ATI Radeon HD 4770 512MB GDDR5 Review

ATI HD 4770 Specs / Market Positioning

Even though ATI’s lineup is a bit further-reaching than what you see here (the HD 4870 X2, HD 4650 and lower-end cards were omitted), it is quite apparent that some very interesting things are happening with the release of the HD 4770. Recently, the HD 4830 received a pretty steep price cut to the point where mail in rebates are beginning to bring its price closer to the $80 USD mark. We can assume this was done in order to clear out excess stock before the HD 4770 512MB made its presence felt.

By taking a close look at its specs, it is quite obvious that the HD 4770 512MB will be taking the place of the 55nm HD 4830. The number of ROPs, Texture Units and Stream Processors is a carbon copy of what we saw with the HD 4830 but where the new RV740 core differs is in its smaller 40nm manufacturing process and internal clock speed. The 40nm manufacturing process seems to have helped in two areas: bringing power consumption to a more than manageable level of around 80W under load and allowing ATI run the core at reasonably high clocks.


However, the one crowning achievement of the HD 4770 is the inclusion of GDDR5 memory. Before today, GDDR5 had been reserved for higher-end cards which carried with them performance and prices that mid-range products could not hope to match. Well, that has now changed with a $99 card sporting some of the fastest memory available on the market. This in turn has allowed ATI to forgo the usual 256-bit wide bus and replace it with a less expensive 128-bit affair. I am sure that some of you will roll your eyes at seeing the specifications for the memory bus but I highly suggest you hold out coming to any rash conclusions until you see how this card actually performs.

ATI used to be the underdog and many of us naturally rooted for them to succeed for that one fact alone. Now they have finally come into their own once again and have an extremely strong lineup to show for it. The HD 4770 seems to be the perfect fit for the current economic conditions and if it is available in large enough numbers, it will take the market by storm. Or at least that’s what ATI hopes…