The ATI Radeon HD 4770 was officially released on the 28th of April, making it the world’s first and still the only 40nm graphics card. The 40nm fabrication process means that the RV740 GPU is not only incredibly small but also extremely efficient, as it uses very little power and therefore generates a minimal amount of heat.

However when we checked out the ATI reference sample on the release date which featured the deluxe cooler, we were a little disappointed. Although this cooler looked impressive, as it was a shrunk down version of what you might find on a Radeon HD 4890 for example, it allowed the Radeon HD 4770 to idle at 70 degrees while temperatures would reach just over 80 under load.

These results certainly were surprising, especially given that the Radeon HD 4770 consumed roughly the same amount of power as a GeForce 9600 GT, yet at idle it was an incredible 66% hotter! Still the Radeon HD 4770 was far from a disappointing product, as it delivered unbeatable performance at $100 US, making it one of the best value graphics cards to date.

Nevertheless, while the Radeon HD 4770 does own the value segment, it is not without a weakness and that of course being its cooler. Therefore ASUS has set out to create the ultimate Radeon HD 4770 solution with their new Extreme AH4770 Formula graphics card. Rather than just apply a pathetic factory overclock, ASUS has focused their attention on making the Extreme AH4770 Formula more durable and efficient.

They have done this by ditching the reference cooler for what they call their “Formula” fan and heatsink combo. ASUS claims that this new cooler will reduce operating temperatures by 33% under load, while it will also be quieter. In an effort to improve durability ASUS has included their Fuse Protection Technology, which helps protect against over-current.

Finally, the last feature that ASUS includes to help make the Extreme AH4770 Formula more durable, is being marketed as “Ultimate Armaments”. This feature means that only quality components have been used, such as solid capacitors, covered chocks, and low RDS (on) MOSFETs, while the output ports also come with EMI shields.

The memory works at a frequency of 800MHz (effectively 3.2GHz) on this particular model, and that should really make for an impressive memory bandwidth. However due to the 128-bit wide memory bus, this new graphics card is limited to a bandwidth of just 51.2GB/s, which is why it was "thought" to slot in between the Radeon HD 4670 and 4830 in terms of performance.

ASUS are shipping the Extreme AH4770 Formula with Qimonda ICs on-board (IDGV51-05A1F1C-40X parts). These GDDR5 modules are rated for 1GHz (4GHz) operation, so we suspect that given they are only operating at 800MHz, there should be quite a bit of overclocking headroom in them. Speaking of memory, according to the ATI specification the Radeon HD 4770 will only be available in 512MB flavors.

Although the Radeon HD 4770 has a thermal design power (TDP) of just 80 watts, which is just 10 watts higher than the Radeon HD 4670, it employs a dual slot cooler. This is interesting and really we expected the first 40nm graphics card to make use of a single slot cooler, especially being a mid-range contender. The dual slot cooler will provide better cooling performance and likely make less noise.

While ASUS has upgraded the cooler for better thermal performance, the dual-slot design remains. The heatsink is much larger than the standard version and does cover much of the graphics card. The heatsink features a micro surface treatment which is said to improve heat dispersion by up to 14% as this technology maximizes surface area.

Providing this heatsink with air-flow is a 75mm Y.S Tech brushless fan (YD128015ML-R), which is the same fan Thermaltake use on their DuOrb VGA cooler. Although we are not entirely sure what RPM this fan works at on the Extreme AH4770 Formula, we can tell you that when the GPU is placed under full load for an extended period of time this fan remains almost silent.

ASUS has re-worked the PCB design of the Extreme AH4770 Formula, and along the way added a few personal touches. The card now features three sets of fuse protection devices to guarantee better defense against over-current. Furthermore, with the inclusion of the EMI Shield, covered chokes, low RDS(on) MOSFETs, and solid capacitors, ASUS are aiming to make this a highly durable product.

ASUS claims that although graphics cards are equipped with controllers for over-current protection, they can fail causing the product to possibly lose performance or die altogether. Here they claim that by providing a backup over-current protection device, being “Fuse Protection”, that there will be no chance of excessive or dangerous temperature rise in the conductors.

Hardware - Intel Core i7 965 Extreme Edition - x3 2GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-12800 (CAS 9-9-9-24) - Seagate 500GB 7200-RPM (Serial ATA300) - ASUS Extreme AH4770 Formula - Radeon HD 4770 (512MB) - Radeon HD 4670 (512MB) - Radeon HD 4830 (512MB) - Radeon HD 4850 (512MB) - GeForce 9600 GT (1GB) - GeForce 9800 GT (512MB) - GeForce 9800GTX+ (512MB) - ASUS P6T Deluxe (Intel X58) Software - Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 (64-bit) - Nvidia Forceware 185.85 - ATI Catalyst 9.5

In terms of performance the Extreme AH4770 Formula is no faster than a standard Radeon HD 4770, as ASUS has stuck with the AMD specifications for core and memory clock frequencies. This means that 3Dmark Vantage reports the Extreme AH4770 Formula to be slightly faster than a GeForce GTX 9800+, and slightly slower than the Radeon HD 4850.

Crysis Warhead shows no difference in performance when comparing the Extreme AH4770 Formula to the ATI reference card. This does however mean that the Extreme AH4770 Formula is faster than a Radeon HD 4850 in this particular game.

Like Crysis Warhead, we see absolutely no difference in performance between the ASUS Extreme AH4770 Formula and the ATI reference card.

The Extreme AH4770 Formula was again able to match the performance of the ATI reference card in Unreal Tournament 3, which made it roughly as fast as the GeForce 9600 GT and 9800 GT graphics cards.

Interestingly the Extreme AH4770 Formula was slightly faster than the ATI reference card when testing with World in Conflict Soviet Assault. Although the margins were small, it was enough to put the Extreme AH4770 Formula ahead of the Radeon HD 4830.

The ASUS Extreme AH4770 Formula consumed the same amount of power as the ATI reference card at idle. That said, the Extreme AH4770 Formula was slightly more efficient under load, using 7 watts less when compared to the reference card.

The operating temperatures of the ASUS Extreme AH4770 Formula are impressive, with an idle temperature of just 36 degrees, making it 49% cooler than the ATI reference sample. Once under load the Extreme AH4770 Formula reached 61 degrees, making it 26% cooler than the reference sample. The Extreme AH4770 Formula was one of the coolest operating graphics cards tested.

Also keep in mind that there are two different types of reference coolers available for the Radeon HD 4770, and our sample featured the more expensive version. The vast majority of Radeon HD 4770 graphics cards feature the cheaper version, and the Extreme AH4770 Formula will look even more impressive when compared to these cards.

For those that have not seen the two different reference coolers, they were shown on the second page of this review alongside the Extreme AH4770 Formula. It was not just the cooling performance of the Extreme AH4770 Formula that impressed us, the operating volume was amazing. Despite managing a load temperature of just 60 degrees, the Extreme AH4770 Formula remained almost silent.

While the performance of this cooler did impress us, the appearance probably will not appeal to everyone. For the most part we could not care less about how a graphics card looks, as long as it performs well, runs cool, and doesn’t make much noise. The Extreme AH4770 Formula does all this, but it could also be argued that the fan shroud over the heatsink looks a little tacky.

The shroud is meant to look like a formula race car, and while it looks more like a futuristic hover craft, we are not sure that a graphics card really needs to look like this. Whatever your thoughts on how the Extreme AH4770 Formula looks, it does perform well. The quality components featured on the PCB are also a nice touch, as is the ASUS Fuse Technology.

With such an impressive cooler we were keen to see how the Extreme AH4770 Formula overclocked. Unfortunately Radeon HD 4770 overclocking is not all that well supported yet. However using a modified version of RivaTuner we were able to get the core stable at 875MHz, while the memory only reached 900MHz. In the past we have pushed the core of Radeon HD 4770 graphics cards as high as 900MHz and the memory 1000MHz, so the Extreme AH4770 Formula result was a little disappointing.

Overall we are impressed with how well the custom designed cooler of the Extreme AH4770 Formula works, particularly when compared to the reference cooler. Although the overclocking results were a little disappointing, they will likely vary from card to card.

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Reviewed By Steven Walton