I think they would be similar. Actually for some games, if you are going to use a Radeon, I would probably suggest an older card that can run Catalyst 7.11 because it works better with some DirectX 8 and OpenGL games. I think Radeon HD 3870 is the newest card those drivers support.

I have a soft spot for the 5770. I used to daily drive a Vapor-X. But the 7770 is about 25% faster and if you don't plan to go for games that are too old, I don't remember having any issues with XP era games back then when I upgraded from the 5770 to a 7850. The 7770 also runs cooler.

I'd go for the HD7770 for all the reasons listed above. The only real argument for the HD5770 would be its closer to be period correct for that hardware. I remember going with HD4850's for builds around that time.

Backwards compatibility of PCIe graphics cards with DirectX 3-7 under XP. Ditto for the 7770. I doubt the results would favor the 5770 in DX8+ but YMMV.

The performance equal for the 5770 would be the 7750 though.

I have 7770 and 7570, I posted 3DMark03 results here a few days ago.

Generally speaking I didn't encounter any glitches in popular games, performance was stable, power consumption - very satisfying.

I use 13.1 driver for 7770 - here are the links, since AMD doesn't provide driver archive like Nvidia does:
https://web.archive.org/web/20130420082910if_ … dd_ccc_whql.exe
https://web.archive.org/web/20130420081955if_ … dd_ccc_whql.exe

Of course the performance varies a bit between them. But, the question was with respect to whether the cards vary in compatibility with XP.

The compatibility issues with Radeons come in with OpenGL games for the most part. Bioware games like KOTOR and KOTOR2 really need Catalyst 7.11 to run properly on a Radeon that can't run a Catalyst 4.xx driver. The OpenGL driver changes dramatically at 7.12. It was essentially rewritten and this was for new OpenGL initiatives, not old games. Even games based on Quake 3 engine can perform poorly unless you rename the game's executable to Quake3.exe.

Compatibility and overall experience. And this is about overall experience - 7770s are cold, quiet and energy efficient. Performance-wise are also good compared to the rivals.

As for compatibility - I remember tinkering with newer drivers on a GF 6600, there were many glitches that make games like FarCry completely unplayable. Missing textures or poor performance were common, where Radeon never gave me these issues.

KOTOR isn't on my list of games - so I can't say anything about it, but my favourite DX8/9 games works flawlessly. So it solely depends on games OP would like to play.

swaaye wrote on 2026-03-17, 20:40:

Of course the performance varies a bit between them. But, the question was with respect to whether the cards vary in compatibility with XP.

The compatibility issues with Radeons come in with OpenGL games for the most part. Bioware games like KOTOR and KOTOR2 really need Catalyst 7.11 to run properly on a Radeon that can't run a Catalyst 4.xx driver. The OpenGL driver changes dramatically at 7.12. It was essentially rewritten and this was for new OpenGL initiatives, not old games. Even games based on Quake 3 engine can perform poorly unless you rename the game's executable to Quake3.exe.

What are the issues specifically? With the iCafe driver from 2015 or so on a 7750 Quake 3 ran without issue and KOTOR needed one setting in the INI changed to fix mouse stutter. Granted KOTOR's performance wasn't top notch but fast enough, 70 FPS at 1024 x 768 with 8x AA and everything on max. This was GOG's release though, don't know about the original.

I had an HD 7850 in my overkill WinXP rig, but it had some weird issues with HL-2, mainly using the flashlight in certain dark areas. I swapped it for an HD 6850 - combined with the Catalyst 13.9 driver, the HL2 issues were resolved.

Thank you for all the responses, were the ATI/AMD OpenGL drivers that problematic back then? I could give up on dual booting Linux and go for a GTX 560Ti at the same price, but I don't know if the NVIDIA drivers were any better.

If you go by hearsay then every card was problematic back then. The 7850 is faster, more compatible, and more efficient than the 560 Ti. For DX9 level hardware the Radeon X series is supported on Linux with the r300g, still being updated and optimized. Worked well with Wine on modern Linux, though not as well as running the games on Windows.

isaacx123 wrote on Yesterday, 00:14:

Thank you for all the responses, were the ATI/AMD OpenGL drivers that problematic back then? I could give up on dual booting Linux and go for a GTX 560Ti at the same price, but I don't know if the NVIDIA drivers were any better.

NVidia drivers will usually be better with OpenGL games but for Direct3D games both companies are similar. I can't think of a single example of an OpenGL game running better on a Radeon than a GeForce at release. Rage was a particular nightmare for Radeon users (I had a 6950 and a 560 Ti at the time).

If I were you I would get a Radeon and a GeForce. It's interesting to experience all the hardware, right? I've always had a variety of cards around over the years.

vvbee wrote on 2026-03-17, 21:26:

What are the issues specifically? With the iCafe driver from 2015 or so on a 7750 Quake 3 ran without issue and KOTOR needed one setting in the INI changed to fix mouse stutter. Granted KOTOR's performance wasn't top notch but fast enough, 70 FPS at 1024 x 768 with 8x AA and everything on max. This was GOG's release though, don't know about the original.

With most ATI/AMD drivers you should find missing effects and occasional crashes. The grass, bloom/glow and soft shadows are problematic IIRC. There's also a heat haze effect on one of the planets that causes problems. That might be a framebuffer effect.

With Quake 3, I wasn't actually referring to Quake 3 itself. Actually games that licensed the engine. RTCW for example. I used to have a notebook with a Mobility 5870 and with RTCW I had to rename the executable to quake3.exe or the game ran at around 20 fps. This seems like a application profile mistake in the drivers.

In my testing of Medal of Honor: Allied Assault on the HD 2600 PRO, the HD 5770, and the R7 360 I didn't see this performance drop, using Catalyst 10 and iCafe probably. But create an NTFS hard link so you don't even need to rename. Not enough info to test KOTOR's haze effect, ideally there'd be a save file. I remember ATI driver crashes around 2010 but not with later drivers, which means simply saying there was a problem isn't enough to know by.

swaaye wrote on Yesterday, 17:20:

With Quake 3, I wasn't actually referring to Quake 3 itself. Actually games that licensed the engine. RTCW for example. I used to have a notebook with a Mobility 5870 and with RTCW I had to rename the executable to quake3.exe or the game ran at around 20 fps. This seems like a application profile mistake in the drivers.

There's a known issue with Q3 engine games and later GPUs which is fixed by setting r_primitives to 2, otherwise you get a stuttery experience with much lower than expected framerates. I experienced the same thing in RTCW and Elite Force getting around 40fps on a HD5870/E6850 desktop, after changing the primitves value it completely smoothed out and the framerate increased dramatically.

Looking at the Quake 3 source code, the game already automatically sets r_primitives to 2 if the driver happens to expose GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array. So just look at the list of OpenGL extensions for your driver, or "...using GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array" in the game's console, and if you see this then you'll already have the workaround enabled by default.

Ah. So maybe changing the executable name to quake3.exe is causing the driver to expose GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array. Or I wonder if it is just that problem with excessively long extension strings and Quake 3 and the driver workarounds this if the executable is quake3.exe.