ATI Radeon HD 4770 In CrossFire: Unbeatable At $220
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Table of contents
- 1 – Introduction
- 2 – Radeon HD 4770s In CrossFire
- 3 – Test Setup And Benchmarks
- 4 – Benchmark Results: 3DMark Vantage
- 5 – Benchmark Results: Far Cry 2
- 6 – Benchmark Results: Crysis
- 7 – Benchmark Results: Left 4 Dead
Perhaps I was a little hard on ATI’s new Radeon HD 4770 in last week’s review. Excited to see planned pricing at $99, it was disappointing when ATI raised the tag to $109, putting the card smack dab between the still-compelling Radeon HD 4830 and Radeon HD 4850 512 MB.
Before that, I was also pretty critical of ATI’s Radeon HD 4890. Yeah, it’s a nice refresh of a successful GPU, but do I want to pay an extra $70 for 10% more performance? Not really. The Radeon HD 4870 and GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 are already fantastic deals at $180-$190. ATI was clearly just filling in a price gap where it thought it had a chance to upsell some extra clock speed rather than going for its competition’s jugular, as it did with the Radeon HD 4850 and 4870 launch.
With multiple Radeon HD 4770s in-hand, though, my tune is much different.
Tag Team, Back Again
The day before the 4770 launched, we received a second card to verify that the fan speed issue we originally experienced was fixed. We didn’t have time to run a set of CrossFire numbers, but your feedback in the comments section made it clear that enthusiasts wanted to see how a pair of these cards stacked up to some of the higher-priced options out there. Fair enough. We were actually pretty curious, too.
At $109 each, a pair of Radeon HD 4770s costs roughly $220. There’s no exact equivalent single-card solution at that same price point right now. A Radeon HD 4870 1 GB runs right around $190 and a GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 can be found as low as $180. Naturally, we’d need to see a pair of Radeon HD 4770s beat both of those less expensive options.
On the other end of the spectrum, a Radeon HD 4890 runs about $250. Most GeForce GTX 275s cost about $10 more than that. We’re comparing the CrossFire’d 4770s to a single Radeon HD 4890, but not the GeForce GTX 275. If you want more information on how the 4890 and GTX 275 compare, check out our GeForce GTX 275 review. The two cards are fairly similar, with the GTX 275 generally a bit faster. Instead, we have a little surprise later in the story: 4770s against Nvidia's GeForce GTX 280.
You also wanted to see a few other points explored: maximum overclocking outside of ATI’s Catalyst Control Center and GPU temperatures (in light of the 40 nm process shrink). Both of those are included here as well, in addition to updated power graphs to reflect the extra energy needed by two Radeon HD 4770s.
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BRING BACK THE DROP DOWN MENU FOR NAVIGATION!! ARGHHHH!!
Working on getting the drop-down or ToC on every page. Sometimes things are changed without advanced notice. Trying to get a solution for you guys!
BRING BACK THE DROP DOWN MENU FOR NAVIGATION!! ARGHHHH!!
Seriously, is a hassle to browse without it.
This RSS feed has the Intel logo??? Larrabee on the mind? ahaha
Great article. Just for kicks, how do the xfires of the 4830 and 4850 compare to the xfire 4770?
How about a dual column menu table? My mobile browser doesn't like to work with drop-down menus. I know, just nick picking like everyone else.
I have already mentioned the drop down issue, but I am mentioning it again for emphasis. Consider Bert Lance's saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." By the way, nice article.
what drop down menu`s ?
didnt notice anything lol
i like old school navigation
The other day I was trying to prove to my brother that 2 ATI 4770's would outperform anything in its price range and my brother didn't agree with that... lol I can't wait to show him the article.
Unfortunately, he already bought a 4850 card which he should be okay for now, I guess.
Anyways, great article. I really enjoyed it.
Thanks!
Just put in the URL to jump to the page you want, for now.
For example - http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 288-3.html will get you to page three. http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 288-5.html will get you to page five, etc...
Hmmm I wonder how three of these would scale together. Nice article as well, very interesting how this compares to the other cards
The other day I was trying to prove to my brother that 2 ATI 4770's would outperform anything in its price range and my brother didn't agree with that... lol I can't wait to show him the article.
Unfortunately, he already bought a 4850 card which he should be okay with it for now, I guess.
Anyways, great article. I really enjoyed it.
Thanks!
"there’s really no reason to buy a single 4890, unless you lack CrossFire compatibility. And you shouldn’t be lacking CrossFire unless you own a motherboard with Nvidia core logic (in which case, you’re probably already running a GeForce card of some sort, too)."
EPIC WRONG !!!!!
I m an avid gamer i own a mainbaord that ONLY has one pci-e 16x slot it is not an nivida chip main board either but an amd based solution. unless you were applying your coment to the rich only, you fail epicly at this comment
wonder what nvidia has up their sleeve to counter this, and...and...its another renamed g92!
Very interesting article.
Makes me regret getting a 4670...
At this price, makes me regret being jobless.
Well, if I do finally get employed soon, ATi has my money thanks to you.
How do these cards react in a tri/quad crossfire environment? Are there even the proper drivers for that yet?
=D
@ Denibgirde665:
Unless you're on a super strict budget, it's not hard to afford a multi-PCI-Ex16 board. I see deals all over where, you can pay an extra 10-30 bucks and get dual-card compatibility. This technology isn't limited to the super-rich anymore. And as this article proves, sometimes it more affordable to go with a dual-card solution.
When is the 4 way crossfirex HD 4890 test coming? The most I have seen were 2 HD 4890 in crossfire on some website.
Any one smell a ATI Radeon 4770 X2?
i myself own the hd4850 card. its amazing to see that this card can perform so well. So my question is, can the 4850 crossfire with 4770? it seems that they have the same architecture so is it possible to crossfire this two?
This just in, AMD announces another price hike on the 4770 after reading this article to keep it's 4890 in the market
"there’s really no reason to buy a single 4890, unless you lack CrossFire compatibility. And you shouldn’t be lacking CrossFire unless you own a motherboard with Nvidia core logic (in which case, you’re probably already running a GeForce card of some sort, too)." EPIC WRONG !!!!! I m an avid gamer i own a mainbaord that ONLY has one pci-e 16x slot it is not an nivida chip main board either but an amd based solution. unless you were applying your coment to the rich only, you fail epicly at this comment
You are an avid gamer yet were enough of a moron to purchase a motherboard with only one pci-e 16x slot. Given that two of these cards cost ~ $220, it's not a stretch of the imagination to think you'd have $100 to spend on a motherboard. And that's not just on any motherboard. That's on a brand spanking new P45 chipset mobo from a reputable company with all the Core 2 bells and whistles. However, if you want to keep your AMD based "solution" (fucking jargon makes me want to RAGE), I peeked on Newegg and found a 790X mobo for $89.99 that has two PCI Express 2.0 slots on it and supports the new AM2+ processors. You're telling me that $89.99 is a lot of money? I build computers with video cards that cost more than 15 times that, and to get these new cards WITH the ability to upgrade significantly, you'd be spending a total of $320. If that's far too much for you to be spending on computer parts, you shouldn't be whining about dual-card "solutions".
Learn to spell, learn to think logically, learn to investigate thoroughly, and think next time before you decide to post your garbage here. It makes you look really stupid to criticize an article when you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.