Sapphire HD 5770 Vapor-X

[Athlonite]

I been wondering what happend to all those unused LGA775 HSF's lol and now i know

 

[Shou Miko]

I bought one of these cards recently and I'm very happy with it. Good bang for the buck. MSI Afterburner works with the Vapor-X and you can use that to go beyond the 960 MHz maximum limit that the Catalyst CC uses for this card. Just add this to the MSIAfterburner.cfg configuration file:

EnableUnofficialOverclocking = 1

1050 MHz on the core is easy enough with some additional voltage. I tried 1100 MHz too but it wasn't stable and was going to need more voltage than I wanted to use.

The other option is to flash to the Asus 5770 bios which I also did.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=237414

This gets rid of the 960 MHz limit in Catalyst and you can then go as high as 1200 MHz in CCC. For 24/7 use I just use 1000 MHz for the core which is fine at default voltage. MSI Afterburner works but it kills the 2D clocks so 1000 MHz / 1300 MHz is good enough for me.

Here's what you need to watch out for. Sapphire is shipping two completely different versions of this card with the same part number. The one I got does not come with the Dirt2 voucher and comes with completely different Samsung memory chips. These chips are not nearly as good as the Hynix memory chips that were on the card that W1zzard tested for this review. I run them at 1300 MHz but 1400 MHz or beyond just isn't possible with the Samsung memory. A little disappointed but ultimate performance isn't that important to me.

What is important is sound level. Even when overclocked I can have the fan speed locked to 20% in CCC which is equivalent to about 1100 rpm. Same noise level in 2D or 3D. The first gaming card that is dead silent. I have to put my finger on the fan at this speed just to make sure it is still turning because I can't hear it. I love it.

Edit: There is a new hotfix driver out that addresses the gray screen issues that some users have seen. It is designed for the 5800 series at the moment but this fix should help out the 5700 cards too when the driver for them is ready. I've only seen this once while doing some aggressive overclocking. I tried installing the 5800 download but it screwed things up so I had to play musical drivers and go back to the original.

Here's a picture of my Vapor-X 5770 with the Samsung memory and the same part number and the same SKU number. Paying extra for the Dirt2 voucher seems to get you the better Hynix memory chips.

Edit: I noticed that the MSI Radeon HD 5770 Hawk that was tested also uses these exact same Samsung K4G10325FE-HC04 memory chips that are rated at 1250 MHz. The Samsung memory chips on the Hawk did a little better than the Samsung chips on my Vapor-X. Increasing the GPU core speed will get you a bigger increase in performance compared to increasing the memory speed.

[url]http://img697.imageshack.us/img697/245/vaporx5770samsung.th.jpg[/URL]

Here it is after running 3DMark06.

http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/4215/vaporx3dmark06.png

Using Afterburner I kept bumping the core voltage up +0.025 until it was stable. 1050 MHz took 1.275 volts which is typical for these cards. The memory was stable enough at 1350 MHz to complete 3DMark06 but it's not stable at 1400+ MHz like the Hynix chips are. It's a Sapphire 5770 Vapor-X but it's been flashed with the Asus bios so that's why it reports Asus. By default, both versions of the Vapor-X use the same bios.

will that work with my Sapphire Radeon HD5770 Vapor-X 1GB card aswell?

i am stock at 900/1300mhz if i go any highere it becomes unstabile in the games i play

 

[unclewebb]

I bought a second one of these cards that used the Hynix memory chips but it didn't overclock much differently than the card with Samsung memory chips. The core on the second GPU didn't overclock as well.

Cross flashing to the Asus bios or using MSI Afterburner should work. Try MSI Afterburner and see how you make out with that.

 

[Shou Miko]

I bought a second one of these cards that used the Hynix memory chips but it didn't overclock much differently than the card with Samsung memory chips. The core on the second GPU didn't overclock as well.

Cross flashing to the Asus bios or using MSI Afterburner should work. Try MSI Afterburner and see how you make out with that.

i flashed my Sapphire Radeon HD5770 Vapor-X 1GB with the Asus Unlocked bios but msi afterburner still won't show core voltage or let me adjust it

 

[unclewebb]

Have you tried using the Asus overclocking software. Now that you have flashed your bios you have an Asus card so their software will work.

 

[Shou Miko]

Have you tried using the Asus overclocking software. Not that you have flashed your bios you have an Asus card so their software will work.

that didn't help it just says: no graphic card information found or something like that.

i got 2 small chips on my Vapor-X card one on front and one on the back

 

[unclewebb]

What does GPU-Z report for your card now? It sounds like it wasn't a successful bios flash.

I only know of two 5770 Vapor-X cards. One with Samsung memory and one with Hynix but other than that they are both the same. I have one of each and can cross flash either one of them. What type of memory chips are on yours?

I'm just downloading the latest version of Afterburner to see how it works.

Edit: If you click on the Settings button in Afterburner it lets you unlock voltage control on these cards so you can raise the GPU voltage and clocks as high as you like. Have you tried this program yet? I'm using the default Vapor-X bios at the moment.

 

[Shou Miko]

What does GPU-Z report for your card now. It sounds like it wasn't a successful bios flash.

I only know of two 5770 Vapor-X cards. One with Samsung memory and one with Hynix but other than that they are both the same. I have one of each and can cross flash either one of them. What type of memory chips are on yours?

I'm just downloading the latest version of Afterburner to see how it works.

i have flashed it back to the original Sapphire bios it came with, and GPU-Z reports it as a Sapphire/PCPartner right before with the Asus bios it reported it as a ASUS card ^^

and my Vapor-X has Samsung memory on it.

i can't get MSI Afterburner to active Core Voltage even if i mark it in settings and restart MSI Afterburner it still won't show any core voltage clock...

screenshot of my card with the ASUS bio on:

 

[unclewebb]

Does the voltage adjuster show up in Afterburner with the Sapphire bios?

You might also want to try adjusting the maximum core clock speed using the Radeon Bios Editor.

http://www.techpowerup.com/rbe/

It supports the 5770 cards.

With the Asus bios flashed on these cards I was able to use the Asus tool for overclocking. It's been a while since I did this so I'm not sure what's changed.

Using RBE I just altered the bios from my Vapor-X 5770 card to get by the 960 MHz GPU limit. I set it to 1050 MHz. I was seeing some artifacts at 1050 MHz so here it is at 1040 MHz.

Modded Bios
http://www.sendspace.com/file/u4evwk

You can download that bios and mod it for whatever you need or you can use GPU-Z, read the bios you are using and mod that with RBE.



I'm more of a programmer than a gamer so I've been running it at 960 MHz / 1300 MHz lately and haven't bothered with these mods.

 

[Shou Miko]

my pc freezed if i go that high, even with the Asus bio it freezes the hole pc

 

[Athlonite]

just telling the BIOS to push more voltage wont help if the Voltage controller isn't adjustable nor will it do anything by telling afterburner to turn it on although after saying that most non adjustable Vreg controllers are usually hardwired to 1.2V max so you should theoretically be able to pull 1.2V via the BIOS

 

[Shou Miko]

just telling the BIOS to push more voltage wont help if the Voltage controller isn't adjustable nor will it do anything by telling afterburner to turn it on although after saying that most non adjustable Vreg controllers are usually hardwired to 1.2V max so you should theoretically be able to pull 1.2V via the BIOS

i think it got a voltage control chip but i am not sure, but look at the pix here: http://forums.techpowerup.com/showpost.php?p=1908181&postcount=13

and yes i made another topic in the ATi sector so with don't keep spamming this review thread with off topic ^^;

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=123263

 

[kasis1000]

today i was trying overclocking old one 5770 vapor-x because got Hynix version.

Looks, that i do not have Core Voltage changer.

my stable settings (i can't change voltage, even at MSI Afterburner)