MSI Radeon HD 5770 Hawk Review

Category: VGA

Added: 9 February 2010

AMD's new Radeon HD 5000 Series has been a great hit with NVIDIA having nothing to counter it. The new cards offer DirectX 11 support, AMD EyeFinity, improved HDMI audio features and considerably reduced power consumption. The Radeon HD 5770 has been released as reference design in mid October 2009, over the last weeks we have been seeing more and more custom-design HD 5770 accelerators by many AIBs.

MSI's Radeon HD 5770 Hawk follows the design principles of their Lightning series which is designed to offer supreme cooling performance to reach maximum overclocks. MSI has redesigned AMD's reference PCB to fit their requirements for this series and also uses their Twin Frozr II cooler which has been introduced with the MSI Lightning Series. Clock speeds have also received a small bump and are not at 875 / 1200. Pricewise all these changes add quite some premium, MSI expects card retail at about $190.

	Radeon HD 4770	GeForce GTS 250	Radeon HD 4850	Radeon HD 4870	Radeon HD 5770	MSI HD 5770 HAWK
Shader units	640	128	800	800	800	800
ROPs	16	16	16	16	16	16
GPU	RV740	G92	RV770	RV770	Juniper	Juniper
Transistors	826M	754M	956M	956M	1040M	1040M
Memory Size	512 MB	1024 MB	512 MB	512 MB	1024 MB	1024 MB
Memory Bus Width	128 bit	256 bit	256 bit	256 bit	128 bit	128 bit
Core Clock	750 MHz	738 MHz	625 MHz	750 MHz	850 MHz	875 MHz
Memory Clock	800 MHz	1100 MHz	993 MHz	900 MHz	1200 MHz	1200 MHz
Price	$115	$110	$105	$155	$155	$190

Packaging

MSI chose the F117 Nighthawk as cover image for their packaging, looks very impressive. The back has further info in multiple languages.

You will receive:

Graphics card
Driver CD + Quick Install Guide
DVI to VGA Adapter
Voltage measurement adapter

The Card

As mentioned before, MSI has modified AMD's reference PCB to fit their own needs. AMD's reference PCB number 109-C01337-00C (who picked the number?) can still be found on the top edge of the card, and right next to it you can find MSI's version number V214 Ver. 2.0. Usually when AIBs modify AMD's reference PCB they remove AMD's version number to make it clear that this is not an AMD reference design.

Just like the AMD reference design, the cooler occupies two slots. MSI has chosen to use a cooler that does not use the full height of the slot which will help with air circulation in crowded cases.

The card has one DVI port, one DisplayPort and one HDMI port. For a lower-end card like this I would have preferred to see an analog VGA or DVI+Adapter output instead of the DisplayPort.
For HDMI Audio, most NVIDIA alt

cards require you to feed an external audio source, for example from your motherboard's on-board audio, to the card via SPDIF cable. AMD on the other hand has integrated a sound device inside their GPUs which is the easier solution for most users. Also AMD's integrated sound device has been upgraded to support HDMI 1.3a which includes Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD, AC-3, DTS and up to 7.1 channel audio with 192 kHz / 24-bit.
The blue thingies you see on the picture above are some plastic protectors that MSI has added to cover the outputs, the CrossFire port and the PCI-E slot connector. Certainly a nice touch but not sure if they are worth it.

MSI has included a single CrossFire connector on their card (but no CF bridge in the package). This is not a limitation, CrossFire works the same with a single bridge or two of them.

Here are the front and the back of the card, high-res versions are also available (front, back). If you choose to use these images for voltmods etc, please include a link back to this site or let us post your article.

A Closer Look

MSI's TwinFrozr cooler looks very nice with its shiny metal surfaces. The base is connected to the fin array using three heatpipes. Two very quiet fans then blow air through those fins to cool the card. Due to the design there is also some airflow going onto the memory chips on the front side of the card, but there is no airflow to the memory chips on the back, which does not seem to be an issue considering the massive memory overclock we saw.

MSI is using a single 6-pin PCI-Express power connector on their card, just like the reference design.

The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Samsung, and carry the model number K4G10325FE-HC04. They are specified to run at 2500 MHz (5000 MHz GDDR5 effective).

The UP 6204 offers software voltage control up to 1.35V. It also lacks the monitoring features of the more expensive Volterra controllers. Nevertheless it is good to see MSI using such a controller and bundling their Afterburner software with it to adjust voltages.

MSI has added two voltage measurement points for GPU and memory voltage. This is very convenient for voltmodders because there is no more need to search for the measurement points. However, it is not hard to find these points for experienced overclockers, and beginners will not find anything about this feature in the documentation. Also there is only one "adapter" cable included (the ends are sized nicely to fit the tips of your multimeter probe).

This is AMD's new Juniper GPU, it comes with 1040 million transistors and is produced on a 40 nm process at TSMC Taiwan. The die size is 170 mm².

Test System

Test System
CPU:	Intel Core i7 920 @ 3.8 GHz (Bloomfield, 8192 KB Cache)
Motherboard:	Gigabyte X58 Extreme Intel X58 & ICH10R
Memory:	3x 2048 MB Mushkin Redline XP3-12800 DDR3 @ 1520 MHz 8-7-7-16
Harddisk:	WD Raptor 740ADFD 74 GB
Power Supply:	BFG ES-800 800W
Software:	Windows 7 64-bit
Drivers:	NVIDIA: 195.62 ATI: Catalyst 9.12 HD 5670: 8.69 RC3
Display:	LG Flatron W3000H 30" 2560x1600

All video card results were obtained on this exact system with the exact same configuration.
All games were set to their highest quality setting

Each benchmark was tested at the following settings and resolution:

1024 x 768, No Anti-aliasing. This is a standard resolution without demanding display settings.
1280 x 1024, 2x Anti-aliasing. Common resolution for most smaller flatscreens today (17" - 19"). A bit of eye candy turned on in the drivers.
1680 x 1050, 4x Anti-aliasing. Most common widescreen resolution on larger displays (19" - 22"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
1920 x 1200, 4x Anti-aliasing. Typical widescreen resolution for large displays (22" - 26"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
2560 x 1600, 4x Anti-aliasing. Highest possible resolution for commonly available displays (30"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.

Anno 1404

Anno 1404 is the latest installment of the popular Anno series made by German game studio Blue Byte Software. The genre could be described as a mix of RTS and city building game which is centered around exploration and exploitation of newly discovered islands in the middle ages. You have to prosper your little town by clever management of resources and construction of new city features.
The game engine features beautiful detailed graphics that can become quite taxing for your PC, it supports DirectX 10 alt

and multiple CPU cores.
Due to a limitation in the benchmark engine there are large steps between possible scores as you can see further below.

alt

BattleForge

BattleForge, a card based RTS, is developed by the German EA Phenomic Studio. A few months after launch the game was transformed into a Play 4 Free branded game. That move and the fact that it was included as game bundle with a large number of ATI cards made it one of the more well known RTS games of 2009. You as a player assemble your deck before game to select the units that will be available. Your choice can be from forces of Fire, Frost, Nature and Shadow to complement each other.
The BattleForge engine has full support for DX 9, DX 10 and DX 10.1, we used the internal benchmark tool to acquire our results.

alt

Call of Duty 4

Call of Duty 4 is a first-person shooter that is built on the award winning Call of Duty Series. It is the first version to play in modern times. In a near-future conflict between the United States, Europe and Russia you get to play as a United States Marine and a British SAS operative. The engine is Infinity Ward's own creation and has true dynamic lighting, depth of field, dynamic shadows and HDR. Even though the game plot is scripted you will find yourself in intense battles, often working together with computer controlled team mates.

alt

Call of Juarez 2

Call of Juarez 2: Bound in Blood is a prequel to the first Call of Juarez game which was one of the first DX10 titles available on the market. This time the plot evolves around two brothers, before each mission you may pick one to play. Your choices affect the game play since both characters have different ways of handling situations and doing combat.
Call of Juarez 2 uses Techland's Chrome Engine 4 which adds Edge Anti Aliasing as one of the first engines on the market. Edge Anti Aliasing looks similar to normal AA but comes with a considerably reduced performance drop. However, due to the deferred shading design of Edge AA, normal AA can't be used on top of it.

alt

Company Of Heroes

The real-time strategy game Company of Heroes is set during World War II where you take two American companies through several fights all over France to liberate the country from German occupation. Company of Heroes is the first game to use Relic's next-generation engine "Essence Engine" which includes support for HDR lighting, Shader Model 3.0, normal mapping, dynamic lighting and shadows. You are able to zoom in from the tactical view of the battle field to see the individual units fighting. Often you catch yourself admiring the detailed animations of the soldiers while the fight around you is raging.

alt