AMD ATI Radeon HD 4770 512MB

Conclusions

The Radeon HD 4770 is an interesting card that performed very well throughout our suite of tests. It generally trailed behind the Radeon HD 4850 by a few frames per second, but there were instances where pixel fillrate was the main concern and it ended up being faster because of that.

If the Radeon HD 4830 didn’t make the Radeon HD 4850 look like bad value for money following its many price increases, the Radeon HD 4770 will all but confirm that. It makes no sense to buy a Radeon HD 4850 anymore, unless you’re opting for one with 1GB of video memory and even then we’d question whether it’s worth bothering with that.

Performance is almost consistently higher than Nvidia’s price-matched competition, with only Crysis and Call of Duty: World at War showing that the battle isn’t completely one-sided. Even then though, the Radeon manages to either match the 9800 GT’s performance or even surpass it slightly in some instances.

Where things get a bit more complicated is when you look at the GeForce 9800 GTX+ GeForce GTS 250 512MB, which isn’t much more expensive than the Radeon HD 4770 at around £97 (inc. VAT). Of course, there are scenarios where the 4770 outperforms it, but when the GTS 250 builds up a head of steam, there is no stopping it – it can be in a different league to the 4770 in some instances.

Having said that though, if you can’t afford to stretch beyond the £85 asking price, there’s no point dwelling on it because the Radeon HD 4770 delivers a lot of performance for how much you have to spend. It’s comfortable at 1,680 x 1,050 in all but Crysis and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky and you’ll be able to achieve playable frame rates in both of those after lowering some of the in-game details a little.

Power consumption is also impressive as it uses the least power out of all of the cards tested at both idle and gaming loads. Folding, admittedly, isn’t quite as good because the 4830 manages to use the least power. However, when you factor in performance per watt, the difference is negligible and actually works out slightly in the 4770’s favour.

If there was one disappointment, it’s the current Folding performance delivered by the Radeons. They just aren’t up to the equivalently priced Nvidia alternatives and so if Folding is important to you, you’d be better off either spending a little bit more on the GeForce GTS 250, or maybe spending a bit less and grabbing a GeForce 9600 GSO, as it still delivers respectable gaming performance in most games at 1,280 x 1,024 while delivering some excellent Folding performance.

Final Thoughts

The Radeon HD 4770 is a good card for the money, but it needs to stay close to the £80 mark in order for it to retain its value. Nvidia’s GeForce GTS 250 may end up getting a price cut as a result of this launch and that would make the 4770 lose its value quite quickly. The mid-range market is incredibly volatile at the best of times and this is a card clearly designed to upset the balance a little – the Radeon HD 4830 no longer makes any sense and frankly neither does the 4850.

Overall though, if you’ve got no more than £85 to spend and want a graphics card that delivers great performance at 1,280 x 1,024 and 1,680 x 1,050 in today’s latest games, you really can’t go wrong with the 4770.

• Features
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• 9/10

• Performance
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• 9/10

• Value
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

• Overall
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• 8/10

Score Guide

Further Reading

Since the publication of this article, we've done some additional analysis following some price fluctuations on launch day and we've also done a spot of overclocking too. You can read about our experiences in our overclocking the Radeon HD 4770 blog post.