Conclusions

Ever since the launch of AMD's first Radeon HD 4000 series parts, it's been an almost non-stop journey of success for the company's ATI graphics division.  While NVIDIA have managed to remain competitive with their offerings, complete with their own unique selling points, AMD have frequently managed to match or better them across the board, and it's shown in terms of both marketshare and mindshare, well and truly justifying the strategy that they set out for themselves with the launch of the Radeon HD 3000 series previously.

With that in mind, the Radeon HD 4770 is another clear step forward for AMD's "sweet spot" strategy, picking up on the $99 price point as an obviously important market for both company and consumer (especially so in the current financial climate) and engineering a derivative of their existing architecture to fit the bill better than the Radeon HD 4830 that it replaces - A breath of fresh air in a year that has frequently been more notable for existing graphics boards getting renamed that the arrival of many truly new offerings.

For the purists, there are certainly a few points to get excited about with this launch, from the arrival of a 40 nanometre manufacturing process in the desktop GPU market through to the introduction of GDDR5 on a mainstream product - Both definite steps forward for the industry as a whole, and both promising better, smaller, faster parts at lower price points, which can only ever be a good thing.

In sheer performance terms, the Radeon HD 4770 accomplishes exactly what it intends to, matching NVIDIA's GeForce 9800 GT in gaming usage but via a much smaller GPU die and thus increasing pressure on the competition's ageing G92 die.  This is obviously good news for AMD themselves, but if you're an end user or OEM looking for a part that isn't overly large, power hungry or hot then today's launch is definitely looking like a tempting proposition.  In truth, performance fluctuates when it comes to an outright comparison against the GeForce 9800 GT, which rules the roost in certain games but gets beaten soundly in others, while a number of other titles see little difference in frame rates between the two.  Overall, the trend tends towards the GeForce 9800 GT when anti-aliasing is involved, but the Radeon HD 4770 is rarely far behind, making 1680x1050 with all graphical goodies in-game turned on a near-certainty, and with 1920x1200 often within the board's reach - Excellent performance for its particular price point, in short.

As always, there are of course other aspects to consider, such as NVIDIA's PhysX support or the wealth of CUDA-enabled applications compared to the distinct lack of ATI Stream-enabled software on the one hand, or AMD's support for DirectX 10.1 (as exhibited by our H.A.W.X. testing here today) on the other.  As always, the level of importance of these features depends upon your own needs, but they should of course all be weighted into your final buying decision.

To sum up then, today's launch isn't exactly a revolution for the desktop graphics mainstream market - If you're still running a hugely popular GeForce 8800 GT board then there's nothing new for you here in performance terms, making the Radeon HD 4770 of more interest to anyone looking to upgrade from an older or lower-end part on a sub-£100 budget.  However, it is a very distinct evolution in terms of manufacturing process and technology, offering great performance and features for its price point into the bargain.  It's small, it's quiet, it runs cool and it isn't power hungry - In other words, it's exactly what a mainstream graphics board should be, and that alone may well be what makes it more attractive for many than NVIDIA's continued reliance on their G92 architecture, particularly when coupled with what looks to be an extremely competitive price point against most GeForce 9800 GT boards.

Product information

HIS Radeon HD 4770 512MB

- Vendor web site
- Vendor product information

Recommended retail pricing (at time of going to press): Approximately £85 including VAT

Many thanks to HIS for providing the sample for this review

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