XFX Radeon HD 4770 512MB video card review

When AMD launched their mainstream Radeon HD 4770 part a little over a month ago, it took us a little while to wrap our heads around what we were seeing compared to the expectations fostered in us by AMD's press presentations before the release - Not, thankfully, in terms of the basic specification of the board, but in terms of the cooling solution.

AMD's slides showed a pretty traditional dual-slot cooler which was very much in the ATI graphics division mold, and that was what we expected to crop up on reference cards, but as retail boards started to make their way to us for review we realised that this wasn't going to be the case, with most AIB partners opting instead for a smaller, less impressive looking solution which nonetheless did the job well enough to be fair.  But what had happened to the cooler we saw in the presentation slides?  It turns out that this particular board was simply a "starting point" for AIB partners, with a price point that most of them simply couldn't afford to run to for retail cards, leaving said boards with a less robust PCB and, of course, that smaller cooler.

However, enter XFX's Radeon HD 4770 and the subject of today's review - A board which seems Hell-bent on following AMD's original reference design far more closely, starting with that dual-slot cooler we were expecting to see on all retail boards which never materialised.  So, this card already stands out from the pack in terms of looks, but how about performance?  Let's give it a once-over, while also seeing what the release of Catalyst 9.5 as the first WHQL driver set for the Radeon HD 4770 brings to the table.