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AMD Radeon HD 4770 @ [H]

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Brent_Justice

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AMD Radeon HD 4770 - Cheap price, low power, and an enjoyable gameplay experience, all of this is possible in AMD’s new Radeon HD 4770 launching today. We will take the HD 4770 for a spin in six games and compare it to a NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250. You’ll be surprised at the level of gameplay possible for around $100 these days.

The Radeon HD 4770 has a lot of potential for hardware enthusiasts, even at $100. We feel that AMD is finally making video cards for us hardware enthusiasts. The Radeon HD 4770 provides value because it performs as it does using less power and producing less heat with potentially cheaper prices.
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Surprised you guys took the time to review a "low end" card; I certainly wasn't expecting this. Reading now.

EDIT: Cranking up the AA is pretty rocking for those of us still on 1680x1050. It's kind of strange that the original slides showed the cooler being the same as the sample you tested, yet the retail cards have the more awkward looking dual slot fan that doesn't exhaust out of the case. Wonder which one's better now.
 
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So would this be faster or slower than a 4850-512mb? I'm thinking faster than 4830, slower than 4850, but probably closer to the 4850 overall. Is that a fair assessment?
 
Rather odd idle clock for GDDR5, I can't really see any reason why they would leave it that high. I managed to downclock my 4870X2's Vram to 300MHz and it helped shave idle power quite a bit. If they are doing this for performance reasons it would be even stranger since it's the 'idle' clock.
 
Mehen said:
So would this be faster or slower than a 4850-512mb? I'm thinking faster than 4830, slower than 4850, but probably closer to the 4850 overall. Is that a fair assessment?
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4850 512 is faster, i haven't tested 4830 but estimates according to their positioning put it slightly faster than 4830
 
Hypernova said:
Rather odd idle clock for GDDR5, I can't really see any reason why they would leave it that high. I managed to downclock my 4870X2's Vram to 300MHz and it helped shave idle power quite a bit. If they are doing this for performance reasons it would be even stranger since it's the 'idle' clock.
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Indeed, power and temps at idle would be lower if the memory downclocked as well. Perhaps they can make this happen in future driver versions.
 
a 128 bit card keeping up with nvidia's flagship card 2 years ago. Technology is amazing.
 
Trombe said:
Surprised you guys took the time to review a "low end" card; I certainly wasn't expecting this. Reading now.
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Damn straight - thank you VERY much!

(Any word on a Radeon 4750? Reading article, now, but I haven't seen one. Seems, with the power this card brings to the table, you could do a PCI-E-only powered version that would still kick a lot of ass!)
 
I wonder if there's room thermally for some voltage increases, if there was could the 4770 hit 1ghz core?
 
Figure I'd point out, the more reference GTS250's only use 1 PCI-E x 6pin connection... for whatever reason Sparkle and Asus put out GTS250's with 2 of them...
 
Noteleet said:
I wonder if there's room thermally for some voltage increases, if there was could the 4770 hit 1ghz core?
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I'm not sure, but I would *guess* based on what I've seen that 900MHz-950MHz+ is not out of the realm of possibility. Hopefully we'll be able to push the ASUS card up using their overclocking utility which includes voltage manipulation.
 
Brent_Justice said:
I'm not sure, but I would *guess* based on what I've seen that 900MHz-950MHz+ is not out of the realm of possibility. Hopefully we'll be able to push the ASUS card up using their overclocking utility which includes voltage manipulation.
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Can't wait. I think I could get used to this budget and enthusiast combo.
 
This card targets 8800 GT not 9800 GTX :p

But, i feel this review said it just spanked 8800 GT.
 
dderidex said:
Damn straight - thank you VERY much!

(Any word on a Radeon 4750? Reading article, now, but I haven't seen one. Seems, with the power this card brings to the table, you could do a PCI-E-only powered version that would still kick a lot of ass!)
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Running with that latter idea some...

...boy, howdy, you could make an amazing 'passively cooled' card with this GPU! :D
 
AtkinS said:
This card targets 8800 GT not 9800 GTX :p

But, i feel this review said it just spanked 8800 GT.
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Despite what AMD or whoever thinks it targets, we go by price, and it sits at the same price point you can buy a GTS 250, so that is what it gets compared to.

Technically AMD wants this card to target and surpass 9800 GT, and that it does quite well.
 
Really good review, thanks :) As someone else said it's cool that you reviewed a bit lower-end card though still awesome performance for the price.

One suggestion if you do more reviews in this price range in the future - could you consider adding a 1280x1024 or 1440x900 comparison? I know the readership tends towards the higher end here but there are still a lot of people at these resolutions and especially with a lower-end card like this it'd be nice to get a better idea of performance.

Not sure about the [H] readership, but just for an idea Steam hardware survey has 24% of people at 1280, 12% at 1440, 18% at 1650 and only 6% at 1920. (And 20% still at 1024 :eek:)
 
karoc said:
Really good review, thanks :) As someone else said it's cool that you reviewed a bit lower-end card though still awesome performance for the price.

One suggestion if you do more reviews in this price range in the future - could you consider adding a 1280x1024 or 1440x900 comparison? I know the readership tends towards the higher end here but there are still a lot of people at these resolutions and especially with a lower-end card like this it'd be nice to get a better idea of performance.

Not sure about the [H] readership, but just for an idea Steam hardware survey has 24% of people at 1280, 12% at 1440, 18% at 1650 and only 6% at 1920. (And 20% still at 1024 :eek:)
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Thanks for the feedback.

Just to throw something back your way, when you start to get into lower resolutions like that you do become more CPU limited. Also, the 4770 and GTS 250 are so fast that they were capable of running these games at 1680x1050+, so that's kind of the point. Look at Burnout Paradise, the power is there to do 2560x1600 with 2X AA and the game is maxed out at 8X AA at 1920x1200 (8X AA is the games maximum AA level supported), so 1024 or 1280 wouldn't show us anything new or interesting. If you can do 8X AA at 1920x1200 then you can do 8X AA at 1280 or 1024.
 
It would be interesting to see it compared in crossfire against 4890 considering 4830 crossfire beats 4870 and two 4770 costs about the same as one 4890.

Also the cooler in your 4770 is not the one that is going to be at retail according to the review I read at another review page. The actual cooler is going to be a lot cheaper and only cool the GPU. For some reason AMD wanted to ship this much better looking and more expensive cooler for reviews.

EDIT: Here is the link to the page I was talking about http://en.expreview.com/2009/04/24/first-review-of-radeon-hd-4770-99-monster.html

Some cards are up on Newegg, all of them have the cheaper cooler and no mention of a rebate yet. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=4770

Not blaming HardOCP, AMD should not have sent you the wrong card =(
 
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AIBs always determine what heatsink/fan combo they are going to use, that's always been the case. This is a reference card. When we evaluate a retail video card we'll obviously show you what heatsink/fan combo they have employed with plenty of pictures.
 
wait, you guys have an e-gasm over this card and it only gets silver? did i miss something? :confused:
 
matrix563 said:
wait, you guys have an e-gasm over this card and it only gets silver? did i miss something? :confused:
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If it owned the GTS 250 in performance, it would get Gold, it didn't. It had other qualities however that earned it a Silver as indicated under The Bottom Line.
 
ah i guess barely beating it with aa turned up is not enough :). i just didnt see anything at the end that was negative cause i was surprised at only a silver rating.
 
The 4770 will be facing 8800 GT here.

Same price, and 9800 GTX is more expensive than 4850, thats how it's here, didn't think of it :p

Well, this is pretty amazing card, 128 bit, 40 NM 137 MM^2 and thats probaly a cashmaker for ati.

If the price was 90 usd, this would be way better, i guess we can see that in near future, its just been released, and everything is expensive at release.

Still feel that this card should be named 4840.

But, for crossfire, the memory bandwidth is limited, and memory size, if you got 2x4770 1gb and clock the memory to 1100 you get somewhere ;)

I got 4870 CF and they struggle now @ 1920x1200. 512 mb 4870's that is. having issues using the shader power since i got vmemory bottleneck, clearly for 1680x1050, the 4770 CF could be a nice deal ;)
 
I would really prefer if you only listed each cards price sans the rebate. Rebates change, expire, sometimes are never honored. Why not just list the cards at their selling price, with a note that you may get a rebate depending on model etc.

As for the 4770 review sample you guys used, the cooler on it looks quite a lot nicer than the ones I see available at newegg.com. Is AMD playing games here?
 
There is yet no cooler like this review sample around, amd is perhaps playing some games, if im gonna buy a 4770 CF rig, i need dualslots, so i really hope it isn't just for review samples

Funny stuff:
4770 price in norway, and its priced equal/less than most of the 9600's!
And there isnt a 9800GTX GTX250 in the 0-1000 "Nok" at all, so much diffrence countries have.
arranged by price. also a quick note, rebates do not exist in Norway.
But just a little statement of how much diffrence there is from usa to europe :p

This card is going to hit gold in norway, thats for sure!
 
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A simple typo that has been corrected, thanks - Brent
 
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Well, they are all the same, GTX is overclocked ?(9800GTX+) or something, GTS250 is 9800GTX which is overclocked, lower memory bandwidth 8800GTX+55nm.
 
Just to throw something back your way, when you start to get into lower resolutions like that you do become more CPU limited. Also, the 4770 and GTS 250 are so fast that they were capable of running these games at 1680x1050+, so that's kind of the point.
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Thanks for the reply. I was really looking with regard to Crysis and GTA 4 where the visuals are far from maxed out at 1680. But your point is well taken, we are clearly a long way past the question "will it play well." And that's a nice place to be :)
 
128bit? Lower the graphics settings to get same or lower FPS? I think I'll pay $30 more and get a GTS250.

If the 4770 was 256bit it would've been much more interesting.
 
128 Bit doesnt matter, if theyve clocked it @ 1100 or something it would do about 65 gb/sec.

People underestimate the power of GDDR5.

256 bit 4890 fights 448 bits GTX275.
 
Pretty kickass for a budget card. Was just recommending a HD4670 for my friend, but now I'm gonna have him get the 4770 instead.
 
Very impressive card.

Can't wait to see what kind of overclocks and performance people can get out of the 4770.
 
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