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AMD Radeon HD 6770

AMD Radeon HD 6770: An Outdated Warrior in the Age of New Technologies

April 2025

In a world where ray tracing, AI rendering, and 4K gaming have become the norm, the AMD Radeon HD 6770 appears to be a relic from the past. However, even 14 years after its release, this card still piques the interest of budget build enthusiasts. Let's explore who might find it useful in 2025.

1. Architecture and Key Features

TeraScale 2 Architecture: A Legacy from 2011

The HD 6770 is built on the TeraScale 2 architecture (Juniper XT chip), manufactured using a 40nm process. This generation focused on improving energy efficiency and supporting DirectX 11, which was groundbreaking at the time.

Unique Features of the Era

- Eyefinity: Support for up to 3 monitors — relevant for multitasking.

- UVD 3: Hardware decoding of 1080p video (H.264, VC-1).

- Lack of Modern Technologies: No equivalents to DLSS, FSR, or ray tracing. Even FidelityFX emerged years later.

2. Memory: Modest Specs for 2025

- Type and Size: 1GB of GDDR5.

- Bus and Bandwidth: 128-bit bus provides 76.8 GB/s.

- Impact on Performance: For modern games (e.g., Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty), this is insufficient — even at minimum settings in 1080p, lag may occur due to insufficient VRAM.

3. Gaming Performance: A Nostalgic Look Back

FPS Examples (1080p, Low Settings):

- CS2: 40-50 FPS (drops may occur in dynamic scenes).

- GTA V: 30-35 FPS.

- Fortnite: 25-30 FPS (without FSR support).

Resolutions Above 1080p:

- 1440p and 4K are not suitable for comfortable gaming.

Ray Tracing: No hardware support.

Recommendation: The card is suitable for indie games (Stardew Valley, Hollow Knight) or retro projects.

4. Professional Tasks: Not the Best Choice

- Video Editing: Basic editing in DaVinci Resolve is possible, but rendering will take 3-4 times longer than on a modern Radeon RX 7600.

- 3D Modeling: Blender and Maya will run, but OpenCL acceleration is weak.

- Scientific Computing: CUDA is unavailable (an NVIDIA technology), and OpenCL 1.2 is limited.

5. Power Consumption and Thermal Output

- TDP: 108W — modest even by 2025 standards.

- Cooling: Single fan. Under load, temperatures reach 75-80°C, with noise levels at 38 dB.

- Case Recommendations: Enclosure with 2-3 fans for additional airflow.

6. Comparison with Competitors

Historical Analogues (2011):

- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti: Comparable in performance but worse in energy efficiency.

Modern Analogues (2025):

- Integrated Graphics: Ryzen 5 8600G (Radeon 760M) outperforms the HD 6770 in most tasks.

- Budget Discrete Cards: NVIDIA GTX 1630 (4GB GDDR6) or Radeon RX 6400 (4GB GDDR6) — 3-4 times more powerful.

7. Practical Advice

- Power Supply: 400W with an 80+ Bronze certification. A 6-pin PCIe connector is mandatory.

- Compatibility: PCIe 2.0 x16 is compatible with modern motherboards (PCIe 4.0/5.0) but may incur a performance loss of up to 5%.

- Drivers: Official support from AMD has ended. Use the latest available versions (Adrenalin 21.6.1).

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Low price on the second-hand market ($20-30).

- Suitable for office tasks and older games.

- Easy installation and low power consumption.

Cons:

- Does not support DirectX 12 Ultimate, Vulkan 1.3.

- 1GB VRAM is critical for modern applications.

- Lack of upscaling technologies (FSR/XeSS).

9. Final Conclusion: Who is the HD 6770 Suitable For in 2025?

This graphics card is a choice for:

- Retro PC Enthusiasts: Building systems based on older operating systems (Windows XP/7).

- Temporary Solution: While saving for an RTX 5060 or RX 8600 XT.

- Undemanding Users: Web browsing, document work, video watching.

Why Not Buy a New One?

The HD 6770 has been discontinued. New alternatives (Radeon RX 6400) cost $120-150 but offer modern features and warranties.

Conclusion

The AMD Radeon HD 6770 is a monument to an era when 1GB of memory was sufficient for gaming. In 2025, it remains relevant only in niche scenarios. If your budget is limited to $50, it’s better to look for a used GTX 1050 Ti or save on integrated graphics. However, for those who cherish nostalgia, the HD 6770 will remain a loyal companion in the world of pixelated adventures.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

January 2011

Model Name

Radeon HD 6770

Generation

Northern Islands

Bus Interface

PCIe 2.0 x16

Transistors

1,040 million

Compute Units

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

40 nm

Architecture

TeraScale 2

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

1024MB

Memory Type

GDDR5

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

128bit

Memory Clock

1200MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

76.80 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

13.60 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

34.00 GTexel/s

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

1.387 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

800

L1 Cache

8 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

256KB

TDP

108W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

N/A

OpenCL Version

1.2

OpenGL

4.4

DirectX

11.2 (11_0)

Power Connectors

1x 6-pin

Shader Model

5.0

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Suggested PSU

300W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

1.387 TFLOPS

OpenCL

Score

3390

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

GeForce GTX 1050 Max Q

1.487 +7.2%

GeForce GTX 860M

1.417 +2.2%

Radeon HD 6770

1.387

GeForce GTX 960A

1.361 -1.9%

Radeon HD 4890

1.333 -3.9%

OpenCL

Radeon RX 6700S

62821 +1753.1%

Radeon Pro 5300

38843 +1045.8%

Radeon R9 M290X

21442 +532.5%

Radeon Pro 455

11291 +233.1%

Radeon HD 6770

3390