ATI Radeon HD 4770 In CrossFire: Unbeatable At $220

Versus Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 280

By now you’re probably thinking, “Great—you tested against a bunch of less-expensive cards and ATI’s one quicker single-GPU solution. Where’s the GeForce GTX 275?” We’ll do you one better. How about a GeForce GTX 280? The card still sells from anywhere between $305 and $350 online and should technically outclass the two 4770s. So, we took a handful of the most strenuous games and put the two solutions head to head.

Without AA enabled, the two Radeon HD 4770s are shockingly either as fast as or slightly faster than a single GTX 280. Turn on the eye candy, and Nvidia’s solution slips into the lead. But at 1680x1050, where the GTX 280’s 512-bit memory bus and 1 GB frame buffer help it pull away, we’ve already dropped down to 40 fps, making the victory a little less meaningful.

The two configurations trade blows in Stalker without the AA enabled, but perform very similarly overall. The same applies when anti-aliasing is turned on in the game. Below 1280x1024, however, things slow down too much to be considered playable.

World in Conflict favors Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 280 at 1280x1024 and 1680x1050. But the CrossFire’d 4770s pull ahead at 1920x1200. With AA on, the GTX 280 again leads at the two lower resolutions, while things even up at 1920x1200.

All in all, not a  bad showing for a pair of 4770s. Yeah, we were surprised too.

Chris Angelini
Chris Angelini is an Editor Emeritus at Tom's Hardware US. He edits hardware reviews and covers high-profile CPU and GPU launches.
  • curryj02
    BRING BACK THE DROP DOWN MENU FOR NAVIGATION!! ARGHHHH!!
    Reply
  • cangelini
    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!
    Reply
  • crisisavatar
    curryj02BRING BACK THE DROP DOWN MENU FOR NAVIGATION!! ARGHHHH!!Seriously, is a hassle to browse without it.
    Reply
  • Spathi
    This RSS feed has the Intel logo??? Larrabee on the mind? ahaha
    Reply
  • Summer Leigh Castle
    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. :D
    Reply
  • mrubermonkey
    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.
    Reply
  • Ciuy
    what drop down menu`s ? :p didnt notice anything lol

    i like old school navigation :D
    Reply
  • xbsoft
    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!
    Reply
  • ta152h
    Just put in the URL to jump to the page you want, for now.

    For example - http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-4770-crossfire,2288-3.html will get you to page three. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-4770-crossfire,2288-5.html will get you to page five, etc...
    Reply
  • quickwind
    Hmmm I wonder how three of these would scale together. Nice article as well, very interesting how this compares to the other cards
    Reply