ATI Radeon HD 4770: 40nm Goes Mainstream

[eddieroolz]

Looks like a nice little card, but it still doesn't make me regret the GTS 250. Most of my games play better on the GeForce architecture, so you can see where I'm coming from.

 

[nerrawg]

[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]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![/citation]

Awesome - looking forward to see what these 4770s can do as pair

 

[Ephebus]

Very nice card, indeed, but I would never buy one. Why? Because of the appaling Catalyst control center, with its bugs, clumsy operation and lack of support for individual graphics profiles for games, something NVIDIA's control panel has offered for ages. Not to mention that the Catalyst download page simply doesn't work with the Opera browser. Keep up the good work, ATI, and maybe someday I'll buy something from you guys when you start offering decent software too.

 

[fadirocks]

Comments about the DirectX 10 vs 10.1
check this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSKD_1h_DkU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxFd_kNoDoE

 

[justjc]

Good to hear that ATi and TSMC have a 40nm line going, as it means we might just get Little Dragon at the end of July.

 

[balancedthinking]

The 4770 is on sale @ newegg for 99$ so please start rewriting your conclusion.

 

[Onus]

This looks like a great card. Except for the tiny percentage of people keying off "Crysis," most people will not need more.
This is a gamer card, not a "mainstream" card. "Mainstream" to me is the stuff people TRY to pass off as gamer cards, like 9500GTs; or what Dell and other mass-market vendors use, and sell in large quantities.
Too bad about the price though. For $99, there isn't too much justification for anything lower. At $109 though, they're still leaving plenty of room for the 4670, but they might steal market share from their 4850.

 

[Onus]

I see four of them at Newegg; all are $110 up front, 3/4 of them may have a $10 rebate.

 

[Guest]

Here is the review that should be done...

4770x2 ($220) vs 4890 ($230)

If you do a xfire review of the 4770 please add in a 4890. I will be gladly waiting for those results as I believe it will help justify my purchase decision.

 

[sublifer]

With stock clocks of 750/800 MHz as our reference point, we settled on a stable 830/850 MHz combination

Chris, It's fairly well known that graphics memory will over clock much better without stressing the GPU first. With the already rather high stock clock on the GPU, the cut on the memory path I would wonder if higher memory clocks would really benefit the card. I don't know if they make GDDR5 rated as low as 800MHz but I know they have some rated at 1100-1200MHz which might mean there is huge gains to be had. Could you see how high the memory clocks go with the GPU at stock or maybe even slightly underclocked? Be nice to see how the results compare to the other results on page 3.

 

[sublifer]

Far Cry 2, Left 4 Dead, World in Conflict, and Grand Theft Auto 4 all stand to benefit from a quicker CPU.

Except Far Cry 2 and Left 4 Dead already have quite playable framerates on the X2 7850. The games that really benefit would be World in Conflict and GTA4 both of which are notoriously tough on systems (WiC on ATI graphics based systems and GTA4 on pretty much everything except Core i7)

 

[Guest]

I have noticed hundred times that toms hardware tends to favor Intel And nvidia against AMD look xbit labs review & anandtechs and compare it with tomshardware.

 

[scook9]

So the currently offered cooler is not only "ugly" but also features a fan design that tom's just recently talked smack about in it's 4850 vs GTS 250 non reference article. I have never purchased a card with the design similar to this, mine have all had blowers - with the exception of my PhysX card, but it barely needs any cooling anyway.

Would have been REALLY cool of Tom's to throw in noise and temperatures, 2 things that matter for graphics cards and you all NEVER mention in reviews. That is why I have to constantly check SPCR for graphic reviews. These are big concerns of mine as I currently have 2x 4850's with reference coolers and would like to see what benefits the new dual slot cooler has.

These are very promising cards, I would like to see how big a 4770x2 would be. Also, love that the card is 8.5". I'm glad that ATI is rubbing that in Nvidia's face, you dont need a dam case upgrade just to get there newest cards, the GTS 250 is a 10.5" card afterall...for similar performance to a 8.5" card.

 

[lire210]

should be a good overclocker the jump to 40nm is sorta weird. from 65 to 55 = 10 nm but the 55 to 40 is even greater % change and a higher number of nm weird. i heard 975mhz is easy for this card. good job amd,
and why are they comparing a 1gb nvidia card to 512mb card of amd.

 

[Summer Leigh Castle]

Quick question: Why was the GTS250 1GB used instead of the 512MB model? How much does the extra 512MB of video ram affect performance? Kinda skewed in my opinion.

 

[sublifer]

[citation][nom]Summer Leigh Castle[/nom]Quick question: Why was the GTS250 1GB used instead of the 512MB model? How much does the extra 512MB of video ram affect performance? Kinda skewed in my opinion.[/citation]
Read some comments, that has already been answered.

 

[scooterlibby]

[citation][nom]balancedthinking[/nom]The 4770 is on sale @ newegg for 99$ so please start rewriting your conclusion.[/citation]

This is not the case as of 4/28/09 at 10:15 am CST. Newegg is selling them all at $109 - with some rebated that push it down to $99. Most rebates are a scam, so I think the conclusion is right on point: at $100, this will be an ward winner. I figure that will happen in a week or two.

I also share the glad sentiment regarding the innovation and competition going on between ATI and Nvidia right now, and cannot wait to see the who brings their A-Game in the upcoming boutique DX11 battle.

 

[dirtmountain]

Excellent article, when Toms only has a day or 2 to test a newly released card they usually have to go with the card that's provided by the manufacturer and whatever competitive cards they have on hand. This isn't a hit on Toms or other reviewers, but instead is a hit on the readers (like me) that want (demand) benchmarks and info as fast as we can get it. Yes a crossfire review would have been nice, but where are they going to get the other card? Pull it out of their uhhh hat? A good review of the actual 4770 that's available at retailers is at
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/17320-ati-radeon-hd-4770-512mb-gddr5-review.html and it's only because some anonymous retailer slipped them a card to review.

 

[bounty]

It should have been called the ATI Radeon 4840.

 

[fausto]

By the time i upgrade my 8800 gts 512 for something else...probably march of next year...i will be able to buy an awesome card for 200 bucks. the sweet spot if you want to play everything all settings on.

only like 3 games make my card sweat...the rest are not problem.

 

[Caffeinecarl]

Dang! If I had the PSU to do it, pick up two of these and... CROSSFIRE! I'm a GTS 250 user myself, but this is AWESOME!

One thing though... those chintzy coolers gotta go. Replace them with Zalmans!

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]sublifer[/nom]Chris, It's fairly well known that graphics memory will over clock much better without stressing the GPU first. With the already rather high stock clock on the GPU, the cut on the memory path I would wonder if higher memory clocks would really benefit the card. I don't know if they make GDDR5 rated as low as 800MHz but I know they have some rated at 1100-1200MHz which might mean there is huge gains to be had. Could you see how high the memory clocks go with the GPU at stock or maybe even slightly underclocked? Be nice to see how the results compare to the other results on page 3.[/citation]

Heya Sub--830/850 was actually the limit of CCC. I'll ask Don to try RivaTuner or something in the roundup to go beyond what ATI "suggests," though!

 

[cangelini]

Ok, I take what I said about CrossFire back. Just got a little surprise in the mail and will cook something up for later this week.

 

[Proximon]

Looks good!

...When I could get the pages to load.
Is it just me or are these Google ad links getting annoying? I hope they send the company lots of money.

I was surprised about the power consumption actually. I was hoping for a bit more in that dept... some guys need that power saving argument to convince the wife
Well, not me, but some guys.

 

[Kill@dor]

Better value for your money...it think ATI has a very good thing going here with this card. They are not always looking to be #1 like Nvidia, they stride for their customers interest ^_^

Nvidia seems to love charging large bills for their cards...but even so they do have awesome products and i will continue to buy from them ONLY if its worth the value. My 8800GT plays crysis without a hitch on 3.5GHz E6600...and its only one card...

Can't wait for DX11