Here, however, the gap between it and the HD4850 begins to show – especially as the image quality settings are cranked up. Which is more or less what we were expecting to find.

The key point is that, so long as you can live without anti-aliasing, there's no game that's playable on an HD4850 that you won't be able to get away with on an HD4770.

Small wonder

Factoring in the low power consumption and tiny size of the HD4770 makes it look more attractive again – especially as an upgrade to a 'family' PC – and it bodes well for the next generation of similarly priced cards.

As promising as that sounds, things aren't as clear-cut as the dramatic sub-$100 saviour headlines would have you believe. Perhaps the weakness of the pound at the moment and the retailers struggling to clear out their old stock have combined to create perfect buying conditions for older GPUs, but we've recently seen HD4850s available for roughly the same amount of cash as these new cards. And if you're willing to spend just £50 more for a GeForce GTX260 or HD4870, you'll see an enormous leap in performance that more than justifies the extra expense.

As much as we appreciate what AMD has achieved by launching a card this good at this price, right now we can only recommend it as a second choice.

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