And a 6.5” PCB is short enough to fit in space-constrained environments like diminutive desktops and HTPCs. A 55 W power rating means that it doesn’t need an auxiliary connector at all-just a 16-lane PCI Express slot. The Radeon HD 7750 is a drastically different graphics card, even though the same piece of silicon serves as its foundation. Power supply requirements: AMD Radeon HD 7750A 500 watt or better power supply. An unmolested back-end turns up four ROP partitions and a 128-bit memory bus populated by 1 GB of GDDR5 memory at 1125 MHz. No interconnect is required for AMD Radeon HD 7750 graphics cards. Since each Compute Unit includes four texture units, 7770 also sports 40 texture units. The Radeon HD 7770’s 1 GHz Cape Verde GPU employs all 640 available shaders, theoretically yielding 1.28 TFLOPS of compute performance. Of course, we all know that the core’s operating frequency is only one variable in the complex equation that defines a board’s performance, so that name ends up rubbing as self-congratulatory and, ultimately, superfluous. This is a milestone, AMD says, meaning every partner board will bear the moniker, regardless of whether it’s a stock reference board or a faster configuration with aftermarket cooling. Officially, the top-end Cape Verde part is called Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition, paying homage to its 1 GHz core clock. Right in the middle, where the Radeon HD 68s currently live, you’ll soon see a third distinct GPU called Pitcairn. You know, it was October 2009 when ATI released the Juniper GPU, you guys and girls know it as the Radeon HD 5770. The gaping hole between AMD’s highest- and lowest-end Radeon HD 7000s won’t persist for long.