Hardware AMD ATI Radeon HD 4770 512MB

We've just published some preliminary overclocking experiences with the 4770: http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/2009/04/29/overclocking-the-ati-radeon-hd-4770/

 

You don't have to hit them over the head?


Sorry.

 

Certainly looks like an impressive card for the money. Frankly I might opt to put this into any new systems I build especially if heat and power are going to be issues.

 

Well, it seems I (sadly) wasn't too far off the mark with my suspicions of a special "reviewer edition" of the HD4770...

 

Yeah, but as ExPreview points out, there's little difference between the two. I doubt there's some kind of review conspiracy where ATi send out better cards to reviewers. If they had, they'd make it a little more suitble than a massively huge cooler difference.

 

It's a bit more than simply another cooling solution, although it still is the same PCB.

But why not simply send out the same cards to reviewers, which will appear in retail? Should be a lot easier and I cannot believe the new cooling solution was a last minute decision that simply couldn't be implemented on cards sent out for review.

I've got nothing against the new retail cooler, but I'd really like to see how it performs noise- and coolingwise. It DOES make a difference, and right now any HD4770 review (except perhaps for the one in the German c't Magazin) is flawed because of this decision.

 

We've got some retail versions of cards in house and I've had a look at a couple of them... the power circuitry has been stripped pretty bare - another case of pulling as many components off before it stops working in order to cut costs. It's not surprising at this price point, but I'd imagine AMD's response would be "that's a partner decision, not ours" and they'll wash their hands of it completely, even though all of the boards are contract manufactured in a small number of factories.

It's maybe lucky (on our part) that we didn't overclock the card in the review and merely gave you a sneak peek on the blog - the retail cards may not be as good, but they do still have the same number of power phases. They're just a bit leaner (only one push/pull PWM per choke and fewer caps) and so the power won't be as clean - this might affect overclocking. We'll let you know in due course.

 

Glad to see that my 9 month old 4850 is still holding it's own high up the charts.

 

Thanks for the update. I suspected as much from the pictures shown on ExPreview. Another thing that struck me was that the power connector for the fan had been changed from a 3 pin header to a 2 pin header. I doubt that'll save cost anywhere, but to my knowledge that effectively removes fan control functionality, although fan voltage could presumably still be adjusted from the firmware.

Looking very much forward to hearing back from you guys at bit-tech as to how the stripped retail boards change the "HD4770 experience"...