With our second Radeon HD 5770 arriving which carries with it these same stock setup as the previous one we tested, we had one idea on our mind, to CrossFire the two cards and see what kind of performance we could achieve out of the new mid-range boards from ATI that have done well to impress us in solo form. What makes CrossFiring these cards so great is the low expense of buying one now and a second one later. If you can afford the price of two initially you are normally better off buying the next model up, something like the Radeon HD 5850. If you want an new graphics accelerator now and some extra performance in the future, this could be a great option leveraging new gaming experiences. - TweakTown

HIS Radeon HD 5770 1GB CrossFire Upgrade Preview

The HIS version of the card doesn't really show us anything we haven't seen from the model before. With that said, this is a really nice cooler which carries with it the same overall design as the higher end models, albeit just shorter. HIS has of course added their own flair to the model, which includes a HIS sticker on the fan. The left of the board is taken up by another sticker which shows us a picture of the sword and tells us the model, while giving us the HIS logo again and the ATI one. This Radeon HD 5770 edition carries with it a single 6-pin PCI Express connector and much like the Radeon HD 5850 it sits in one of the rear vents.

Across the top of the card we have our two CrossFire connectors, the good news is that we are really going to be making use of these. Hopefully we see some good performance from the setup when we team it up with our other Radeon HD 5770. Like the rest of the card, there isn't really anything outside the norm when it comes to the clocks. This means the core comes in at 850MHz and their 1GB of GDDR5 memory carries with it a very healthy 4800MHz effective speed. We've already been impressed by the performance of this Radeon HD 5770, and just now focussed on the multiple GPU configuration to look at the difference.

While we will be basing our scores on the performance of these single card, the main piece of information we need to talk about is the CrossFire performance which is nothing short of great. Now we see a good boost in performance in just about everything we test with it sometimes being the difference between a game being playable and not playable at higher resolutions with higher settings. It is also great to see that HIS have included this Dirt 2 voucher in the bundle and considering the performance of the model we're sure that the model will be able to handle the DirectX 11 game that is due out before Christmas.

These HIS Radeon HD 5770 doesn't carry with it anything different from the stock model and this would be a problem if the stock model wasn't great, but it is. With that said, we're looking forward to the company putting its own spin on the model with future IceQ and Turbo models. Though at $159 over at Newegg, this model is still very attractive and gives you solid performance for the price, especially if you double up and go the two card route. If you're looking for a Radeon HD 5770, the HIS version is one worth looking at. More importantly, don't let anyone tell you that using CrossFire on these mid-range cards is a waste of money.

Because the bottom line is the buy one now and another in the future idea helps lessen the blow on your account while still offering great performance. And in this case it's performance is better than just a single Radeon HD 5850. Another great Radeon HD 5770 that anyone would be happy with, and we discovered today that the model in CrossFire not only gives us some fantastic performance, but also manages to offer fantastic value for money.