XFX is a company that sells video cards, motherboards and other computer components in retail establishments. A division of Pine Technology Group, XFX has primarily in the past used NVIDIA based video chips in their video cards. Late last year XFX launched a new series of video cards based upon ATI video chips.
ATI and NVIDIA have gone two separate design directions in terms of their very highest end cards. NVIDIA designed their GTX280 as the largest video chip for the consumer market with 1.4 Billion transistors and a die size of 576mm2. ATI designed their counterpart, the HD 4870 to give excellent performance at a lower price point. Their focus was on designing a chip that can be produced inexpensively and combined with another identical chip to provide the highest performing video card in their lineup.
Recently, ATI launched their RV740 chip which is their mainstream version of their HD 4890 card. This is the card ATI targets for the $110 MSRP price range and is the replacement for the HD 4670 card. The HD 4770 is ATI's first 40 nanometer chip and should offer excellent performance for the price. XFX has released two versions of the HD 4770, one with the standard reference cooler and another with a heatsink/heatpipe/fan cooler. Today's review is on the HD 4770-YDFC card, which has the standard fan and heatsink.
