Buy Radeon HD 4770 Now or Later?

[Hindesite]

So I'm just about to buy two Radeon 4770's and cross-fire them but I've been reading into them and now I'm a little unsure.

I've read that the reason every Radeon 4770 on the market was so similar in design and also why there's so few retailers with any available anymore is because ATI barely finished designing the card before the deadline and was forced to rush manufacture a bunch themselves to get it out to the typical 3rd party sellers in time. So, essentially every 4770 out right now was manufactured exactly the same by the same company, the only difference is the sticker. Sapphire/Asus/whoever that is selling the card didn't actually manufacture it themself this time around.

That's all good and well, but it has me curious as to if the usual 3rd party manufacturers will make any design changes that'll give it better cooling or maybe better stock clock speeds not seen with the current generic 4770 design.

I know it's kind of a stretch, but when a product is rushed out like the 4770 was you sometimes see improvements in later-made variations.

 

[ohiou_grad_06]

If I understand right, and someone else can probably clarify this, but when the 3rd party companies get these, they really come from a single source anyway like ATI or nvidia themselves, and what the companies really get are reference cards, but they are free to tweak and add their own cooler and put their stickers on. I may be wrong, but perhaps someone can clarify this for me. But I don't believe those companies are actually manufacturing the card itself. Again someone correct me if I'm mistaken.

 

[PsyKhiqZero]

I "heared" that the companies HAVE to stick with the reference design for a period of time before they can make any major changes like the cooler or PCB. That's why they all use the refernce cooler when they first come out. I'm not saying this is true..

 

[Andraxxus]

I was about to buy a 4770 too but there may be some 5870's (or whatever will they name the new GPU) very soon some people speculated that they may have a july 9 release date.If you have no problem waiting it may be a good thing (You could save some money and get DX11 on a true DX11 card). I have no way to know for sure that they will release the new cards then so you don't have to take my comment as a guarantee that it will be like this.

 

[jaguarskx]

TSMC was having issues with their 40mm process which resulted in low yields (20% at best from what I've read). They have recently resolved their issues, but it will take some time for more HD 4770 GPUs to reach the market in mass.

There are only a few OEMs that manufactures video card for all other brand names. One example is Sapphire's parent company. HD 4770 video cards with different coolers should reach market later this month.

 

[Hindesite]

Oh wow, this is a lot of different info to consider.

How solid is this info on the possible july 5000 series release? I can definately wait for it, but the person who was willing to buy my old video card will be moving away so that's an easy $50 I'll be losing out on. He wont be around to buy it from me in july.
Also, what'll the prices be like when the 5000's come out? For example, will the 4870 stay $200 while the, lets call it 5870 costs more? Or will the 4870 drop in price and the 5870 will take it's price point? I ask because $200-ish will still be my price range next month if the 5000 series Radeons do come out, and as of right now I can get two 4770s really close to that price.

TSMC was having issues with their 40mm process which resulted in low yields (20% at best from what I've read). They have recently resolved their issues, but it will take some time for more HD 4770 GPUs to reach the market in mass.

There are only a few OEMs that manufactures video card for all other brand names. One example is Sapphire's parent company. HD 4770 video cards with different coolers should reach market later this month.

So what does this mean for when the 4770's do start showing up in mass? Issues resolved and new coolers attached, will we see noteworthy performance improvements on these cards or does that really not make a big impact outside of looks?

 

[dirtmountain]

You also have to be cautious of some HD4770s that have been showing up with DDR3 instead of DDR5.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814129131

 

[EXT64]

Do you think that's right? It may have just been a typo (wouldn't have been the first time).

 

[witcherx]

pounce on them... cheers....

 

[witcherx]

some1 wants to sell...
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/265450-33-fair-price-4770

hehe

 

[mactronix]

When new cards are first released, which incidently is when the company ATI/AMD or Nvidia etc are good and ready. They are not held to a release date by anyone else and its quite often a release date will be changed at short notice for one reason or another, market forces such as Nvidia releasing something or them wanting to beat Nvidia to a new launchwould be the only reason AMD/ATI would rush release anything.

Any way new cards are all referance cards when first launched, which is to say all identicle except for stickers and whatever performance differances there might be within the normal running perameters of the hardware, some chips are better than others and vice versa.

After a while the board partners are then permitted to make certain designated changes to the referance cards. This can range from just sending them out with higher clock speeds, to a whole differant PCB board and a revision chip with higher rated Memory modules and a fancy aftermarket cooler. At this point it isnt really the same card at all but still carries the same name but probably with the word "Top" or some such after it, 4770 Turbo etc.

The chips used for such cards are usually the ones that passed testing at a higher level and so can to a higher spec gauranteed, which you dont get when overclocking yourself.

I was going to wait for the after market cards myself but decided to get in early.

Mactronix

 

[dirtmountain]

Do you think that's right? It may have just been a typo (wouldn't have been the first time).

I doubt it, all the other boxes have bullet points touting their use of DDR5, Visionteks box is curiously blank with a large white sticker on it, (probably covering their old DDR5 bullet point)

*EDIT* Newegg has now changed the Visiontek to DDR5, so it looks as though EXT64 was right and it was a typo.