Cooling

The reference cooler drives air through the heatsink inside a long plastic housing with a turbine installed at one end. The card occupies two motherboard slots. It's not quite clear why a $99 card needs such a powerful cooling system. This cooler is almost noiseless (and it should be, as it's apparently excessive for this card).

The card from HIS comes with a different cooling system (however, there is reason to believe that it's also a reference cooler, and that most 4770 cards will be equipped with this very cooler). This round device cools only the core and is almost noiseless thanks to a large slow fan.

We monitored temperatures using RivaTuner.

ATI RADEON HD 4770 512MB

HIS RADEON HD 4770 512MB

Operating temperatures of both cards are apparently within the normal limits, they are quite low for modern graphics cards.

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