PowerColor HD 4770 PCS Review - PAGE 14

Operating Temperatures

To measure core GPU temperature, we used the hardware monitoring program in RivaTuner 2.24. The idle temperature was taken after leaving nothing running, on Vista's desktop, for a minute. The load temperature was taken after a 100,000ms run of Furmark at 1680x1050 with no AA.

Previous testing has shown that the HD 4770 runs quite cool, thanks no doubt to the 40nm design. The PCS cooler from Arctic Cooling improves matters further, keeping operating temperatures postively chill.

Power Usage

To measure power usage, we used a Kill A Watt P4400 power meter. Note that the above numbers represent the power drain for the entire benchmarking system, not just the video cards themselves. For the 'idle' readings we measured the power drain from the desktop, with no applications running; for the 'load' situation, we took the sustained peak power drain readings at the end of 200,000ms run of Furmark at the maximum resolution.

The PowerColor HD 4770 PCS delivers big performance, but does not require tremendous amounts of power to do so. A 450W PSU should be enough to get the job done.

In CrossFire mode, a pair of HD 4770s is likewise extremely efficient on delivering performance-per-Watt. Only a 550W PSU is needed to keep both video cards happy.

Conclusion

As with earlier HD 4770s we have tested at Neoseeker, the PowerColor HD 4770 PCS offers great bang for the buck. Selling for about $100, you can expect the HD 4770 to be able to handle all but the most demanding of the games available today.

PowerColor has put together a nice rendition of the HD 4770 here -- the cooler, made by Artic Cooling, keeps temperatures quite low. Although the PowerColor HD 4770 PCS is modified beyond the reference design HD 4770s, the Powercolor HD 4770 PCS does not sell for any more than the other, standard models. Which is nice to see.

Today we took a look at the HD 4770's CrossFire performance, and it was very impressive. While a single HD 4770 represents great value for allowing you to game with reasonable framerates in most games, the HD 4770 offers even further value due to the upgrade path available for gamers with CrossFire capable motherboards. Not even necessarily combining the HD 4770 with another HD 4770 -- which works quite well -- but also choosing to CrossFire-up future cards, from perhaps new generations, when your HD 4770 can no longer sastify the demands of increasingly demandin games.

All-around, the PowerColor HD 4770 is a good choice for someone with about $100 USD to spend on a video card.