There are few things that are more exciting in the lives of computer geeks than the launch of a new generation of video cards, and rightfully so, because every generation brings us another shining example of Moore's Law at work, bringing us a leap in performance, adding new features and lowering costs and sometimes power consumption as well.  ATI and Sapphire are hoping that this generation is no different, bringing forward a slew of new GPUs to attack the high end and midrange segments of the market.  Within the last couple of weeks, we have seen the Cypress-based HD5870 and HD5850 completely blast the high end, and now we have the HD5750 and HD5770 attacking the mid-range. 

Which brings us to today, as Sapphire has sent us a sample of their HD5770.  This RV870 based beast uses the previously mentioned Juniper core, which is essentially the Cypress core cut in half, and should be in the same ballpark as the RV770 based 4870 and 4890.  Let's take a look at the specs, shall we?

Specifications:

As we can see from the above table, the HD5770 has specifications that are nearly identical to the HD4890, except for the 128-bit memory bus, 1.2GHz of GDDR5, and the new advanced TSMC 40nm process geometry.  Some bonus specs and features:

• DirectX 11 Support

• ATI Eyefinity Technology, with support for three displays

• ATI Stream Technology

• Windows 7 Support

• 2nd Generation TeraScale Engine

• PCI-e 2.0 x16

• HDMI 1.3 support with Deep Color and 7.1 High Bitrate Audio, supporting bitstreaming for all Blu-Ray codecs, including Dolby TrueHD and DTSHD-Master Audio.

• On chip HDCP support

• CrossfireX support for up to four discrete cards on an AMD 790FX based motherboard

• Avivo HD support for decoding HD video, Blu-Ray, DVD Upscaling, and audio over HDMI

• Dynamic power management for both core clocks and memory clocks

While it is tempting to just gloss over the list, it is important to point out that there are a couple very big features that I am very excited to see, the top being the addition of Dolby TrueHD and DTSHD-MA bitstreaming support.  I just can't wait to see a potential HD5650 come out in the near future for me to throw into my HTPC. 

The other big deal, is of course no secret.  Everyone has seen the Eyefinity demonstrations, and I am eager to see how the support for this pans out in the coming months.  Gaming at 7680x1600 on three 30" monitors?  Yes, please.