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.
- 03/05 – Wherefore Art Thou, Fermi?
- 28/12 – Benchmark Results: DirectX 9 With 4x AA
- 28/12 – Test System And Settings
- 18/11 – ATI Radeon HD 5970 2GB: The World's...
- 05/11 – Best Graphics Cards For The Money:...
- 13/10 – Benchmark Results: H.A.W.X.
- 13/10 – Test Setup
- 13/10 – Radeon HD 5770 And 5750 Review:...
- 30/09 – Radeon HD 5850: Knocking Down GTX 295...
- 23/09 – Cypress Measures Up
- 24/08 – Best PCIe Card: $100 To $190
- 10/08 – Conclusion: Sapphire's Radeon HD 4770...
- 10/08 – Sapphire HD 4770 512M (Radeon HD...
- 10/08 – Roundup: Mainstream Graphics Cards...
- 27/07 – MSI’s D.O.T.-Enabled Driver
- 10/06 – Best PCIe Card: $430 And Up
- 10/06 – Best PCIe Card: $200 To $420
- 10/06 – Best PCIe Card: $130 To $180
- 10/06 – Best Graphics Cards For The Money:...
- 04/05 – Conclusion
Been looking to replace my ol' 8800gtx xxx edition for a while and i do have a crossfire board, hmmm
*Darts off to find a 8800gtx Vs 4770 x-fire chart*
I was going to pay AU$225 for a 4850, but for AU$300 I'm now getting 2x 4770's. Awesome
Now I am regretting the 4870 1GB I bought. They really say that as soon as you buy it, it's outdated.
could one xfire a 4770 with a 4850? or better just to xfire 2x 4850?
Cheapest I could find a 4770 in the UK was $123 inc. sales tax. That's not too bad compared to $109 in the US, although you guys may be able to get some form of rebate.
I really like this card. Lots of people are asking me to price up a spec for a comparatively cheap, but still capable GTA IV gaming rig. I can now offer them an AMD Phenom II rig, with either one or two 4770's. Crucially, I don't have to worry about the machine coming back because it's over-heated or they're tweaked the CPU/graphics too hard. That for me is a big bonus. Awesome card(s) with lots of power whether you're Intel or AMD.
Great article Chris.
Bet these turn up as an X2 soon.
I guess you need to update this one once 1GB 4770 cards come out, as the extra frame buffer might even get things nastier for the rest of the competition...
I wonder how NVIDIA will reply to this...
They could always rebadge something like the G92 ... for the fourth time.
I'd still rather have a G80 GTX ... the real thing had a wider memory bus and crunched some serious triangles.
The G92 was a shrink that just saved a few bucks ... at no saving to the customer.
AMD's shrink saves us a few bucks and two of them seem like a killer pair ... comparable to the 9600GT idea I would say (still cheaper though)
/snicker
+1 to 1GB and X2 versions of the card. AMD would be stupid not to! All we need now is the OpenGL physics to go mainstream and we're laughing!
Nice gear. Something for me to look forward to as a CrossFire virgin.
My next rig most certainly gets two of these.
"Below 1280x1024, however, things slow down too much to be considered playable." Above, surely?
£78.53 For a single Sapphire 4770 512Mb inc tax! Maybe I'll finally upgrade my 3870X2 with 2 of these or wait for a 1Gb / X2 version! WIN!
I don't think they have to pull out a X2 card, just up the memory and memory bus. The only problem I can think of is that it will kill the rest of their cards, as I don't believe we'll have to pay more than $50-75+ for this addition alone.
Great performance scaling. Sometimes more than 100%. Weird though.
You can prolly now get 2 for under $200 US Chris ... keep us posted !!
It's not just the FPS that matters...but heat, noise, power consumption...
Not always 2 cards are better than one, unless we talking about Crysis..
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/164568
83 GBP over there, a HD 4770. Thats quite good. and the performance, very good!
I´m kinda regretting buying my 4870 now too
. Though all is not yet lost!
In a couple of months I´ll get either another 4870, 4770 or a better card, depending on what seems like the best choice.
It seems everyone has fallen in love with the 4770 crossfire but when you think about it, your already limiting yourself. For those with 4870 once you put them in crossfire they will also outperform these configs.
Each user has a different budget. The 4890 is not at danger as it can overclock nicely as well as be arranged in crossfire blowing away the competition. Remember directX11 cards are also coming in September.