ASUS EAH 4770 Formula Video Card

Not all of us have hundreds of dollars to blow on a video card, but at the same time, we don’t want to get saddled with sub-par performance.

Manufacturer: ASUS

Price: Roughly $100

I would imagine most of our readers understand value and video display devices. If you are not a video game enthusiast, there isn’t a real need to look into a high-end $400+ video card. Unless there is a specific application for it, the buyer would be better served looking into a more frugal investment. To be truthful, onboard graphics, provided it’s available in the system they are using, is more than adequate for menial tasks such as web surfing and basic productivity.

What happens though if you have the itch to try out the latest Blizzard video game? With onboard graphics, as far as they have come, you will be kind of stuck up the creek here. Discreet graphics is still the way to go for maximum video performance, but generally it comes at a price. Literally.

Over the years, we have seen major progress made at the sub-$200 mark for video cards. It goes without saying that today’s mainstream cards will run circles around high-end cards of a few years ago. It’s natural progression as chip makers innovate and streamline manufacturing to get the most out of their silicon.

Now, when we say video cards less than $200 are getting better, we are still talking about something in the $180 range and up. range cards more often than not are a different story. The perception of course is you get what you pay for and at that price range, you would think you are not getting a whole lot.

Today we will be reviewing the . As we received an early production sample, there isn’t any retail packaging to show off, but the hardware itself is representative of what you’ll find on store shelves.

Here is an excerpt from :

The ATI Radeon™ HD 4770 graphics processing unit (GPU) offers an unbeatable combination of HD gaming performance1 and price. Featuring the industry’s cutting-edge 40nm process technology and the most advanced GDDR5 memory technology, this GPU delivers seamless frame rates with incredible speed and processing power. Proof that high performance gaming and price can co-exist without compromise.

Leveraging the latest 40nm manufacturing process technology, the ATI Radeon™ HD 4770 GPU represents an industry milestone in the advancement of gaming performance.
Equipped with the fastest, most advanced GDDR5 memory technology, the ATI Radeon™ HD 4770 supports higher data rates which translates directly into superior performance.
Get right in the action and experience cinematic gaming at HD resolutions1 with outstanding performance in the latest DirextX10.1 games.
Unparalleled anti-aliasing (AA) and anisotropic filtering deliver eye-popping graphics with striking realism.
Take your game even further with ATI CrossFireX™ technology and enjoy superior scalability with dual GPU support².
Tap into the massive parallel processing power of your ATI Radeon™ HD 4770 GPU with ATI Stream technology and tackle demanding tasks like video transcoding with amazing speed.
Watch the latest Blu-ray movies^1,3 play with incredible fidelity and have the freedom to edit videos with lightning-fast speed.

ATI Radeon™ HD 4770 – Key Features

Advanced Memory – GDDR5 provides twice the data per pin of GDDR3 memory at the same clock speeds.
Enhanced Anti-Aliasing & Anisotropic Filtering – High performance anisotropic filtering and 24x custom filter anti-aliasing (CFAA) smooth jagged edges and create true-to-life graphics, for everything from grass to facial features.
DirectX® 10.1 – Play today while preparing for tomorrow with state-of-the-art DirectX 10.1 graphics capabilities.
ATI CrossFireX™ Technology – ATI CrossFireX™ technology with dual GPU support offers superior scalability so your system is ready to level up when you are².
PCI Express 2.0 – Support for PCI Express 2.0 will prepare you for bandwidth-hungry games and 3D applications.
Power to Spare – This GPU has the brute processing power needed for physics, artificial intelligence, stream computing and ray tracing calculations.
Unified Video Decoder 2 (UVD 2) – UVD 2 frees up your CPU for other tasks so you get The Ultimate Visual Experience™ for even the most processing-intensive content, including VC-1, H.264 and now MPEG-2. Also, take full advantage of Blu-ray functionality with dual-stream, picture in picture (PIP) capabilities^1,3.
Accelerated Video Transcoding (AVT) – With ATI Stream technology, owners of ATI Radeon™ HD 4770 GPUs can help accelerate the conversion of standard and HD video into multiple formats for use on differing consumer electronics devices. The ATI Video Converter, designed to enable GPU transcoding of HD video streams, is currently available.
Upscale Beyond 1080p – Watch the hottest Blu-ray movies or other HD content at full 1080p display resolution and beyond⁴.
Enhanced DVD Upscaling – Watch standard DVD movies in near high-definition quality with DVD upscaling. The GPU uses post processing algorithms to enhance standard and low resolution videos and movies on your HD display.
Dynamic Contrast – Dynamic Contrast automatically adjusts the contrast and brightness during scenes to consistently deliver a crisp, vibrant picture.
HDMI – Enjoy the latest audio technologies using HDMI with 7.1 digital surround sound support. Also, xvYCC support allows the user to enjoy a wider range of color when connected to a capable HDTV.
Dynamic Power Management – ATI Radeon HD 4770 GPU delivers high performance when needed and conserves power when the demand on the graphics processor is low.

1 HD capable monitor required
2 ATI CrossFireX™ technology requires an ATI CrossFireX Ready motherboard, an ATI CrossFireX™ Bridge Interconnect and may require a specialized power supply.
3 Blu-ray drive required
4 The ATI Radeon™ HD 4770 GPU can upscale video display to 2560×1600 on dual-link monitors which is almost twice the display resolution of 1080p displays.

Manufacturing Process	40nm
Transistor Count	826 million
GPU	ATI Radeon HD 4770
Memory Size(MB)	512
Memory Interface	128-bit
Core/Memory Clocks	750/800 MHz
Interface	PCI Express x16 (PCI Express 2.0)

ASUS EAH 4770 Formula Video Card

As we’ve already mentioned, we received a pre-retail sample. What we got was the video card, a small manual, driver and software CD and a PCI-E power dongle.

At under nine inches, the ASUS EAH 4770 Formula should have no problems with most installations. While everyone’s setup will differ, unless you have an unusual abundnance of components hanging out in the PCI Express area, installation should be painless.

The core features of the ASUS 4770 mirrors AMD’s reference. The Radeon HD 4770 is built on a 40nm fabrication process, which is a first in the graphics industry and is composed of 826 million transistors. The Unified Superscalar Shader Architecture features 640 stream processing units which allow dynamic load balancing and resource allocation for vertex, geometry and pixel shaders. The stream processing units share a common instruction set and texture unit access for all types of shaders as well as dedicated branch execution units and texture address processors. There are 32 texture units capable of 24 GTexels per second. Naturally, Direct X 10.1 is supported. The GPU is capable of 960 GFLOPs. The default core speed of the Radeon HD 4770 is 750MHz.

While the market rate of the card is about $100, ASUS doesn’t skimp on quality here as a key feature of their 4770 Formula is their . This feature is present in many of their products and is in a nutshell, elements to improve quality and longevity in their products. The ASUS 4770 Formula has solid capacitors to increase stability and a low RDS (on) MOSFET design which runs cooler than traditional. Their connections are EMI shielded and their chokes are covered for more efficient power to the board. Also, while not exactly obvious in the picture above, a black brace runs along the card for increased durability and stability.

While the length of the card should pose no issues, the ASUS 4770 Formula uses a large heatsink and fan combination. Designed with the shape of a Formula 1 race car, the cooler is effectively a two slot design. the Formula design is a lot more than just cool and pretty looks though. To start, the bearings of the fan are sealed from dust, which according to ASUS will increase the fan lifespan by 25%. While I have never had a fan fail on me personally, I know this has happened to other people. As you may be able to see in the picture above, the heatsinks are grooved, providing more surface area for heat to disapate.

There were no video adapters included with our sample and it seems unlikely they will be needed as the ASUS 4770 already has the three primary outputs that would cover the majority of uses. Moving from left to right, we have a digital HDMI output, a standard analog VGA output and a digital dual link DVI output.

This last shot shows off the covered chokes as well as the PCI-E power connection. AMD recommends a 450W power supply at the minimum with a 75W 6-pin connector. If you are running in Crossfire mode, they suggest a 550W PSU.

Benchmarks

We’ll be comparing the ASUS EAH 4770 against a few competing products. On the bench against the 4770 Formula will be an ASUS GTS 250, and a MSI 9800 GT. While the last card isn’t in the same generation, the price-point is in direct competition.

Test Setup: Intel C2D X6800, ASUS P35, 2GB Corsair Dominator DDR3, Seagate 7200.8 400GB, Windows XP SP3, Audio on.

ASUS EAH 4770 w/AMD Catalyst 9.6

ASUS GTS 250 w/GeForce Driver Release 186.18

MSI 9800 GT w/GeForce Driver Release 186.18

Games:

Call of Duty 5 – 1280×1024 default settings with 4xAA, 1680×1050, 1920×1200 default settings with no AA.

Race Driver GRID - 1280×1024, 1680×1050, 1920×1200 default settings no AA.

Crysis Warhead - 1280×1024, 1680×1050, 1920×1200 default settings no AA.

Far Cry 2 - 1280×1024, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, default settings no AA.

Stalker: Clear Sky - 1280×1024, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, default settings no AA.

Tomb Raider Underworld – 1280×1024, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, default settings no AA.

Benchmarks were done with a 300 second run through using the latest version of FRAPS. These benchmarks measure true gaming performance rather than canned synthetic or scripted benchmarks. Displayed below are the average frame rates across 3 different resolutions, 1280×1024, 1680×1050, and 1920×1200.

Call of Duty 5: World at War

The game engine is not as advanced as some of the latest games out there and the 8800 GTX still does a solid job, but the does not suffer the same performance drops.

The game looks very good nonetheless and stayed above 40fps throughout testing.

Race Driver Grid

Neither video card had any issues with the game.

Both cards looked very good and while both performed the same on straight roads, the animation did appear to be smoother during many of my crash sequences. Unlike the older card, the newer was able to stay over 60fps most of the testing.

Crysis Warhead

At first glance, it would appear both cards performed equally, but then you need to take into consideration that the 8800 GTX was running at 1440×900 while the HIS 4870 was at 1920×1200.

Image quality was very good, though we did feel the performed better when we stepped back a little at 1650×1050. However, the performance was fairly consistent at the higher resolution and was able to handle the on-screen explosions better than the 8800 GTX.

Far Cry 2

As the games get a bit newer, we see the gaps getting larger.

The clearly felt much smoother here, making the gaming experience better. Was it a dramatic difference? For this game, we felt it was.

Stalker Clear Sky

Like the Crysis tests, looks can be deceiving.

We needed to scale back the 8800 to 1152×864 to be able to function. The did struggle at our preferred 1920 resolution, so we knocked it back to 1650×1050 and it played much better.

Tomb Raider Underworld

Tomb Raider didn’t pose much of a problem for either card but the HIS 4870 consistently stayed above 80fps, hence some of the fram drops we did have did not feel as drastic.

Final Words

Overclocking initially hit a roadblock when we were limited with what we can do with AMD’s drivers. We received this from ASUS:

Currently there are limitations with overclockingfor this card defined by the Vbios and driver as defined by AMD. 4770default clock: 750E/800M;limitation values : 830E/850M.

We downloaded Rivatuner and did the adjustments from there. Without modifying the core, we green screened when we put the memory slider at 1000MHz, which based on other reviews, was a possible value. Knocking it down to 996MHz was completely stable. We then left the memory at 800MHz and moved the core clock value. Anything above 880MHz also created this green screen crash. We played around with both settings, all the while keeping the video card fan at 100%, we ended up with below.

gpuz

With the right tweaks, we would imagine you may be able to do a little better. Still, not a bad showing overall from a card that really won’t cost much more than $100 shipped.

Performance-wise, we were pleased with the ASUS EAH 4770 Formula. Considering the price-point, the ASUS 4770 provides great value for the money. It is competitive to the GTS 250, though overall a little behind it in the benchmarks. On the otherhand, the GTS 250 is more expensive.

Image quality was very good, both in productivity applications and in video games. In the gaming department, while we did like the performance, we feel that for the more modern games, playing on a 20″ monitor at 1680 resolution will not be the best gaming experience. At 1024 resolution and lower, the card excels, and for older games, the higher resolutions were not an issue at all.

There’s no fooling an enthusiast as clearly this card is not geared towards those users. Anyone on a system with onboard video, if you have a free PCI-E slot, you really should give the ASUS EAH 4770 Formula a close look.