The ASUS EAH5770 CuCore/2DI/1GD5/A videocard might just hit that wonderful sweet spot where price and performance balance perfectly... you know, when time itself becomes fluid and games run smooth at wide resolutions with all the fancy new graphics eyecandy options enabled. Best of all, you've achieved modest nirvana without forking over hundreds of extra dollars. :-)

When it comes to graphics cards that are good enough to game on every day, but affordable and not mainstream to bog down modern 3D FPS games, that happy mix is one ATI Radeon HD 5770 GPU and a sticker price in the region of $200 bucks. Coming in just under that figure, Asus' EAH5770 CuCore videocard is an affordable DirectX 11 card to consider.

The card comes packing 1GB of GDDR5 RAM and with a GPU ticking away at 850MHz. In terms of performance, the Radeon HD 5770 GPU slots in just below ATI's flagship Radeon HD 5870 and 5850 chips, but above the mainstream Radeon HD 5670. The Radeon HD 5770 graphics chip is based on the ATI RV840 'Juniper' GPU, a 1.04-billion transistor die manufactured on a the 40nm process. All of AMD's Radeon 5000-series of graphics cards share a number of new technologies, the most important of which is support for DirectX 11. This latest revision to Microsoft's graphics hardware standard brings two major additions to the DX11, tessellation and compute shaders.

ASUS have clocked the Radeon HD 5770 GPU at 850MHz on this videocard, and it's connected along a 128-bit bus to 1GB of GDDR5 memory running at 1.2GHz. Being quad-pumped, the effective memory speed is a mouth watering 4.8GHz. For reference, ATI's RV840 GPU has 800 shader processors which is the same amount as the Radeon HD 4870 and Radeon HD 4850 from last season. As part of the Radeon HD 5000-series of videocards, the Asus EAH5770 CuCore videocard supports DirectX 11 and Shader Model 5.0, as well as OpenGL 3.2. The PCI Express x16 ASUS EAH5770 CuCore videocard can be teamed up in CrossfireX mode on compatible Intel and AMD motherboards.

ASUS EAH5770 CuCore/2DI/1GD5/A Videocard INCLUDES: User's Manual, Driver CD, Utility CD, Alone in the Dark, HDMI to DVI converter, molex to PCI Express adapter, CrossfireX bridge. Graphics Processor: ATI Radeon HD 5770 (850MHz) Memory Capacity: 1GB GDDR5 (4800 MHz) Card Format: PCI Express x16 2.0, two slots wide. Outputs: HDMI, Analog, DVI-D Videocard Class: Mainstream

Cooling for the Radeon HD 5770 GPU comes care of the massive CuCore cooler - basically a larger copper block with an extruded aluminum heatsink surrounding it. The heatsink is cooled by a modestly low noise fan, which in tern is covered by a plastic grating. The design of the Asus EAH5770 CuCore videocard's cooler doesn't push air out of the back your case, so it's a good idea to have an internal fan set up to push air out of the back of the case.

ATI Radeon RV840 Juniper GPU

ATI's Radeon 5770 graphics card is powered by the RV840 'Junpier' GPU, the middle child of ATI's 'Evergreen' family of 5000-series Radeon videocards. As the mid-range offering the 'Juniper' Radeon HD 5770 is between the mainstream 'Redwood' Radeon HD 5670 and the high-end 'Cypress' Radeon HD 5850 and 5870 videocards in terms of price, power and complexity.

All of AMD's Radeon 5000-series of graphics cards share a number of new technologies, the most important of which is support for DirectX 11. This latest revision to Microsoft's graphics hardware standard brings two major additions to the DX11, tessellation and compute shaders. Tessellation is a method of adding density and complexity to a 3D mesh. It can take a simple, low-poly model and break up the geometry into more complex portions, adding another layer of detail on top of a mesh. The end result is better looking, more detailed graphics with a very low cost in performance.

The ATI RV840 GPU in the ASUS EAH5770 CuCore/2DI/1GD5/A videocard contains some 1.04 billion transistors manufactured on a 40nm process, or about half of that used on the massive 2.15 billion transistor 'Cypress' GPU (Radeon HD 5870). If you take a look at the chart below, you'll actually notice quite a few similarities to last-generation's flagship, the Radeon HD 4870 videocard. Both videocards have around 1 billion transistors, 800 stream processors, 40 texture units and 16 raster operators.

Midrange Videocard Comparison Chart ATI Radeon 4870 ATI Radeon 4850 ATI Radeon HD 5770 ATI Radeon HD 5750 NVIDIA Geforce GTX 260 GPU Code Name: RV770 RV770 RV840/Juniper RV830/Juniper GT200b GPU Process: 55nm 55nm 40nm 40nm 55nm GPU Transistors: 956 Million 956 Million 1.04 Billion 1.04 Billion 1.4 Billion TDP: 110W 110W 108W 86W 171W GPU Core Clock Speed: 750MHz 625MHz 850Mhz 700MHz 576MHz Memory Speed: 900MHz (3600MHz GDDR5) 993MHz (1986MHz GDDR3) 1.2GHz(4.8Ghz GDDR5) 1.15GHz(4.6Ghz GDDR5) 999MHz(1998 GDDR2) Memory Capacity: 512MB/1GB 512MB/1GB 1GB 512MB/1GB 512MB GDDR3 Memory Bus Width: 256-bit 256-bit 128-bit 128-bit 448-bit Stream Processors: 800 800 800 720 216 Texture units: 40 40 40 36 72 Raster Operators: 16 16 16 16 28