ATI's HD 4770 is the first 40nm GPU
THE RACE TO be the first 40nm GPU on the market is over, and despite some early signs, ATI wins with the RV740/HD 4770.
Photo from ancient past
The chip was meant to come out last December, but like we said, TSMC glitches bit and leakage became the overriding problem. Luckily, ATI actually seems to have followed the DFM rules rather than believing arrogance without a coherent QA program can bend the laws of physics. That is why the HD 4770 is the first 40nm GPU on sale.
It is not a high-end part though, it slots between the 4670 and the 4850, closer to the latter than the former in performance, and will undoubtedly kill the more expensive to make 4830. On the Nvidia side, it sits on top of the vanilla 9800 (or is it the GT239XXX this week?), meaning margins in Santa Clara should shrink a bit in Q1.
The raw specs are a 750MHz core clock, 640 shaders, 32 texture units and 512M of 800MHz GDDR5 on a 128-bit bus. As far as silicon is concerned, the chip is built on the much criticised TSMC 40nm process, and packs 826 million transistors into 134mm2. Power consumption is a little high for a new process at 80W, but that exactly splits the difference between the 4670 and the 4850.
In terms of performance, it is a hair below the 4850 in most regards, beating it in raw compute and pixel fill tests, but losing in texture capacity. Basically, depending on what you are looking for, one card or the other might be better.
That brings us to the ultimate question, price. The HD 4770 will retail for $109 with a $10 rebate, meaning an official sub-$100 price. Given the performance, and the lack of real competition, it should have this segment of the market almost all to itself. µ
Irrelevant Note
The Nvidia online pharmacy has been updated. It looks like they now sell Pravachol as well.
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Charly,
I am truly fed up with the aversion towards NVidia you constantly have to display. There are a lot of NVidia fanbois out there, and actually you are a subtype of them: The NVidia hateboi. This habit of yours is obnoxious. Why don't you just cram it up your behind, STFU with that personal crap of yours and leave us alone with it?
This is coming from somebody who prefers ATI, but yet.
undoubtedly it will sell like hot cake.
What I love is Charlie hates Nvidia, Nvidia Fan Bois hate Charlie, Nvidia Fan Bois complain about Charlie hating Nvidia and he shouldn't complain so much. But in there complaining they're complaining about him and doing the same thing. So now I want to add to this by complaining about the fanbois complaining about Charlie complaining about Nvidia.
I love the internet. It brings out the whinger in all of us.
Love Matthew
I'm glad to see someone who speaks the truth about Nvidia.
All nvidia cares about is milking it's customers, why else would they re-brand the same card 3 TIMES.
(GTX9800,GTX9800+,GTS250)
I guess some people can't handle the truth so they deny it then attack the messenger.
Dear King Charlie ... please keep up the good work pressuring NVidia to come clean with their dodgy benchmarks and other such claims.
Ultimately it is helping to ensure the poor gamer gets more FPS for his buck.
Plus they started it ... didn't they?
Cripes ... where did that whole thing start?
How bout a potted history ??
Nvidia have just lost the mid range spectacularly. They won't have anything to compete with the 4770 for at least 6 months.
I would be more interested in this article if there was some benchmark on the new 4770 vs the GT250. I hear they are going to be priced similarly. And plz keep your fanboi comments to yourself.
WTF!..I have a 9800GTX+ & I think it's a great card,so STOP slagging off NVidia
& it's products.
You AMD\ATI fanbois are probably the same ones that whinge at INTEL,as opposed to AMD.
My old rig was a AMD64x2 4400(a decent prossie), with a 7800GS(Gainward)GPU & I've got to say that card was C..p in comparison to the 9800gtx+ card,that's on board a P5E3 Deluxe & QX9650.
And yes,I've got a pretty fast rig,even if it's not quite the latest.
If youv'e whinged about NVidia then, your a ATA/AMD Fanbois & know nothing about NVidia,try their products & then complain,but I have no complaints,it spits out Crysis ahich imho is a c..p game.
"anon", do you realise that the 7800GS is also an Nvidia card? And that totally invalidates any argument you thought you had?
It doesn't matter what you think about your 9800gtx+ either. All that matters is the 4770 beats it in most games and costs a lot less while drawing less power.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3553&p=1
Hey WOW,
I don't buy that article,any comparison is NEVER exactly like for like.
As the article says,it could be hardware/driver tweaks, or the fact expressed in the article that,AoC favours AMD/ATI hardware.
Again,the game settings were only set at high,what about very high on 1920x1200 with full physics,as in NVidia cards?
Even on that result,it doesn't make me want to change hardware,especially as I am very happy with the 9800GTX+(not the unclocked 9800GTX).
The 4770 may well be a good card & I am not slagging off AMD/ATI,although Intel will probably always beat AMD on speed,the AMD used to be innovative in design,unfortunately, they will probably never produce a ferarri type cpu.
I know the 7800GS was a NVidia chip,the one I had was faulty,which is why I changed my rig from a AGP setup to PCI,only because of AGP bandwidth limitations.
I appreciate the reduced pwr used on the 4770,but,you can't change a card on that basis alone.
When playing older games,it's interesting to see the difference that the physics drivers make to the graphics being rendered,something the older GPU cards couldn't reveal when those games were made.
...this article instead then?
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/radeon-hd4770_17.html#sect0
Competition that is.
@Anon and Jimbo, If it weren't For Intel, AMD would not be making chips. If it weren't For AMD, Intel would not have made a Core Duo 2. Nuff said about Competition.
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/164142
http://en.expreview.com/2009/04/28/first-look-at-radeon-hd-4770-crossfire-benchmark.html/4
one word: crossfire.
buy two for UNDER 160 pounds, and watch them muller the 4890, GTX 275 easily and the 285 too most likely. 20 percent faster than the 4890. wowsers...
Charlie has never called the NVidia 9800 and it's variants a bad card. He's just told us the consumer that it's been rebranded several times now.
You should all get your panties untwisted and listen to yourselves.
ATI vs NVidia, or AMD vs Intel, they are at times pretty silly topics,especially, when you consider the significant benefits that we,as consumers, have enjoyed in the last couple of years,providing one has the money to persue those advances.
Looking at GPU's,ATI & NVidia have really upped their products in that time.
I think that now graphics have reached the point of development that we can enjoy physics in games,I would like to see the power of GPU's harnessed towards things like 'Ray Tracing'.
There is just so much GPU processing power that can be utilised,along with power reductions.
I would like to see a design change in motherboards,so that mobo's have two,or more processor sockets,like Skulltrail,with one or more, being used as a GPU socket for physics.
We are at the point where there is no need for bandwidth bottlenecks in any system.
A dedicated GPU socket,along the lines of the CPU socket would,imho be a great benefit to pc users & ought to be as quick to update, as any current PCI slot card is today.
Since the chip supports DisplayPort, there should be also such cards available. I would like to buy a few of these but need the cards to have 2*DisplayPort connectors. And not a single manufacturer has so far announced a 4770 card with even a single DP connector.
The power consumpiton of 4770 was actually measured better than 80W (xbitlabs review: below 50 watts).
I have an 8800gt with dog arsh colour, an old 9800gt looks much sweeter via vga to my overpriced samsung, lots of tweaking with little results even splurged on monster hdmi, hoping one of these comes out with MINI-display port so I can dream of saving up for an apple cinema display that has proper glass [smaller than my samsung but hsips rules over discount mva] if this shows up in vancouver at close to hundred then I will update as to how well it spanks nvidian bottoms, peace out K
ssshhhhh, u dont no wot ur talking about k thnx bye,
he clearly didnt say a 9800gtx is a bad card, just sayin ga 4770 is better and cheaper, therefore its better.
And nVidia will counter by lowering the prices of its cards. You'll still be able to get a faster nVidia card for the same price as a ATI Card.
Im seeing a pattern develop, here.... and I like it!!!
The 4770 is actually late coming out due to yield issues. Also I read that the 4770 is still not available "in abundant supply." Yield is improving but still need to have a lot of room for improvement since it is relatively new. Nvidia is focusing their 1st 40nm GPU on laptops (coming out in the next few months) so they take the benefits of what TSMC learned from working with AMD on the 4770.