: 2-years
Price: Click here to compare prices



The box for Sapphire’s stock HD 5770 isn’t much different from others we have seen in the past with a stylized representation of ATI’s Ruby mascot being front and center. As usual, Sapphire’s packaging remains perfectly compact which should cut down on shipping costs.

This HD 5770 1GB comes with a remarkably well-rounded list of accessories which includes a long Molex to PCI-E adaptor, a Crossfire bridge and a DVI to VGA dongle. Sapphire also includes a free download of the DiRT 2 racing game but you should be aware that many of ATI’s board partners are predicting that by March 2010, less and less cards will include this voucher.


As you can probably see, since this is a reference-based card Sapphire has stuck to ATI’s norms when specifying a heatsink and PCB. All in all, this HD 5770 is about 8 ¾” long even though its PCB is actually 8 ¼” long. This excess length is due the ¾” projection of the heatsink shroud over the edge of the PCB into which this card’s single PCI-E power connector is recessed.

We should also mention that this is perhaps (in our opinion) one of the best looking cards on the market right now but several manufacturers have taken it upon themselves to dumb things down so to speak. Many have realized that the full length heatsink used on the reference HD 5770 1GB is not only expensive but also excessive when it comes to cooling off the relatively efficient core. So, they have ported over the lower-end heatsink from the HD 5750 which allows for cost savings but results in a much less stunning design.


The back of the card shows us the usual clean ATI PCB layout done in a stunning black and a quartet of GDDR5 memory modules. Meanwhile, the backplate is custom made for Eyefinity setups with a pair of DVI connectors in addition to lone connectors for HDMI and DisplayPort.