HIS Radeon HD 4770 512MB video card review

Back in October of last year, there was a flurry of excitement surrounding the launch of AMD's Radeon HD 4830 part.  While this excitement was sullied somewhat by certain boards having incorrect BIOS revisions that exposed the wrong number of Stream Processors enabled in the hardware, overall the use of a cut-down version of the company's top-notch RV770 core with a certain degree of redundancy in place made for a compelling part around the £100 price point, and a worthy competitor for NVIDIA's ageing GeForce 9800 GT.

However, the Radeon HD 4830 was only ever intended to be a stop-gap solution before AMD moved on to better things, and today that time has come with the launch of the Radeon HD 4770, with this new offering again hoping to prove itself to be a nemesis for the GeForce 9800 GT which still refuses to die.  While this new SKU is a clear like for like replacement to the Radeon HD 4830 in some senses, it also exhibits some exciting changes courtesy of its all-new take on the now well-established Radeon HD 4000 series' architecture.  We're lucky enough to have a reference-based Radeon HD 4770 from the good people at HIS in our review dungeon to accompany this launch, so let's take a look at what under £100 can buy you in terms of graphics performance, and whether you might be tempted to part with your cash.