HIS Radeon HD 7750 iCooler review - Introduction

AMD released new entry level graphics cards. The codename for the GPU empowering these cards is is 'Cape Verde', and the graphics cards deriving from it are the Radeon HD 7750 and 7770 One GHz edition. This is not a refresh, it is a completely new GPU based on the same technology that powers the R7900 series, the GCN architecture.

And that's interesting, as with less shader processors AMD will make this product a good chunk faster. They benefit from the GCN architecture but also have a trump card at hand, as this is the first ever reference card that is clocked at 1 GHz - hence AMD will give all these cards a 'GHz edition' extension. See, the 28nm node allows them to place a good 1.5 billion transistors onto the GPU's 123 mm2 die, and that should make the card a good 25% faster.

AMD has been focusing on three primary features and key selling points ever since the series 5000 products were released. First off, the new graphics adapters are of course DirectX 11 ready. With Windows 7 and Vista being DX11 ready all we need are some games to take advantage of DirectCompute, multi-threading, Hardware Tessellation and new shader 5.0 extensions.

HIS decided to jump on the bandwagon and releases a slightly customized R7750, it's named the HIS 7750 iCooler 1GB.

As you can tell from the photo below the card is all customized, a nice blue PCB and a cooler, that though eats two slots, makes the cards virtually silent. Much much better then the reference AMD design really. The card remains 100% reference clocked though at a price of give or take 99 USD it might give it enough bite for a game or two in the lower resolutions.

Anyways, have a peek and then let's onwards into the review.