Conclusion

ATI’s Radeon 4770 is a deceiving performer. When you first see its "4770" designation, you assume it’s been designed to slot in between the 4830 and ATI’s 4670. Its use of a 128-bit memory interface reinforces that assumption. But thanks to its blazing clock speeds and the use of the same 800MHz GDDR5 memory first adopted on the Radeon 4870, the 4770 is actually capable of outrunning ATI’s previous mainstream performance offering, the Radeon 4830.

ATI should’ve designated the card as the Radeon 4840.

But how does it fare against the competition? That’s ultimately going to depend on how prices shake out. Right now the card sells for $109.99. ATI says a $10 mail-in rebate will also be offered, knocking that price down to $100. For $100, the Radeon 4770 delivers an enormous amount of performance for the dollar, but we’re honestly getting tired of the rebate game both ATI and NVIDIA are playing nowadays: this author is still waiting for his mail-in rebate on a non-computer related purchase that was redeemed back in early February. Therefore we’re going to call a spade a spade and say that the Radeon 4770 is a $110 graphics card.

At $110, the card’s closest competitor is NVIDIA’s GeForce 9800 GT. When compared against the 9800 GT, the Radeon 4770 was a little faster overall, but it certainly wasn’t a blowout. Performance in games like Far Cry 2, Call of Duty 4, and to a lesser extent, Fallout 3 (only at 1920x1200 did the 9800 GT pull away from the 4770), was close for the most part. The 4770 was clearly the better performer in Crysis, World in Conflict, and Dawn of War 2 though.

The 4770’s greatest threat then is probably the GeForce 9800 GTX+/GeForce GTS 250. Prices on the GTS 250 start at $120 before rebates on Newegg – just $10 more than the 4770. EVGA even has a GTS 250 card that’s OC’ed slightly that is priced at $130. Even Sapphire’s own Radeon 4850 512MB can be found for $120 on Newegg right now.

Both of these GPUs deliver better overall performance than the Radeon 4770 for just a few bucks more than the 40-nm ATI offering. As a result, this is the route we’d suggest for most of our readers at this point in time. The Radeon 4770 is a really sweet offering for sure, but priced at $110 it’s just priced too close to these GPUs at this point in time.

That may change though once more 4770 boards hit the retail market. Once that occurs, ATI’s board partners will begin to compete with one another on price, which will lead to lower prices. Once the first wave of second generation cards with custom cooling and faster clocks arrive, the 4770 prices will fall even faster.

That’s probably going to be the time to pick up a 4770 in our opinion. With its 40-nm process and GDDR5 memory, the chip is begging to be overclocked, and by then RivaTuner should be up to speed with full support, opening the door to higher speeds than what we’re capped at today with Overdrive.

Yep. If you’re tempted by the 4770 today, our advice is to wait a month or so for things to mature a bit more. If you must buy today, the 4850 or GTS 250 will give you more bang for a similar amount of money but by mid to late May that could definitely change. Keep your eyes peeled to see how things ultimately end up panning out.