XFX Radeon HD 5770 (Juniper XT) 1GB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 CrossFireX Support Graphics Card HD-577A-ZNFC

Pros: Fast as a 4870, but way smaller and more energy efficient. Similar price to a GTX 260, but better performance. The obvious DX11 and Eyefinity and DDR5 ram. Overclocks well and the fan is quiet while still providing good temps. It also looks great and blows the hot air out the back. Free Battleforge if you care (read free is good)

Cons: XFX has overpriced their card compared to others. Don't include the game if you are going to charge more. Beta drivers still.

Overall Review: This replaced a 4850 in an ITX Lan rig. I expected this card to be longer than the 4850 (also from XFX) but it is actually about an inch or so shorter including the shroud length on the 5770. The best part is that the new card is a decent amount faster, uses less power, and has more features than the 4850. Great card.

Pros: Works as intended
"Future-proof" solution for early adopters looking for DX11
Quiet card

Cons: A big one (read this and "Other thoughts"):

This card is in my new build under W7 64 and is constantly crashing. Like others, I'll get screen artifacts first (usually checkerboxes), unresponsiveness for a few seconds, then a single-color screen, and finally my desktop returns with a message from the system tray saying that W7 has recovered from unresponsive ATI drivers. This happens once every five to ten minutes as long as the system is on.


I have a ticket with XFX and they are aware of the issue:

"We are teaming with ATI and think that we will have some new information that may help with your problem in the next couple of days."

As anyone can see, this is not only my problem, as indicated by other reviewers here. With that said, there IS an odd workaround to prevent the card from crashing.

The workaround to prevent the card from crashing is to play any game that would utilize the card.

(continued below)

Overall Review: It seems the card only crashes when its not being utilized. I never have a crash while playing a game, only when I'm doing non-gaming tasks like going to a website or typing a paper. To make those basic tasks bearable, I run a game for maybe ten minutes and leave it open in the background while I switch to whatever else I want to do. If I don't leave the game idle for more than half an hour (click back into it and play for a few once in a while), the card won't crash.

Great excuse to game over writing a term paper? You decide. At the very least, it's proof that the card WORKS when it has to (and quite well, as you'd expect of a newer generation card), but for some reason doesn't work when it doesn't have to. I have faith in XFX and am waiting for working drivers, but as of this writing, CCC 9.12 (and hotfix) isn't cutting it.

As long as the card can run games and my core i5-720 can tolerate one in the background (which it obviously can), I'll live until better drivers.