Sapphire is a manufacturer of a variety of computer components, but I would guess that people probably associate them most with Radeon HD graphics cards. We have covered quite a few of their cards dating back to when we first met during the HD3000 generation, and we are happy to be taking a look at one of their latest cards today.
The topic of this review is the Sapphire Radeon HD7730 PCI Express video card with 1GB GDDR5 memory. The promotional image above provides a quick look at the card, where we see it has a rather short PCB while featuring a fairly powerful looking two slot cooler. After checking out some of the features and specifications, we'll take a closer look at the sample provided for review.
Features and Specifications:
» Display Support: 2 x Maximum Display Monitor(s) support
» Output:
» D-Sub(VGA)
» 1 x Dual-Link DVI
» 1 x HDMI (with 3D)
» GPU:
» 800 MHz Core Clock
» 28 nm Chip
» 384 x Stream Processors
» Video Memory:
» 1024 MB Size
» 128 -bit GDDR5
» 4500 MHz Effective
» Dimension:
» 163(L) x 104(W) x 33(H) mm Size.
» 2 x slot
» Software: Driver CD
For more details, please visit
the official product page on the Sapphire website. While there you may notice that Sapphire has created three variations of the HD7730 (there were actually just two when I first wrote this). There is the 1GB GDDR5 version we will be covering in this review, as well as two GDDR3 variants which offer you a choice of 1GB or 2GB of memory. Of the three options I would gladly choose the 1GB GDDR5 version, because even doubling the total available doesn't do much for me considering the effective speed is 1800MHz with GDDR3 and 4500MHz with GDDR5. Sadly, I have read that the GDDR5 version will not be for sale in the USA, so most of our readers will have to choose between the two GDDR3 offerings if this card seems right for them.
These memory offerings are all paired with an 800MHz GPU and they all include 384 stream processors, which make the HD7730 a low to middle of the road offering in the discrete graphics market in the sub-$100 range. This is quite a crowded market with a variety of cards from AMD and nVidia competing for sales, as well as the resurgence of integrated graphics from a handful of vendors taking a slice out of the pie, too. It will be interesting to put the HD7730 up against some of these cards to see how it compares!
