Conclusion
A single Radeon HD 4770 at $109 is good. It’s priced right in between the Radeon HD 4830 and 4850 and simultaneously serves up competitive performance at significantly lower power levels. Again—I had planned to give it an award at $99, but reconsidered at $109. Of course, now it’s a little easier to see why, exactly, ATI adjusted the price.
Two Radeon HD 4770s in CrossFire are downright nasty. At a $220 price point, they blow right past ATI’s Radeon HD 4890 at $250. We were already skeptical of the 4890’s value, and the one bit of bad news for ATI here is that 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).
Of course, the good news is far more meaningful to game enthusiasts here. Two Radeon HD 4770s are unbeatable at $220. Almost across the board, in every single benchmark, a pair of 4770s is able to oust the Radeon HD 4890. Moreover, the 4770s use less power under load, run cooler, and, if our samples were any indication, overclock like mad. Need I even mention the two cards keeping pace with the GTX 280—a $305+ board?
You want the party line? Here it is. A Radeon HD 4770 on its own (and at $109—that rebate deal isn’t instant) is a solid card. You can’t discount the value of ATI’s Radeon HD 4830 or Nvidia’s GeForce GTS 250 on either side of the 40 nm solution, though. A pair of these boards, however, deserves the Recommended Buy award. For $220, you simply cannot go wrong here.
