I'm had nothing but problems from 2 XFX 4770's I recieved over the last 4 weeks from Newegg. Both cards have refused to give me a screen AFTER booting into bios. I'm using a Gigabyte GA-EP45T-UD3LR MB, Intel Q9400 cpu, Noctua cooler, 4 gigs of Kingston PC3 10600 and a Soundblaster XFI card. The HDD is a WD 750. The OS is XP Pro/32bit (I think). The PS is an Antec True Power 550. Can anyone on this site look at this system profile and see any reason why both of these cards refuse to give me a Windows screen? I know that the slot is good because I bought an XFX 4350 to test it, and that card works fine. I also installed the drivers for that card off the XFX disk that came with it, so it seems to me that those drivers should allow the 4770 to function at some level prior to installing its drivers. The CD drive is a 48X Lite-on. The machine works fine with the 4350 installed, but will not show me the welcome screen with the 4770 installed. I'm using the provided DVI to VGA adapter to go to a Proview 19 iinch monitor. The fan on the card is working. Can someone tell me what I'm missing? I can't believe that Newegg would send me two bad cards in a row. The odds of that are almost unbelievable. Thanks in advance for any help I find here. Marius-Mark

I know WoW draws a lot of tards, but it's hardly a test of GPU power. Perhaps if you're in a cluster screw in alterac valley or sitting in the middle of a city and just watching tons of people go by, that might do something. Even still, it made me cringe when I saw it in the benchmarking suite. :(

"I was shocked to be able to pick up and play almost immediately, with very little help from a tutorial."

And you put it down just as fast as you pick it up.

Hmm 45 FPS in WoW at 1920x1200 4xAA Ultra... I can barely get that with my HD 4850 at 1680x1050 4xAA Ultra. Are shadows turned on?

What's with the seeming lack of availaibility of the AMD version of this card, which has a nice enclosure around the fan that directs hot air out the rear?

I've tried fruitlessly to find this particular AMD version, but can only locate several versions by other manufacturers all having the same crappy open air fan that does nothing to help actively direct heat out of the computer's case.

I don't like the fact that extremely high end cards are included, especially in SLI and crossfire. Do it like the xbitlabs review and only include cards in a similar price and performance range. It clarifies matter a whole lot.

No offense intended, TR is my fav tech hardware site, but that Xbit review was A+ while this one was an A-.

Is it just me, or does this card seem to be competing with another of AMD's cards? (the 4830). The 4830 wasn't included in the charts, but I imagine the performance would be very similar, and the price is very similar as well. The 4830 is a bit cheaper, and probably a bit slower, but the difference must be incredibly small (likely only a couple FPS in most games)

Having more choices is always nice of course, but this card just seems to have such a small "window" of performance and price. You can get something almost as fast for $20 less, or get something significantly faster for $30 more.

well nice review i finally made up my mind to grab this one and replace my 3650 running on my P4 3ghz CPU!!! I guess ill wait until 2010 and then upgrade my CPU to a 6 core one.

I must say that this review of the 4770 - like most of them out there - does not convince me. Testing a mid-range/budget card on the fastest processor there is leaves a strange taste in the mouth. Somebody on a tight budget does quite pobably not have a core i7 rig, but rather something in the line of an x2 or a 4300. So, yeah, the 4870 is faster than the 4770 (what a surprise!) on the i7 but how about a slower system? I'd love to see a budget card tested in a budget context. Sure, a second testbed is a lot more work but it would distinguish the review from the armada of identical propositions out there...

/reply to #34...

Thanks, that's good to know, though I'm not holding my breath.
4830 prices have plummeted, so I thought I'd have a look at those as well. Unfortunately, they all seem to be two-slot as well.

<rant>Why can't the makers put the cooler dimensions in an easy-to-find place. For most of them, I've had to email them to find out. And in six-out-of-ten cases, I've emailed the (r)etailer as the makers don't bother to respond...
</rant>

Folding performance cares both about shader speed and the number of shaders. But it way more shaders (like ATI has) than can be used, it ends up being shader speed that counts. Nvidia could also have some extra optimizations.
As the projects grow, ATI cards are starting to do better.e.g. The 4870 on some of the biggest GPU projects have almost doubled their PPD. But that gap seems a bit too big to disappear anytime soon.
We've seen on some low shader count nvidia cards a significant hit with some of the biggest gpu projects. But cards like the 250 seem to have enough shaders (for now).
edit: reply to 35...

This must make a killer laptop GPU

The GTS 250 Wipes the streets with the HD 4000 series in Folding @ Home PPD. This puts it way over the top for me. 6350 PPD vs only 2835 PPD on the HD 4770 :

In addittion to the new game benchies please add folding sim to this:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/HD_4770/22.html

I'm not waiting for Stanford/ AMD to get their folding act together. In the here and now there's no contest. Yes if gaming is all you care about than this is not relevant. NVID has their Cuda act together AMD's Stream Initiative is greatly lagging. (For now anyway).

Two things Damage.
1. On conclusions page you say "one has to wonder about the value proposition of any of the cards in this price range when you can sometimes snag a Radeon HD 4780 for $150" it should be 4870. Some people will probably nitpick that.

2. Load temperatures are dramatically different from the original 4870/4850 reviews. I remember these things used to be in the high 80's/90's degrees celsius. Has AMD changed the fan speed rate on newer models of the cards? I remember for the 4890 review you said AMD opted for cooler cards/noiser output for the 4890.

Can we get temp measurements on the two different 4770 coolers?
Or at least a note letting us know if the temp was the same between the two coolers?

Good review.

Maybe somebody who has been following the market more closely can contextualize this for me. I have an 8800GT/256MB right now. In loose percentage terms of both performance and audible noise, what are the advantages of upgrading from that, to this?

Again, not very impressed with the card, since it draws 15W more than GTS250 in idle, negating most of the energy savings, unless you are folding 24/7. And the fact that the card gets beaten by the 4850 in at least half the tests, so it brings nothing new from a performance or value standpoint, since 4850 costs on average 5-10$ higher.

Come on ATI, bring us some high end 40nm parts, and then I'll be sold.

So, another good review but you have been pairing the new HD4770 up with the relatively old 9800GT.

Maybe currently, talking about recent releases, HD4770 should be paired up with GTS250. Of course, there are some GTS250 numbers so they speak for themselves.

But at the moment, a bad one economically, is there a chance that TR (Cyril especially) can try to compile a GPU value article like you did with CPU? I would like to see those numbers and graphs and it may help people to choose the well priced, good performing hardware. Too many too choose from today.

This new GPU scales really well with Crossfire.
Two of these puppies run about 20% faster than a Radeon 4890.
That's really excellent graphics performance for $200 dollars.

Wow. I had no idea AMD had something like this coming out. The modest over-clocking is a little disappointing but hopefully that will be different when higher-end cards are released on the 40nm fab.

Excellent review as always. I especially liked the comments on Hawx. I saw that game on Steam and have been curious as me and my friends might need something to follow Left 4 Dead.

1 year ago my 9800GTX was the best thing around. Now it gets owned by a 99$ card. Amazing how fast things change.

That sure is a nice new chip.So small and good power draw and heat levels yet it's a strong performer.
I notice DX 10.1 in HAWX was rockin....it does look good I have to say.
Still..if I really want a few leaves to blow past my jet in a dogfight I oughta get CUDA I suppose :)

The GTS250 looks to be the best bang for the buck in this range.

Nice review.

Any idea on when/if we'll see a single slot cooling solution? I'd just love to drop one of these into my HTPC to replace a HD 3650, but it has to be single slot.

Help. A Radeon with PhysX? Is there something I missed in the article? Or have I been wrong about something this whole time.

Nice review and good too see some new games in the benchmarks, but what about Crysis, CoD, and L4D benchmarks? Will they be included in future reviews?

Thanks for including Dawn of War II in the benchmarks. That game looks really neato.

The performance gain going from DX10 to DX10.1 in HAWX is impressive. Optimization is always a good thing.

You have transposed two digits in the 4870, 4th paragraph on the last page.

WoW classic has vastly different in graphics requirement (because its 4 years old) than Wotlk which is the latest expansion, the WoW benchmark is not very valid. You can get frame rates dipping to the mid teens with the latest cards in heavy traffic areas like Dalaran.

Outstanding results for what must be a very cheap card with its small die and 128 bit PCB.

The cheapest 4770 at Newegg is $117 shipped, which at just $3 less than a GTS 250 doesn't really reflect the bargain this has the potential to be.