Following my previous benchmark of the Radeon HD 4770 1GB, this time I will look at other aspects of this card.

Compared to the XFX’s 4770, Gigabyte’s bundle omits the CrossFire bridge cable, making the product slightly less attractive for those who want to scale up performance with two 1GB cards. Thankfully the 6-pin to PCIE connector to Molex adapter is still included in the box. The other item supplied is the driver disc. Overall the package is quite basic, but enough to get the card to get working.

Looking at the card itself, you will immediately see the large 80mm fan cooler and a large heatsink covering the whole GPU and memory modules. The cooler takes up two slots and the fan’s height is only slightly shorter than the XFX blower fan. Another thing that is immediately obvious is the blue PCB board which Gigabyte claims to have been manufactured with 2 ounces of copper for lower GPU temperatures and you will see later that it does.

This Ultra-Durable model is packed with the most capacitors and MOSFETs of all the 4770 models. However, the point of insertion for the 6-pin power connector is angled upwards instead of backwards sideways. For smaller computer cases this means that the card may not fit with the protruding power cable. Interestingly the card is stocked with Qimonda IDGV16-05A1F1C-40X memory modules (the same ones used in Radeon HD 4890) even though the Gigabyte website states that Hynix/Samsung memory chips would be used instead.

Looking at the other end, you can see that the card takes up one slot on the back of your computer case. Gigabyte’s choice of (from left to right) HDMI, VGA, and DVI is quite nice as it avoids unnecessary adapters for connecting to a home TV. For those wishing to use two DVI outputs, an HDMI to DVI adapter (not supplied) converts the card back to the standard dual DVI configuratio0n of the reference 4770.

Looking at temperature improvements, the Gigabyte model is around 12 degrees cooler in idle and 20 degrees cooler on load compared to the XFX model, in no small part due to the large heatsink and fan. From the graph, temperatures were measured with FurMark running and after it was closed for up to 60 seconds to test heat dissipation performance. It took more than 60 seconds to cool down to a stable idle temperature of 44 Celcius for the Gigabyte model compared to 58 degrees for the XFX.

Last but not least, the 4770 was able to score D111589 in NGOHQ’s DirectCompute GPU test. The exact same score was achieved in both DirectCompute 10 and 10.1 modes.

If you were one of those who had a Radeon HD 4000 series graphics card and was disappointed when the much hyped DirectCompute support was nowhere to be found in DirectX 11, then the AMD Driver Team comes the rescue. Catalyst 9.12 driver adds full DirectCompute 10.1 (and 10.0) support to the Radeon HD 4800/4700 series of hardware. Although about four months late compared to the green team’s efforts, it nevertheless fulfills AMD’s and Microsoft’s promise of providing backwards-compatibility of DirectCompute technology to DirectX 10.1 hardware.

With this driver update you can now test out the DirectCompute benchmark.

It seems like the folks at Microsoft understand the importance of brand awareness, especially for an intangible product/service as competitive as a search engine. Three Bing-branded ringtones in MP3 format have been released by Microsoft for Bing fans and can be downloaded here. Basically there is only one word in the ringtone lyrics and yes you guessed it – Bing!

Following my review of the XFX Radeon HD 4770 512MB, I’ve been wondering whether the 40nm RV740 core can benefit from a double increase in frame buffer. Let’s go straight to the numbers:

All benchmarks done at 1920 x 1080 resolution with all custom graphics settings set to highest possible. Game results below are in average frames per second.

• Futuremark 3DMark Vantage GPU Score
  • Performance Preset
    • 512MB: 6818
    • 1GB: 6612
• Unigine Heaven (DirectX 11, no tessellation)
  • No AA
    • 512MB: 24.1
    • 1GB: 23.6
  • 4x AA
    • 512MB: 13.4
    • 1GB: 16.4
  • 8x AA
    • 512MB: 2.3
    • 1GB: 12.7
• DiRT 2 Demo (DirectX 9 8x AA) 
  • 512MB: 31
  • 1GB: 30
• Need for Speed: Shift Demo
  • No AA
    • 512MB: 42.66 (some stuttering)
    • 1GB: 43.41
  • 4x AA
    • 512MB: 36.22 (significant stuttering)
    • 1GB: 34.43
  • 8x AA
    • 512MB: 11.86 (significant stuttering)
    • 1GB: 26.32
• Crysis Demo GPU Test (DirectX 10)
  • No AA
    • 512MB: 15.82
    • 1GB: 15.62
  • 4x AA
    • 512MB: 10.29
    • 1GB: 12.07
  • 8x AA
    • 512MB: 3.62
    • 1GB: 11.17
• Crysis Demo GPU Test (DirectX 9)
  • No AA
    • 512MB: 20.72
    • 1GB: 20.57
  • 4x AA
    • 512MB: 8.18
    • 1GB: 14.60
  • 8x AA
    • 512MB: 3.46
    • 1GB: 13.31
• BattleForge Benchmark (DirectX 11 FeatureLevel 10.1)
  • No AA
    • 512MB: 21.5
    • 1GB: 21.4
  • 4x AA
    • 16.3
    • 16.0
  • 8x AA
    • 12.3
    • 13.6
• Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. Demo Benchmark (DirectX 9)
  • No AA
    • 512MB: 77
    • 1GB: 75
  • No AA
    • 512MB: 72
    • 1GB: 71
  • No AA
    • 512MB: 70
    • 1GB: 67
• Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. Demo Benchmark (DirectX 10)
  • No AA
    • 512MB: 40
    • 1GB: 40
  • 4x AA
    • 512MB: 31
    • 1GB: 31
  • 8x AA
    • 512MB: 12
    • 1GB: 29
• Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. Demo Benchmark (DirectX 10.1)
  • No AA
    • 512MB: 45
    • 1GB: 45
  • 4x AA
    • 512MB: 38
    • 1GB: 38
  • 8x AA
    • 512MB: 15
    • 1GB: 35
• Resident Evil 5 Demo Variable Benchmark (DirectX 10)
  • No AA
    • 512MB: 53.37 (average of four scenes)
    • 1GB: 53.72 (average of four scenes)
  • 4x AA
    • 512MB: 42.8 (average of four scenes)
    • 1GB: 41.87 (average of four scenes)
  • 8x AA
    • 512MB: 37.22 (average of four scenes)
    • 1GB: 34.95 (average of four scenes)
• Resident Evil 5 Demo Variable Benchmark (DirectX 9)
  • No AA
    • 512MB: 56.02 (average of four scenes)
    • 1GB: 57.45 (average of four scenes)
  • 4x AA
    • 512MB: 45.02 (average of four scenes)
    • 1GB: 44.57 (average of four scenes)
  • 8x AA
    • 512MB: 42.82 (average of four scenes)
    • 1GB: 41.87 (average of four scenes)
• World in Conflict Demo (DirectX 10)
  • No AA
    • 512MB: 28
    • 1GB: 28
  • 4x AA
    • 512MB: 21
    • 1GB: 21
• World in Conflict Demo (DirectX 9)
  • No AA
    • 512MB: 33
    • 1GB: 33
  • 4x AA
    • 512MB: 28
    • 1GB: 27
• Street Fighter IV Benchmark
  • No AA
    • 512MB: 93.01
    • 1GB: 91.02
  • 4x AA
    • 512MB: 57.18
    • 1GB: 56.30
  • 8x AA
    • 512MB: 56.09
    • 1GB: 55.45

Although one can assume that the 1GB version should outperform the 512MB version, what is really interesting is that the 1GB 4770 was consistently slower (although mostly negligible) than the 512MB 4770 when the memory is not needed, but outperforms the latter significantly when it does. Both cards clock speeds were at stock and are identical (750MHz core and 800MHz memory), I am guessing the timings of the memory modules are different. From the results above you can see that DirectX 9 is consistently faster than DirectX 10 and although DirectX 10.1 does close the gap somewhat nicely, there is still a significant drop in performance. But that has been true for DirectX 7, 8 and 9, although this time the improvement in image quality from 9 to 10 is not as dramatic as 8 to 9 or 7 to 8.

Games that benefit most from the 1GB of frame buffer are Crysis, Need for Speed: Shift, and Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X., the rest are quite optimized for 512MB video cards. Something to note about the Need for Speed: Shift results is that the game was unplayable with antialiasing (AA) with the 512MB 4770 due to stuttering issues, the 1GB version remedied this.

What these benchmarks tell is that the conventional wisdom that anything less than a Radeon HD 4870 does not benefit from 1GB of VRAM is partially true, but when it does benefit it benefits immensely. A pair of 512MB 4770s already outperform a 4890, a pair of 1GB of 4770s would definitely achieve much greater results, especially in 2560 x 1600.

O’Reilly Media Inc., a well-known publisher of IT techincal books and manuals, has recently started offering iPhone OS versions of the Microsoft Press e-book series. From their product description, the e-book apps are self-contained and are based on Stanza e-book reader. Most titles to date are priced at AUD 7.99 and under which is a fraction of their printed counterparts. The range is quite complete and there are about 200 titles on offer already.

Microsoft has recently published the deployment notes for its upcoming 64-bit-native Office 2010 productivity suite. As you may be aware, this is the first time Microsoft has to coded its flagship productivity suite in x64/64-bit binary format. This development is nonessential yet important. Nonessential because the vast majority of documents’ contents do not exceed the 2GB application address space limit but important because future demands always increase (whether that be from document contents or application size). This is also the opportunity to slowly but surely transition the user base to 64-bit while demand for it is still low, minimizing the impact of the transition just like the way Windows XP and Windows Vista’s transition to 64-bit was done when users wanted but not needed the extra capability.

To achieve the goal of a smooth transition, Office 2010’s 64-bit migration path generally follows that of Windows Vista and Windows 7. 32-bit is the default choice for all users, whether or not a 64-bit operation system is running during installation. This means compatibility with existing 32-bit plug-ins, DLLs, VBA code, and the depreciated Equation Editor (MathType) used in Office 2003 and earlier. Only when the user specifically uses the 64-bit Office 2010 setup file will the 64-bit version of Office 2010 be installed. Naturally, upgrading from an earlier version of Office will net a 32-bit Office 2010 upgrade; presumably a clean install is required for a 32-bit to 64-bit upgrade. The other exception is when an existing 64-bit Office program is already installed (like Word 2010 x64) the default setup will choose to install the 64-bit version in place of 32-bit.

It’s been clear from Microsoft that both 32-bit and 64-bit has the same features and functionality and perform quite similarly, and documents saved from either versions will open exactly on both. The one and more pronounced benefit of 64-bit will come from Excel where you can “create bigger workbooks, whether that’s due to tons of data in the grid, tons of charts in your workbook, several really huge PivotCaches supporting your PivotTables, and so on”. (Joseph Chirilov) However the 64-bit GDI subsystem in Windows x64 which the 64-bit SmartArt relies on does not support MMX extensions in CPUs. Whether or not there is a speed difference in rendering SmartArt diagrams remains to be seen.

Overall, this is a positive step that balances compatibility with future development that advanced users can benefit from.

All necessary parts are listed except the computer case and power supply. Prices in Australian Dollars and are correct at time of writing.

For office programs and home theatre computers:

• Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-MA785GMT-US2H (AM3 microATX) – $97
• CPU: Athlon II X2 245 (dual-core 2.9GHz 2MB) - $75
• RAM: SuperTalent DDR2-800 (2GB) – $37
• Hard Disk: Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB (16MB 7200RPM) – $54
• Optical Drive: Sony DRU865S (22x DVD+/-RW Lightscribe) $48
• Monitor: BenQ G2220HD (1920 x 1080 DVI) $168
• Total Cost: $479 including monitor, $311 computer only

Comments: fast integrated graphics (Radeon HD 4200) that will run current games (at low settings) or older titles at high settings. The motherboard comes with DVI, VGA, and HDMI outputs.

For gaming:

• Motherboard: ECS A740GM-M (AM2+ microATX) – $52
• CPU: Athlon II X2 245 (dual-core 2.9GHz 2MB) - $75
• RAM: SuperTalent DDR2-800 (2GB) – $37
• Hard Disk: Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB (16MB 7200RPM) – $54
• GPU: PowerColor Radeon HD 4870 (512MB) – $159
• Optical Drive: Sony DRU865S (22x DVD+/-RW Lightscribe) $48
• Monitor: BenQ G2220HD (1920 x 1080 DVI) $168
• Total Cost: $593 including monitor, $425 computer only

Comments: from a performance perspective the Radeon HD 4870 GPU is close to the top-end Radeon HD 4890 which has twice the frame buffer according to a recent X-bit labs testing, good for current and future titles.

For photo and video editing:

• Motherboard: ECS A740GM-M (AM2+ microATX) – $52
• CPU: Athlon II X4 620 (quad-core 2.6GHz 2MB) - $129
• RAM: Two (2) SuperTalent DDR2-800 (2GB) – $74
• Hard Disk: Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB (32MB 7200RPM) – $95
• GPU: HIS Radeon HD 4770 (512MB) – $128
• Optical Drive: Two (2) Sony DRU865S (22x DVD+/-RW Lightscribe) $96
• Monitor: BenQ G2220HD (1920 x 1080 DVI) $168
• Total Cost: $742 including monitor, $574 computer only

Comments: now that AMD has introduced low cost quad-core processors it makes sense to include them here, encoding performance is quite competitive too. Radeon HD 4770 for lower power consumption compared to the 4850. Now video encoding can be done on either the quad-core or the graphics card.