When considering the product out of the box, Powercolor's HD 4770 PCS is equal to the AMD HD 4770 reference design for all intents and purposes. The performance is exactly the same, power draw almost the same, fan noise comparable and pricing matches as well. So why would anyone get Powercolor's HD 4770 PCS instead of a reference design card? That is a very valid question that I find quite hard to answer. While our sample has shown considerably better overclocking than the HD 4770 launch sample we had, we are not confident that all HD 4770 PCS cards overclock so well. If you are willing to do some tweaking, then manually adjusting the fan speed settings of the HD 4770 PCS to something very silent should be an easy task to do.
Powercolor made a great choice with Arctic Cooling as provider of their thermal solution. I hope Powercolor releases an updated BIOS that comes with better fan settings, the potential is certainly there. Idle and load temperatures are extremely low, and as some quick testing showed, there is plenty of temperature headroom to lower fan noise. Overall I am satisfied with Powercolor's PCS 4770 even though some potential product improvements have not been exploited like higher clocks out of the box and optimized fan speed settings.