It’s low end part Tuesday

Peter G. 28 Apr, 2009 at 12:16am ET Article published in Tech

Welcome to Low End Part Tuesday, the day where AMD/ATI release low end parts. I’m your host, BuddyJ, and we’re proud to be coming to you from sunny Detroit. It’s lovely, especially this time of year …

Our contestants today include a processor and video card. First we have the Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition. Mr. 7850 is a 65nm dual-core chip based on the Phenom, and hails from beautiful Fab 1 in Dresden. A 2.8GHz part by trade, this 95W TDP chip likes his 3MB of total shared cache and low low price of $69 USD. Everyone please welcome the Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition!

All right, next up is the Radeon HD 4770. She’s an all new 40nm GPU with a 750mhz core clock sporting a luscious 512MB of GDDR5. This lovely lady’s MSRP is $109 but she usually comes with a $10 rebate so get ready gentlemen, she’s a wild one. But set your hopes too high for a wild night on the town! Her benchmarks fall nicely between the HD 4830 and HD 4850.

As the games carry on today, I’ll keep you the audience updated with the contestant’s standings, but for now, here’s an early look at where they are:

HD 4770

Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition

Guru3D
Overclocking it at AMD Zone

Comments

28 Apr 2009 ~ 1:36am DrLiam This cpu definitely lures me into building that new system I've been thinking of but too bad it's not AM3.
28 Apr 2009 ~ 12:00pm Tim If the 4770 benchmarks between the 4830 and 4850, they should have named it the 4840.
28 Apr 2009 ~ 12:31pm Snarkasm ATi has performance tiers within its performance tiers. In the 4800 series, there are 4830s, 4850s, 4870s, and 4890s. In the 4700 series, there are similar breakdowns. The 4770 is one of the better cards in the 4700 series, so the -70 tier means it's better than a 48-series -30. The other differences in the card still don't make it a 4800 series card, though.
28 Apr 2009 ~ 2:44pm GnomeWizardd ill stick with the 980o GTX on this one, I thought of picking up 2 for crossfire but I am not sure
28 Apr 2009 ~ 4:49pm DrLiam

Snarkasm wrote:

ATi has performance tiers within its performance tiers. In the 4800 series, there are 4830s, 4850s, 4870s, and 4890s. In the 4700 series, there are similar breakdowns. The 4770 is one of the better cards in the 4700 series, so the -70 tier means it's better than a 48-series -30. The other differences in the card still don't make it a 4800 series card, though.

If I didn't take the time to read this I would have never of known... So I can see where Tim is coming from.
28 Apr 2009 ~ 6:06pm BuddyJ Finally! Crossfire results from Expreview (in Engrish)!

For $200, you get an HD 4890 beater. That's a $30+ savings and probably in the range of the GTX 275 in terms of performance, provided you wanna sacrifice the slots and run dual GPUs instead of a single-core single card setup.
28 Apr 2009 ~ 8:07pm Komete Wow, 4770 in crossfire really is a deal from all angles. At first, I was thinking the power consumption of running them in crossfire would make it cost more in the long run but at Idle and low use it's between 5-10w's difference. AT full load the 4890 uses more power than the two cards. This is the first time I've actually considered crossfire over a 1 card upgrade. 200 is my video card range and this hits the spot perfectly.
29 Apr 2009 ~ 12:05pm BuddyJ Bit-Tech explains overclocking the HD 4770. Their reference card maxed out Overdrive, so they had to move on to RivaTuner. After some tweaks they were able to use RivaTuner and CPU-Z to bring the card dangerously close to HD 4850 performance.
29 Apr 2009 ~ 1:30pm mas0n I'd like to see some results of 4770 Crossfire vs. 4890, both at maximum OC. Most 4890 will hit nearly 1GHz easy.
29 Apr 2009 ~ 7:13pm BuddyJ I mentioned to the guys at Bit-Tech (who seem to have an abundance of HD 4770s) that it'd be kick ass to see what you've suggested mas0n and they agreed. Hopefully we'll see some numbers in the next few days.

I'm really taking a liking to this card and am considering replacing my HD 3870 with one or two. Probably two.
29 Apr 2009 ~ 9:22pm Komete

Buddy J wrote:

I mentioned to the guys at Bit-Tech (who seem to have an abundance of HD 4770s) that it'd be kick ass to see what you've suggested mas0n and they agreed. Hopefully we'll see some numbers in the next few days.

I'm really taking a liking to this card and am considering replacing my HD 3870 with one or two. Probably two.

I don't know if you'll have the room for all heatpipage;D in your case if you get 2cards.
30 Apr 2009 ~ 12:01am BuddyJ There's always room for more heatpipes!