I've decided to finally upgrade my 7800GT with a Radeon 4870, but before I hop over to newegg and buy I wanted to know if there are any manufactures I should look into (or look out for). I haven't owned an ATi card since the 9600 pro came out and if I remember correctly Sapphire was a good brand back then, though I also notice PowerColor has a nice rebate. So I guess I just want opinions on that.

Also I've heard there is a issue with the drivers/fan speeds. I know the 8.7 Beta drivers are out, does that fix the issue with fan speeds at all or does one have to manually set the fan speed for now?

Thanks.

Right now you're just seeing reference board designs - they're basically all the same as far as I know. For my 4850, I just took the cheapest one (by like $5, but hey, it's something).

As for the fans/drivers issue: you'll need to see which ones work best for you, people seem to report different results from either the hotfix or the 8.7beta drivers. I'm hoping the official 8.7's come out soon.

I'm afraid I can't help you wrt AIB partners on the ATI side.

As for the fan speed issues, a fix will hopefully be available through a driver update.

What concerns me more is the high idle power consumption, which by most indications is a result of PowerPlay not being fully implemented yet. There is at least one unofficial BIOS floating around (an MSI one I think) that brings the idle clocks down to more reasonable levels, but an official fix hasn't been announced as far as I know.

One more thing, according to the ATI Logo Guidelines (top of page 3):

Ah well... hopefully the ATI police don't arrest me for heresy or anything.