The HD5770 offers a lot of features for very little money. We've become accustomed to the new generation mid range delivering the performance of the last generation high end, and the AMD Juniper series does that in spades. AMD's strategy of scalable core performance appears to be working very well, allowing a great release pace and added value features.

In some circumstances the HD5770 outperforms the HD4870, thanks to a high engine clock and plenty of GDDR5, and in others the reduced memory bandwidth shows itself; but really this card is the average gamers hero, offering HD gaming performance, Eyefinity, Dx11 and more as well as great HTPC features.

The fan is quiet and not overly noisy or intrusive when running high speeds, and left to its own devices rarely spins up above average case fan noise. It does a great job of keeping the card cool and running well, and is well suited to a high-powered HTPC system that not only plays stored movies and Blu-ray discs, but doubles as a big screen gamer system, too.

The average gamer, running a less than cutting edge rig or today's more value orientated hardware will be very pleased with the performance and features found in AMD's Juniper range. The clocks appear to give a lot of flexibility for partners to develop added value versions, too. I look forward to playing with an updated version of AMD Overdrive to see what a Juniper equipped Dragon platform can do.

Summary

The Sapphire HD5770 is a great alternative to power hungry oversized last generation technology. Of course, it didn't look that way until this week when the HD5770 showed how compact, efficient and svelte a discrete card could be. The new Rotated Grid Super Sampled AA mode brings life back to older titles, and the flexibility of Adaptive Super Sampling is awesome. Where the 4800 series was renowned for 8xAA performance, Adaptive AA is the gem here - great performance and great looks combined, especially in Edge Detect 4xAA (12xAA) - really enjoyable. The image quality afforded by the custom filtering flexibility offered with AMD's 5000 series is tremendous.

Rage3D presents the Sapphire HD5770 with 5 stars! Simple but effective accessories and bundled game make this a great buy for any gamer looking to upgrade their older cards. Currently selling for $159 at many etailers, it's a steal - replacing your HD4850 or GTS250 with this will be a nice upgrade in quality and performance.