ATI Radeon HD 4770 In CrossFire: Unbeatable At $220

[theubersmurf]

That's funny, I'm glad you did this article. I bought a Radeon 4770 to use as a temporary while I rma my GTX 260 (the ram is damaged), maybe I'll just get a second one and replace my GTX 260 entirely.

 

[theubersmurf]

Actually, as I look at the card, they may be well suited to release a 768 MB or 1 gig version based on this...The widescreens did cause it some trouble compared to the GTX 280, I bet they would be well served with some more ram.

 

[JohnMD1022]

3:50 A.M. EDT, 5-5-2009. Newegg shows 3 different 4770s at 99.99 with $10 MIR and $7 shipping. Total 96.99 each.

Buy 2 and the total is $210.20 less the $10 MIR = $200.20.

Remember, you only get one rebate at a time.

Developers in France, eh?

Maybe that explains why we have to put up with that irritating language selection pop-over all the time now. Anyone ever think of just setting a cookie to eliminate the problem?

 

[JohnMD1022]

There... see that? You have no difficulty remembering my name, so why not my language too?

 

[cangelini]

It is a cookie ;-) It only pops up over and over if you're blocking cookies.

King, MT/s rate is fixed--that's what happens when I try doing math at 4AM. Thanks for the catch.

 

[nottheking]

[citation][nom]theubersmurf[/nom]Actually, as I look at the card, they may be well suited to release a 768 MB or 1 gig version based on this...The widescreens did cause it some trouble compared to the GTX 280, I bet they would be well served with some more ram.[/citation]
Yes, I feel the Crysis benchmarks shows that perhaps 1GB might have more use than was previously thought, so there could be more merit to releasing a 1GB version than for other cards that HAVE had such memory attached to them. After all, we're talking a card that is more powerful than, say, a Radeon HD 2900XT.

As for 768MB, I'd note that framebuffer size on a card must be a multiple of both the interface width and a power of 2, since memory chips themselves only come in power-of-2 sizes; i.e, right now cards use chips in three sizes: 64MB, 128MB, and 256MB. Under the DDR specification, each chip uses up exactly 32 bits of the memory interface. So the only way to get a 768MB card would be to have something like a 192-bit memory interface, (like the GeForce 9600GSO) or a 384-bit one. (like the GeForce 8800GTX)

So, a 768 MB version is out of the question. a 1024MB version isn't, but might be as for now: so far, GDDR5 chips have only shown up in the 64MB and 128MB flavors. Since the 4770 can only use 4 chips at once, they'd have to use 256MB chips to get to 1GB. And while they certainly do exist for DDR2 and GDDR3 forms, the slower memories see size increases first, well before faster types like GDDR4 and GDDR5 would. (this is why you see all those low-end cards with annoyingly large amounts of slow DDR2) So it's quite possible that there isn't any viable production of 256MB GDDR5 chips, so we might not be able to see a 1GB version for quite some time, simply because the parts wouldn't exist for it yet.

I wouldn't be surprised to see GDDR3 or even DDR2 versions of this card out with 1GB, though, so I'd recommend people remain skeptic if they're holding out for one, as the first such boards with 1GB will very likely be of that very sort.

[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]that's what happens when I try doing math at 4AM. Thanks for the catch.[/citation]
When it happens to me, I usually take it as my sign to go to bed. And no problem whatsoever; I think most of us are used to GDDR5 and understand it enough that it wasn't much of a biggie.

 

[arkadi]

I think is all grate on paper, but I will definitely pay the difference and use a single card solution. "if it not there it won't be damaged". The price/performance ratio is questionable as well. Add to the equation the more expansive main board, the better PSU, and the power consumption. But that just me, if you want to show with two pointless cards that your business.

 

[xsamitt]

Well we have the drop down menu back......How about our avatars?

 

[nottheking]

[citation][nom]arkadi[/nom]I think is all grate on paper, but I will definitely pay the difference and use a single card solution. "if it not there it won't be damaged". The price/performance ratio is questionable as well. Add to the equation the more expansive main board, the better PSU, and the power consumption. But that just me, if you want to show with two pointless cards that your business.[/citation]
That was why they ran benchmarks, for those that actually read them; the dual-card setup worked, and worked well. As for reliability, sure, two cards means increased odds of one going bad, but on the flip side, if one does go bad, you can keep gaming with a single card while your other one gets replaced, in contrast to if you only had one to begin with, you're SOL and not gaming for the next few weeks.

Similarly, as far as price goes, given that ATi was a lot more permissive of letting others add CrossFire support to their chipsets earlier on than nVidia, there's a *lot* of boards out there that support it, with it pretty much universal in high-end boards. (for instance, all i7 boards I see appear to support CrossFire. Ditto for all socket-AM3 boards) So in that case, the price difference is simply not significant like it was before, it like it can be for SLi motherboards.

Similarly, if you likewise checked, because RV740 has fewer transistors than RV770, and is two half-nodes shrunk, the whole card has less than half the power consumption of a 4790 at full load. In other words, if a power supply will run one of the bigger-GPU cards, it's got enough juice to run a pair of 7440s. Similarly, 4770s only have 1 6-pin power plug per, compared to 2 for cards like the 4790 and GTX 260 C216. So yeah, any power supply that will run one of those 1-GPU behemoths would run these; the same number of plugs, slightly lower power consumption...

All told, it's hard to argue that a pair of these is "pointless;" most people had no choice but to have CrossFire boards even if they had a single GPU or even went nVidia, Or likewise wouldn't. This is a $200US setup readily besting $250US single-GPU cards, and it's proven to work. And it doesn't require a special power supply at all. All told, yes, this makes plenty of sense. It doesn't make sense for those who already have a non-CrossFire board, but for someone building new, this can be a good place for the priceerformance ratio right now.

 

[cyberkuberiah]

640 SP's with 140 mm2 die size ... the next gen , hd 5800 should see a healthy increase ,and be very good for gpgpu apps with openCl and directx 11 "compute" .

i saw an openCl demo of havok cloth , and it was lovely . i wonder what westmere with 6 cores and hd5000 with directx11's explicit support of multithreaded rendering , would enable on games !

 

[Guest]

What about a GPGPU benchmark test aswell for these newer cards that support it?

 

[theubersmurf]

[citation][nom]nottheking[/nom]As for 768MB, I'd note that framebuffer size on a card must be a multiple of both the interface width and a power of 2, since memory chips themselves only come in power-of-2 sizes; i.e, right now cards use chips in three sizes: 64MB, 128MB, and 256MB. Under the DDR specification, each chip uses up exactly 32 bits of the memory interface. So the only way to get a 768MB card would be to have something like a 192-bit memory interface, (like the GeForce 9600GSO) or a 384-bit one. (like the GeForce 8800GTX)So, a 768 MB version is out of the question. [/citation]Didn't know this, thx.

 

[cangelini]

You guys ask, we deliver. Drop-down menu (a fast one, this time) is in place!

 

[LLJones]

Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but when looking at Toms and only Toms test marks, The XFire 4770 beat the GTX 275 at 1900x1200 in every test. This comes at a $50 lower price tag. $35 cheaper than a 4890. I have read that there will be no support for quadfire. If you want to save that money right now and have a current very nice gaming card(s) then I have to agree that this is the best deal out there, especially if you overclock. The down side is that you are stuck at this level. No support for quad. If you save up and get the 275 or the 4890, then at least you have the option of XFire/SLI for future upgrade.

 

[DXRick]

A lower-end platform would make more sense from an economic standpoint, but then you'd be introducing other variables into the test. You wouldn't, for instance, get the true difference between GPUs because processing power might hold you back.

For a look at this phenomenon exactly, check out our original 4770 review, where we addressed this exact concern. Here's the link:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-4770,2281-12.html

That is my point! GPU tests use the fastest CPU. CPU tests use the fastest GPU.

Would CFing two 4770s be good for an AMD Phenom II X3 720 build, or would it be a waste on that platform? At what point do the slower CPUs (than the i7 965) limit your GPU choices? If your goal is to maintain a minimum of 30FPS (the minimum to make a game playable) what is a good overall system for certain budgets?

Thx.

 

[cangelini]

It isn't going to be a hard line. I suspect you'd see frame rates marginally lower than the Core i7 at 1280 or 1650, and then as you get closer to 1920, the numbers start evening out more and more.

The Phenom II X3 720 would be a good match-up to these boards. This is actually a good story idea, though, discussing building a balanced PC and what you give up as you slide up or down the scale using different hardware. I'll see what I can put together.

 

[DXRick]

It isn't going to be a hard line. I suspect you'd see frame rates marginally lower than the Core i7 at 1280 or 1650, and then as you get closer to 1920, the numbers start evening out more and more.

The Phenom II X3 720 would be a good match-up to these boards. This is actually a good story idea, though, discussing building a balanced PC and what you give up as you slide up or down the scale using different hardware. I'll see what I can put together.

Thanks! Actually, the first question that popped into my feeble mind when I read the article, was whether it would be better to build a Q9550 system with a P45 mobo and DDR2 RAM (versus an i7 920 system with X58 mobo and DDR3 RAM) and use a HD4870 X2. You would save $200 (or so) getting a $100 mobo and DDR2, and the 4870 X2 is about $200 more than 2 4770s.

Thx.

 

[cangelini]

Well, it depends on your purpose Rick. Are you going to be gaming, primarily, or running productivity-oriented apps? If your time will be fairly split, I'd actually lean in the direction of the i7. If this is a gaming box, first and foremost, put the emphasis on that graphics card, for sure!

 

[Dax corrin]

[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]Generally I'd tend to agree that even the single-card segmentation is nuts. Adding prices for 2-3 cards makes things too complex. However, in this case, I'm convinced that there is a case to be made for 4770s in CrossFire. Perhaps that story will change when ATI refreshes its high-end lineup.And for those who don't read the preceding comments--yes, not having a drop-down or ToC bothers me, too. Several people here are working with the developers in France to get this fixed/updated ASAP. Please stay tuned.[/citation]
Oh, the French are involved? They'll struggle for like 5 minutes and surrender. *sarcasm*

 

[marraco]

XY chart:

well, resuming this data:
Radeon HD 4770 GeForce GTX 260 C216 Radeon HD 4870 Radeon HD 4770 CrossFire Radeon HD 4890 GeForce GTX 280
Price 110 180 190 220 250 310
far cry 2 54,5 67,8 70,1 92,3 80,3
Crysis 2 34,9 44,8 48,8 51,3 56,1 51,21
L4D 82,2 110,1 112,8 116,1 118,3
Stalker 19,4 32,4 31,3 39,2 36 37,9
WiC 30 50 44 54 48 55
Average 44,2 61,02 61,4 70,58 67,74

(I only used max settings, at 1280x1024),
i did this XY price-Perfornamce chart:
On Y axis, is price, and on X axis is performance

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_AIJ1WOm9bKQ/SgC9fl0g1eI/AAAAAAAAADE/GMREU17thxA/s1600-h/XY+4770+vs+260.PNG

it shows that 260 and 4870 are almost in the same spot for price/performance (altought the 260 offers future PhysX, so I personally pick it as the winner).

beyond his price, only the 2x4770 gives an advantage (is clearly shown on the averaged points)

the 4890 and 280 are an absolute waste of money. They are less powerful and more expensive.

an interesting conclusion is that, except in Far Cry 2, the 2x4770 setup does not really gives much advantage over the 260/4870 (and in Far Cry 2, the 260 already gives more than 60 fps for max settings)

 

[marraco]

the link does not worked, let' see if here works:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_AIJ1WOm9bKQ/SgC9fl0g1eI/AAAAAAAAADE/GMREU17thxA/s1600-h/XY+4770+vs+260.PNG

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_AIJ1WOm9bKQ/SgC9fl0g1eI/AAAAAAAAADE/GMREU17thxA/s1600-h/XY+4770+vs+260.PNG

 

[marraco]

ah! I just had see the drop down list again.

Thanks, Cangelini!!!

 

[Crazy-PC]

Nice review and now they add back the drop down menu. Very good

 

[nottheking]

Good to see the drop-down list return. Makes it far less of a pain to navigate the articles.

One thing that also amuses me is the number of people that will vote down my posts because they don't agree with what I'm saying, but then they lack the balls to actually repsond. Normally, I'd say that two-GPU solutions didn't make much sense, but that did kinda start to change for me last year. And the card that did it wasn't a Radeon, but instead the GeForce 9800GX2, which at such a low price it had for mid-2008, was actually very competitive with the then-new 4870. But by now, I do see a lot of places where dual-GPU solutions work; I think the 4850X2 is something a lot of people have in mind. Granted, I don't say it's the universal best choice, but it is *a* good choice.

[citation][nom]lljones[/nom]Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but when looking at Toms and only Toms test marks, The XFire 4770 beat the GTX 275 at 1900x1200 in every test. This comes at a $50 lower price tag. $35 cheaper than a 4890. I have read that there will be no support for quadfire. If you want to save that money right now and have a current very nice gaming card(s) then I have to agree that this is the best deal out there, especially if you overclock. The down side is that you are stuck at this level. No support for quad. If you save up and get the 275 or the 4890, then at least you have the option of XFire/SLI for future upgrade.[/citation]
There is a valid point that the 2x4770 means you won't have the option of doubling later, though the way I see it, given that a lot of cards that start out at a good price-performance ratio often don't see much in terms of price drops, getting one in the present and then a second in the future doesn't always make so much sense, as the prices on an old card typically stop falling when it's been entirely removed from nVidia or ATi's active lineup.

[citation][nom]DXrick[/nom]That is my point! GPU tests use the fastest CPU. CPU tests use the fastest GPU.Would CFing two 4770s be good for an AMD Phenom II X3 720 build, or would it be a waste on that platform? At what point do the slower CPUs (than the i7 965) limit your GPU choices? If your goal is to maintain a minimum of 30FPS (the minimum to make a game playable) what is a good overall system for certain budgets?Thx.[/citation]
Technically, it's possible to get the full power out of a GPU even when paired with a very weak CPU. This is because the load you place on a system can be shifted around, so that the bottleneck can be moved from one part to another. It's just a matter of keeping the load and bottleneck sane.

In this case, with a weak CPU and strong GPU, the easy way to balance things out is to simply run your games at a higher resolution. Raising the resolution does not place any higher strain on the CPU at all, but does drastically raise the demand on the GPU(s) a lot. It's largely a question of if your monitor would be large enough for the cards.

So yes, it'd be quite possibly a good combination there, provided you don't run at, say, 640x480. I'd think that at anything 1024x768 and above with relatively modern games and good settings, you wouldn't have to worry about your CPU dragging your GPUs down there.

[citation][nom]marraco[/nom]the link does not worked, let' see if here works:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_AIJ1WOm9bKQ/SgC9fl0g1eI/AAAAAAAAADE/GMREU17thxA/s1600-h/XY+4770+vs+260.PNG[/citation]
The comment system isn't fully-featured compared to the forum software, hence it lacks a number of features, like being able to quote without a name for the quotee, the ability to directly include images, and lists.

As for the charts, it's interesting to see that you arrived at largely the same conclusion as well. Though I also wonder how things might go if you intentionally cut off benchmarks well over 60, which would also bring the 280 into play.

 

[marraco]

An important note the article needs:
i7 sli/crossfire scaling is unmatched by Phenom II/Core Duo-Quad.

The 4770 crossfire should perform much worse on a non i7 system, compared with single card.