If you've been keeping an eye on the video card market lately, you'll no doubt be aware the HD 4770 from ATI has been making some serious waves. I don't thinks there's been such a hoohaa about a budget card since the GeForce 9600GT. And "budget" is definitely the price bracket that this card fits into - it landed in New Zealand earlier this month at $225 but has gone up a smidgen due to, I presume, availability issues, which isn't surprising given its popularity.
As you'll also probably already know, its performance is above the 4830 and just below the 4850. You don't need me to tell you this again, so what we're going to do today is double team the 4770 against two of the latest heavyweight "performance" cards which cost about the same as two 4770's in a Crossfire configuration, namely the HD 4890 and the GTX 275. "Silly pablo, Crossfire is expensive and a waste of time, isn't it?" Well, we are about to find out, but first a quick overview of the card's specifications:
Features
# 40nm process Technology (826 million transistors on 40nm fabrication process)
# 512MB GDDR5 memory # DirectX 10.1 support # 640 stream processing units
# 24x custom filter anti-aliasing (CFAA) and high performance anisotropic filtering
# Dual mode ATI CrossFireX multi-GPU support for highly scalable performance
# PCI Express 2.0 support # Game physics processing capability
# ATI Avivo HD video and display technology
# Dynamic power management with ATI PowerPlay technology
# ATI Stream technology
Most importantly, this is the first GPU to market with a 40nm manufacturing process. This means, compared to the current 55nm and 65nm chips out there, it is cheaper to produce, requires less voltage to run, is a physically smaller chip, puts out less heat, and should theoretically overclock like a ninja on fire. Other than that, it has 640 stream processors just like the 4830, GDDR5 memory like the 4870 and 4890, and a 128bit memory bus like the 4650 and 4670.
Something that sets this XFX version apart is the design of the cooler - a much better solution compared to the reference design on other brands for several reasons. Firstly, it expels hot air out of your case through the rear of the cooler. This is always a sensible idea. Secondly, it is a bigger cooler with more fins, which should translate into lower temps and/or less fan speed needed which will keep noise down. Lastly, the fan is positioned over the voltage circuitry which will give them some airflow. This should help with stability whilst overclocking.
Testing suite update!
Yes that's right, pablo has dragged himself kicking and screaming into 2009 by updating the suite of games used for GPU testing - most of which are now based on DX10 titles - but the rig remains the same:
CPU: Core 2 Duo E8500 @ 3600MHz
RAM: 2x2GB G.Skill DDR2-1000 CL5
Mobo: Asus P5Q Pro (P45, Dual 8x Crossfire)
O/S: Vista Home Premium 64bit SP1
Drivers for the cards are Catalyst 9.4 for the 4890, ForceWare 182.50 for the GTX 275, and the stock drivers on the XFX CD for the 4770 as there were no updated ones available from ATI at time of testing.
3DMark Vantage
Yes, we've finally kicked 3DMark06 out of bed and invited Vantage in for a nice warm cuddle. This synthetic gaming application only works in Vista as all tests utilise DirectX10 technology. 'Performance' mode is run at 1280x1024 with no Anti-Aliasing, 'High' is at 1680x1050 with 2xAA, and 'Extreme' is 1920x1200 with 4xAA.
Fantastic start for the Crossfired 4770 here, beating out the two single cards by a fair margin in almost every test. Huge gains can be seen going from a single 4770 to two - hopefully this result is mirrored in the actual game tests.
Far Cry 2
Another new addition to the line up, the follow-up to the immensely popular Far Cry game. These results are from the bundled benchmark program on the 'Ambush' level.
Another great result for our Crossfired duo. Despite the 1680x1050 results not showing any improvement over 1920x1200, the dual 4770's are neck and neck with the HD 4890 and GTX 275 in both high resolution tests. Again we also see a huge performance boost from the Crossfired setup - going from less than 30 frames per second at the highest settings with a single card to over 50fps in Crossfire. You can't ask for a lot more than that.
HAWX
Continuing the DX10 theme today is Tom Clancy's HAWX, an ultra-modern aerial combat sim from Ubisoft. These results are from the in-game benchmark.
Now the dual 4770s really start to dominate the single 4890, gaining up to 10fps more in each test. The Nvidia card manages a solid victory at both resolutions without AA switched on but once that's enabled it falls back inline with the Crossfire solution. Adding another 4770 again almost doubles performance at the highest settings, and still provides a massive boost at the lower settings. There's a common theme emerging here...
