ATI Radeon HD 4770: 40nm Goes Mainstream

"Well-played ATI, well played."

Couldn't say it better, myself.

Looks to be a pretty good card, but nothing spectacular. 40nm is nice, a little cheaper HD 4850 (fewer FPS, too), but all in all, nicely done.

I wonder who'll sell more, now, the 4850 or the 4770?

"The card’s strange behavior continues on the CPU-only test, where it takes a nearly 2,000-point hit for no good reason" maybe because of the 128 bit memory bus

solid card for the average gammer

I'm pretty blown away at the kind of performance that can be had for ~$100 these days thanks to ATI. It wasn't long ago when Nvidia forced us to choice between the incredibly crappy 8600GT for $150 and the ~$250-300 8800GTS 320.

ATI is leading us into graphics nirvana.

Wondering will 4770 a good one for crossfire? Can we have a review on it....? With its low power useage when fully loaded, cheaper price (~$40 cheaper than 4850 when CF), not much slower than 4850 (512MB), and nice overclocking range... It will be nice to see will 4770 CF setup be useful (playable) in games (1920x1200) with some visual goodies truned on.

Wondering about 4770x2, should be wishful item

bardiaI'm pretty blown away at the kind of performance that can be had for ~$100 these days thanks to ATI. It wasn't long ago when Nvidia forced us to choice between the incredibly crappy 8600GT for $150 and the ~$250-300 8800GTS 320.ATI is leading us into graphics nirvana.

I spent almost $300 on my 8800GTS 320 OC when they came out and I thought I got a great deal. Things have changed! Competition = good for the consumers!

this card is amazing for 1680x1050, if they can manage to slap some aftermarket coolers on there, buying two for the price of a 1gb 4870, and overclocking them, im pretty sure we'd pass gtx 285 numbers.... simply amazing.

great card for 16x10 resolution. good job ati, you've done more damage to nvidia[and they're sickly pricing schemes] in the past year than they've done to you in the pass 3-4

*edit*

just checked newegg and they all have aftermarket coolers on them... wow *_*

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=4770&x=0&y=0

eklipz330*edit*just checked newegg and they all have aftermarket coolers on them... wow *_*http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 70&x=0&y=0

Nah, they're reference coolers from AMD. From what I heard, AMD gave the AIB partners a choice between the dual slot and the, for lack of a better term, uglier cooler. Apparently the "uglier" one is cheaper so that's what you're probably going see for now.

RyunNah, they're reference coolers from AMD. From what I heard, AMD gave the AIB partners a choice between the dual slot and the, for lack of a better term, uglier cooler. Apparently the "uglier" one is cheaper so that's what you're probably going see for now.

i actually like the "uglier" coolers. they look like a spaceship on the card xD. haha

You guys at Tom's are really pathetic. Not only using an early sample of 4770 but pitting it against 1 GB GTS which is in totally different price category. Why didn't you use GTX285 to make nvidia look even better? And that CUDA hyping at the end. Come on, normal person won't need GPU video acceleration. There is no limit in your nvidia bias.

Im just hoping they spend as much space, and lines on ATI's DX10.1 whenever nVidia releases something, or in an nVidia review coming

It will play Crysis!
Now to see, will it crossfire with a 4670? That'd be orgasmic.
I luv my 4670, but I also want the 4770...

I love seeing low power cards also. I'm too cheap to buy a good PSU.
All the cards on newegg look exactly the same...

dang i thought the 4770 would suck compared to any 256 bit interface card,boy! was i wrong!

aznguy0028i actually like the "uglier" coolers. they look like a spaceship on the card xD. haha

Maybe bulkier would've been a better term? =)

Sorry it's late and I'm working on a web computing project so my vernacular is a little narrow.

excellent card but i think the extra 10 bucks made it loose some of it's charm.

phargeWondering will 4770 a good one for crossfire? Can we have a review on it....? With its low power useage when fully loaded, cheaper price (~$40 cheaper than 4850 when CF), not much slower than 4850 (512MB), and nice overclocking range... It will be nice to see will 4770 CF setup be useful (playable) in games (1920x1200) with some visual goodies truned on.

This is upcoming. I know they were asking for CrossFire in other countries as well, but we didn't receive two of these boards. There is a Radeon HD 4770 roundup in the works, however!

The price to performance ratio just keeps getting better and better. I'm simply amazed by this.

Good write-up, Chris. Two points of criticism, one of high praise.

First, I would have preferred to see a whole line of 512MB cards - Tossing a 1GB GTS into the mix makes the higher rez comparisons rather unfair. Given that the typical cost of a 1GB version of the GTS250 is is typically $150-$160 (~$140 w/ MiR), not the $120-$130 price you purport, (those around $120 or so are the 512MB cards) there is more to that story than just the amount of VRAM.

Second, the part about DX10 vs DX10.1 where you said the following:

Quote:

At 1920x1200, the Radeon HD 4850 achieves 12.7 frames per second with “Use DX 10.1” checked (compared to 11.3 frames without it). Looking for a more playable frame rate, we dropped to 1280x1024 and recorded 21.35 frames—down from 21.5. The moral of the story? Don’t expect DX 10.1 to make this title any more playable than it was without the feature enabled.

Why didn't you perform that specific switch on the 4770? I mean, that's the card the article is focused upon, right? Just seems more prudent to apply that to the focus card.

Lastly, I particularly liked the comparison where you went from the "king" i7 to the budget-oriented X2 Kuma. It clearly showed the benefit of a much faster CPU and it's associated architecture in games that are clearly CPU-dependent.

Thanks Raz,

Good point on the GTS 250s--I actually don't have any of the 512MB cards here (only two 1GB boards), but that is indeed about $20 beyond even the Radeon HD 4850. I added clarification to the conclusion to hopefully straighten that out.

Re: the DX tests--given the dismal frame rates of even the fastest card tested, I wanted to stick to the 4850 in the hopes of generating something more meaningful than single-digit frames. As it was, even at 1280x0124, the board wasn't able to generate anything playable still...

It would be great if Tom could adjourn us on today's impact of cpus in gaming. 90% of us use resolutions of 1680x1050 or lower (and 70% is under 1280x1024 - or 1440x900 - according Steam's hardware survey), a range where cpu influence is still significant. I'd like to see how other low- and/or mid-range combinations perform; the i7 extreme vs athlon x2 confrontation is interesting but misses the point. And that other i7 920 vs Phenom II article is still about 250-300$ cpus - to me, that's a limit situation for a budget pc.

I dunno guys. I'm not very good at analyzing, but isn't the reason why Geforce GTS 250 1GB is in there is to show that a card with 512MB less memory and cost $40 less is just a few points behind?

@ronikka : I think they're right about CUDA, but they mention 'enthusiast' which is just a small percentage of overall card buyers. I'm a hardcore gamer, still not an enthusiast. They're also right about we readers know what we want. And before you claim anything, I'm an ATI fan. I currently have a toxic 3870 and used to have AIW series.

CUDA can be a powerful aid if you find the right software

list here:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_home.html#

Haven't looked thoroughly at it but there's one called bada boom or something that converts your vids to upload to youtube that looks good.

I know I hate waiting an hour for my old x2 to convert my avi files so I can burn them to dvd, so having something that could shave off some of that time would be appreciated. It wouldn't be a deal breaker for anyone who has their mind set or is looking at an AMD gfx card, but for anyone already owning an nvidia card supporting it or planning on buying one, it would be a plus.