ATi's HD 4000 series has been a huge success for AMD/ATi in the mid to high end market.  This family of GPUs has grown again of late with the very impressive HD 4890 and the equally impressive HD 4770, each attacking different market segments.  The HD 4770 has received a lot of good press because it promises excellent performance to the end user without breaking the bank.  With a street price of approximately $100, ATi will again move the bar a bit higher in the NVidia/ATi graphics battle for the thrown.  To attempt to dispel any notions that this is a $100 card destined for your grandmother's PC, the HD 4770 has been cited as besting the 9800 GT in raw performance.  I think that got your attention didn't it?

The good people at HIS have send over a sample of one of these inexpensive wonders for us to have a go with.  Can all this talk be true?  Can a $100 graphics card actually play current game titles?  Well, let's look a bit closer at the card and then find out for ourselves.

Specifications

• Graphics Engine: ATi Radeon HD4770

• Interface: PCI-Express 2.0

• Engine Clock: 750MHz

• Memory Clock: 3.2GHz

• Memory Type/Size: GDDR5/512MB

• Memory Interface: 128-bit

• Max Resolution: 2560x1600

• VGA Output: Yes with adapter

• TV-Out: HDTV/S-Video

• HDMI and 7.1 surround audio

• Shader Model 4.1

• Unified Video Decoder (UVD2) for Blue-Ray Video

• DVI: two ports

• Native CrossfireX support

$100 Pixel Puncher

Looking at the HD 4770 we find a reasonable small sized card compared to what we are traditionally used to.  Measuring only 8.25 inches long, the HD 4770 won't be giving anyone trouble in installation for being too big.  Outwardly the card looks to be relatively simple in its design.  Under the hood however, the HD 4770 is based on the 40nm process packing 826 million transistors.  It's core is rated at 750MHz with 512MB of GDDR5 clocked at 3.2GHz.  This translates into 51.2 GB/sec of bandwidth.

  

All of this horsepower can be piped out through two DVI or the S-Video port.  HIS includes along with the HD 4770 a DVI to VGA adapter as well as a DVI to HDMI adapter.

NEXT