Sapphire HD 4770 PCIe Graphics Card Review
May 22, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
MSI R4770 T2D512 Radeon HD 4770 Video Card Review
May 20, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
The recent economic downturn has affected all aspects of the computer industry including the CPU and video card industry. While in previous years the hardcore enthusiast have been willing to shell out a lot of bucks for the high-end video cards that market has dried up. NVIDIA’s margins for their video cards have gone way down and they have lost money for the last two quarters. AMD is barely hanging in there financially, with losses every quarter. Today’s video card buyer is looking for the best bang-for the buck in their pricing category.
ATI launched the Radeon HD 4770 last month to a lot of fanfare for a video card that performs near the level of its bigger brother the HD 4870 with a price point of around $99 online. This card seems to pave the way with high performance and great feature sets that can’t be met by NVIDIA’s solution. ATI has delivered in a big way, outstripping the intended competition and bringing the first 45 nanometer process video cards to the desktop market, just like they were the first to deliver the first 40 nanometer mobile parts. Today’s review is on the MSI R4770 T2D512 video card, the latest card from MSI.
Gigabyte GV-R477D5-512H-B Radeon HD 4770 Videocard Review
May 13, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
If you missed the launch of ATI’s Radeon HD 4770 GPU you’re in for a special treat today. PCSTATS is testing out Gigabyte’s GV-R477D5-512H-B Radeon HD 4770 videocard alone, and in Crossfire mode so you’ll know exactly what two of these mainstream cards can do for you! We already know one Radeon HD 4770 graphics card offers great performance for under a hundred bucks, the real question is what level of gaming performance will two 4770’s teamed up under Crossfire deliver? Mainstream videocards often scale faster and farther than pricey flagship videocards, so it’ll be interesting to see where two Radeon HD 4770’s stand against videocards several times their price.
First the basics. ATI’s Radeon HD 4770 (code name RV740) is derived from the venerable Radeon RV770 GPU. The Gigabyte GV-R477D5-512H-B videocard has its GPU clocked at 750MHz and is equipped with 512MB GDDR5 memory running at 800MHz, giving it a bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s. The memory bus is 128-bit wide, which should make for an interesting comparison between it and the mainstream Radeon HD 4850. PCSTATS will breakdown all the numbers in a moment, including benchmarks with the GV-R477D5 card running in Crossfire, but first let’s introduce you to Gigabyte’s GV-R477D5-512H-B PCI Express 2.0 x16 graphics card.
Review of Overclocked Radeon HD 4770
May 6, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
AMD launched Radeon HD 4770 (RV740) on April 28th which is the first GPU built on 40nm manufacturing process. As we mentioned, Radeon HD 4770 is coming with 640 stream processors and core/memory clock of 750/800MHz. AMD has slashed the memory interface to 128-bit, while adopts GDDR5 memory to make up the bandwidth loss. Actually, the reduction of memory interface is good for PCB wiring, and helps to reduce the die size.
Thanks to the advanced 40nm technology, Radeon HD 4770 does pretty well in power consumption management. According to our benchmark, HD 4770 also shows great overclocking potential, and we recommend you to set the clocks as 850/1000MHz when overclocking.
Radeon HD 4770 was only behind HD 4850 by 5.66% according to our test, so what would happen if HD 4770 is overclocked?
XFX First to Use Premium Reference Design for Radeon HD 4770
April 30, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
XFX continues to show enthusiasm with its ATI Radeon line of products, by coming up with the first Radeon HD 4770 accelerator for the market to use the premium reference design for Radeon HD 4770 (model: XFX 4770ST D5 512MB). AMD had come up with two choices of coolers for its partners. Most of them choose the one which is more cost-effective, so the sales margins could be improved in an already tight pricing-segment.
XFX used the premium reference-design cooler and PCB, with a major difference that it comes in black instead of red. XFX has so far had a knack of trying as hard as it can, to color its cards black. The company did so with the Radeon HD 4870 reference design accelerator recently. This card retains the reference clock speeds of 750 MHz (core), and 800 MHz (memory). Given that XFX chose the more expensive parts in making this card, it will pass on the premium to the consumer, making it slightly more expensive than the reference design cards in its league.
Source: CPUsers.gr | techpowerup
Sphere: Related ContentFaster Graphics For Lower Prices: ATI Radeon HD 4770
April 28, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
First things first: the Radeon HD 4770 is faster than existing 4800 series hardware (namely the 4830). Yes, this is by design.
We hate to start another article complaining about naming (there seems to be some sort of pervasive renaissance of poor naming this year), but let’s talk about why exactly we are in this situation with a look back at something from our RV670 coverage:
At least it’s ironic.
Yes, the problem is born out of AMD’s attempt at sensible, appropriate naming. The problem is that AMD seems to want to associate that “family” number with the physical GPU than with the a performance class. This is despite the fact that they generally use increasing numbers for “families” that are generally faster. Thus, the 40nm RV740 needs a new family name, and they can’t really choose 49xx presumably (by us) because people would be more upset if they saw a high number and got lower performance than if they saw a lower number and got higher performance. So Radeon HD 4770 it is.
When we brought up our issues with the naming scheme, AMD was quick to respond that naming is one of the most contentious things that go on in bringing a graphics card to market. People get passionate about the issue. Passion is great, but not if it confuses, misleads, or distracts the end user. And that’s what a decision like this does. There is no practical reason that this card shouldn’t be named 4840 to reflect where it’s performance falls. After all, the recently released 4890 is host to quite a few tweaks to the physical layout of the chip and it isn’t called the 4970.
At the same time, that trailing zero is doing nothing on all AMD hardware. There is an extra number in there that could allow AMD to shift some things around in their naming scheme to retain all the information they want to reflect about architecture generation, processes revision, performance class and specific performance within that class. If we are going to have a model number system, in order to have real value to both the informed and casual graphics card user it needs to be built to properly represent the underlying hardware AND be strictly related to performance. With this move, AMD joins NVIDIA in taking too many liberties with naming to the detriment of the end user.
Now that that’s taken care of, what we have today is a 40nm GPU (the first) paired with 512MB of RAM on a $110 card. The package delivers performance at a level between the 4830 and the 4850. First indications were that this would be a $99 part and the performance we see with this card at the “magic” price would be terrific. It’s still not bad at a 10% higher price. AMD had indicated that there should be some $10 mail in rebates available for those who are interested in the extra bonus hassle and upfront cost to get the cash.
ATI Radeon HD 4770 512MB Video Card Review
April 28, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
AMD is launching the World’s first 40nm graphics card today with the introduction of the ATI Radeon HD 4770. With such a small die size, it means that AMD can fit more dies per wafer and reduce costs. AMD expects that the Radeon HD 4770 should sell for $109 with an available rebate of $10, which brings the final price into the uber sexy sub-$100 category. Usually the sub-$100 category means crappy performance, but with a core clock of 750MHz and 512MB of GDDR5 memory you might want to think twice about that.
The ATI Radeon HD 4770 is marketed as being the fastest graphics card available for under $100 after mail-in-rebate that is still able to play current game titles at decent resolutions. This is made possible since the dual-slot card runs a core clock speed of 750MHz and 800MHz on the 512MB of GDDR5 memory. This is enough horse power to produce a compute power of 960 GFLOPs with a memory bandwidth of 51.2GB/s.
The Radeon HD 4770 has a total of 640 stream processors, which is double the number that a Radeon HD 4670 has, but is still fewer than the 800 stream processors on the Radeon HD 4800 series of cards. The Radeon HD 4770 has 20% fewer stream processors than the Radeon HD 4850, which will hurt the shader power of the card. Some of that performance loss is gained back by a higher core clock speed and GDDR5 memory, but it will be slower than a Radeon HD 4800 series graphics card. The specifications for the Radeon HD 4770 are very impressive though, and it has twice the compute performance of the Radeon HD 4670 in a card that costs roughly $100.
AMD is targeting the Radeon HD 4770 512MB against the NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT 512MB as you can see from the ATI slide shown above. In terms of general technology, the ATI Radeon HD 4770 is superior, but as we all know what looks good on paper might not work to well in the real world, so let’s take a closer look at this new graphics card and then hit the benchmarks. It’s not every day you see the GPU manufacturing process (40nm) pass up desktop processors (45nm), so this should prove to be interesting.
ASUS EAH4770 HTDI/512MD5/A Radeon HD 4770 Videocard Review
April 28, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
AMD is making a new addition to its midrange graphics card lineup today with the introduction of the Radeon
HD 4770 videocard, based on the companies first 40nm GPU, the RV740. The Radeon HD 4770 strikes a balance between performance and price, coming just under the lucrative $100 mark and slotting in nicely in terms of performance between existing Radeon 4670 and 4850 videocards.
ATI’s new RV740 GPU is derived from the venerable RV770 core, but clocked at 750MHz and equipped GDDR5 memory that runs at an even 800MHz, giving it a memory bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s. The memory bus on the Radeon HD 4770 is 128-bit wide, which should make for an interesting comparison between it and the popular Radeon HD 4850. PCSTATS will break down all the numbers in a moment, but first let’s introduce the videocard sitting on the PCSTATS’ test bench today, the ASUS EAH4770 HTDI/512MD5/A.
ASUS’ EAH4770 videocard is largely based off AMD’s reference design, although it does use a simpler two-slot wide aluminum heatsink in place of the standard ATI thermal solution. It’s not pretty but it is quiet, that’s what matters most. The EAH4770 is PCI Express 2.0 x16 compliant, comes with 512MB of GDDR5 memory and the usual list of supported features; ATI CrossfireX, HDCP, DX10.1, SM4.1, and Unified Video Decoder 2 for HD content decoding. ASUS’ EAH4770 HTDI/512MD5/A videocard retails for about $109USD / $130CDN / £60GBP at stores like Newegg and CanadaComputers.
Between NVIDIA’s re-pricing of the Geforce GTS 250 videocard and the recent launch of the Radeon HD 4890 pushing prices for older videocards even lower, the market for videocards in the $100-$150 price range is suddenly becoming very crowded. Adding another gladiator to the arena can only make things more interesting, so of course PCSTATS is eager to see how the ASUS EAH4770 videocard will compare to this year’s mid-range graphics cards and the titans of the previous generation.
It’s a videocard war zone out there, let’s see how much firepower AMD’s latest salvo has!
GIGABYTE HD 4770 512MB GDDR5 Graphics Card Review
April 28, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
The frequency of graphics card releases now compared to two years ago is just jaw dropping. There used to be three models; a low, mid and high-end model. And while we still have that base structure today, there are so many models that fit into each category. These days we have high mid range cards and low high end cards amongst the main three categories; the reason for this is because of the amount of power these cards offer.
The latest card to hit the market is the HD 4770 which expands upon the HD 4700 series from ATI. The weird thing is that it’s a series that we haven’t heard about a whole lot leading up to its release, especially in the new model market. What we’ve seen from ATI lately are models in the HD 4800 series, HD 4890, HD 4870, HD 4850 and more.
With the GIGABYTE HD 4770 in hand we’ll find out if the model is jut ATI getting some attention or a model that’s actually worth checking out in today’s market. Let’s have a look at what GIGABYTE has done with the package and bundle before having a closer look at the card. From there we’ll find out just how it performs.
GIGABYTE Unleashes Next-Gen Performance GPU Powered by Radeon HD 4770
April 28, 2009 by Cabro · Leave a Comment
Taipei, Taiwan, April 28, 2009 –GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co., Ltd., a leading manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards today is pleased to announce their latest GV-R477D5-512H-B graphics cards. The GV-R477D5-512H-B is built on the highly anticipated ATI RadeonTM HD 4770 GPU ─ which utilizes the latest 826 million transistors on 40nm fabrication process and GDDR5 memory. Featuring the GIGABYTE GV-R477D5-512H-B features the latest TeraScale graphics engine, 640 stream processor units and UVD 2 with Blu-ray picture-in-picture decode, the GV-R477D5-512H-B is able to deliver higher 2D and 3D graphics performance and offers features enthusiasts have been waiting for.
The GV-R477D5-512H-B supports ATI’s new TeraScale graphics engine combines the power of one teraFLOPS, 640 stream processors and next generation GDDR5 memory which provides twice the data per pin of GDDR3 memory at the same clock speeds to increase the physical gaming interaction for a more dynamic and realistic experience. In combination with 24x custom filter anti-aliasing (CFAA) and high performance anisotropic filtering, the GV-R477D5-512H-B is able to create true-to-life graphics for everything from grass to facial features so you can max out the settings of the most demanding next generation games or revitalize your favorite titles. Also, with ATI Stream Technology, every user can easily use the massive paralel processing power of GPU for physics, attificial intelligence, stream computing and ray tracing calculations, and tackle demanding tasks like video transcoding with incredible speed. Deservedly, the GIGABYTE GV-R477D5-512H-B graphics card provides DirectX 10.1 graphics capabilities to support Shader Model 4.1 for life-like realism and stunning 3D gaming effects.
With the great performance, The GV-R477D5-512H-B takes full advantage of Blu-ray functionality with dual-stream, picture in picture (PIP) capabilities and one-cable HDMI™ connectivity. Support for the latest 7.1 surround audio visual interconnects ensures you can take advantage of the latest display technology. Furthermore, the GIGABYTE GV-R477D5-512H-B is equipped with ATI PowerPlay™ technology for breakthrough efficiency of power consumption, maximizing performance per watt by delivering the highest level of high performance when needed and conserving power when the demand on the GPU is low. GIGABYTE graphics products are also 100% RoHS compliant, from manufacturing to on the store shelves, GIGABYTE provides greener computing solutions with better power efficiency.
