Reviews - Sapphire Radeon HD 4770 512MB in CrossFireX: beating up on high-end GPUs?

[HEXUS]

We take two Radeon HD 4770s and see what kind of performance damage they can do to £150+ cards.

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[sawyen]

This is perhaps the 1st time that I agree that a multicard solution to be of superior quality in almost all aspects compared to the current 1 card solution..

I guess the main problem is probably due to Nvidia's inability to provide a low power high performance solution.

Crossfire 4770 is a no brainer solution IMHO for most who's willing to give it a go..

low idle and even lower load power consumption on 2 cards but provides far better gaming is unheard of in the multicard world..

Kudos for AMD this round, they really did raise the bar for performance/watt in the GPU front..

Given so, they are not doing too bad in the CPU realm as well, tho their initial high hopes about the Phenom I seems to be pants..

I would certainly go for a Phenom II + 790GX + 4770 crossfire setup if I'm upgrading now..

Shame I went for the Q6700 when the price was right..

[DeludedGuy]

I have my 4770, I will be changing the fan, and eventually buy another 4770 when they become dirt cheap

My next upgrade will be a CPU, Motherboard and RAM though.

[Sumanji]

Looks good... I was considering 4830 XFire before, but I gather 4770 is marginally better?

Not that my 8800GTS desperately needs replacing, but the upgrade itch needs scratching

Cheers,

Suman

[fat_chris]

Ordered a (single) 4770 yesterday. Should be a nice upgrade from a x1900xt.

[alwayssts]

It's a much better idea than using 4830's, yes.

Still, if you have something greater or equal to a 128sp g92 (much easier than trying to name all the product revisions) or a 4850, I can't see why you wouldn't wait for the 5000 series.

July ain't that far away, and the 5850 should be around the same performance as 2x4770, all things considered. Thing is, it will support dx11 while coming in at a similar cost. Sure, the TMU advantage (omigod 64 ATi tmus@$200...'bout effing time!) is nice, but in the scheme of things, I wonder if the 5850 will be a better long-term investment.

This is not to take away from the awesome that is 4770, but I would take that into consideration before taking the jump.

If nothing else, this surely shows a great potential upgrade path for early adopters of the 4770, or for people whom can't spend more than it's cost per upgrade.

[Hicks12]

Yeh im waiting till june to see if any word on the 5000 series comes to light and judge if its worth waiting for them.

Good performance, was thinking of getting one and this proves its even better as upgrading is great/

[zephod]

I was about to say something about having two cards and a high idle power draw needing to be taken into account when considering cost. But looking back, that would have been total rubbish. I'm a bit stunned that the two cards come in at the same idle power as a 4890 and beat it at load! Definately a good thing for those that already own xfire capable boards and a 4770.

[Hicks12]

One question i have about dual card setups is.... how can idle and load power usage be so low? Is there some powersaving involved because having 2x the amount should make the useage double(by the gpu amount ofc). Since a review i read the 4770 single was only 210w on load and so 250w for 2 of them seems WAY to little .

[Sumanji]

Are those not figures for entire system power draw...?

[Hicks12]

Yes they are but i meant it as in the extra gpu should add more than what it shows(if that makes sense?).

[Main]

Wow. The 4870 would have to be priced below £125 and the 4890 below £140 to get the same bang per buck scores...

[Tunnah]

yet another revelation when it comes to mid-range graphics, ATI are really becoming the daddies!
what would be ideal is a 1gig version of the 4770 in Xfire and these tests being redone, i reckon with the usual premium of around £20, that would make it a £200 Xfire option which would scare nvidia quite a bit

[Eric F]

July ain't that far away, and the 5850 should be around the same performance as 2x4770, all things considered. Thing is, it will support dx11 while coming in at a similar cost.

Couldn't agree more - now all we need is 1GB of GDDR5 on the new cards, as it seems that memory was one of the few things preventing the 2x4770s from trouncing all the other higher end cards in tests.

[Tarinder]

Yes they are but i meant it as in the extra gpu should add more than what it shows(if that makes sense?).

Hicks, we double-checked the figures and they were pretty consistent. We, too, were surprised by how low the cumulative power-draw was.

[tonschk]

It is a pity , ATI after the digital voltage regulation made in the 4870 went back again to analogue voltage regulation with this new card , I think was better to made the voltage regulation using digital because with digital there are anymore capacitors , and therefore I think is better that way , pity