Feature Comparison, And The Winner
We see little reason to buy cards based on AMD’s reference design board. In addition to having the highest street price of the three cards we checked out, its inferior cooling solution leaves the GPU incredibly hot. This is something Tom's editors around the world have noticed. Idle temps run in the 80 degree range, and the fan spins up under load just enough to keep the card in the low 80s. But touch the board after an evening of gaming and you'll quickly realize just how hot 80 degrees C really is.
Sapphire implemented a clearly-superior cooler, and it provides a dedicated heat sink for the card’s voltage regulators, but the rest of the card is very similar to what AMD manufactures (Ed: in fact, it's the same PCB design). Strip away the cooling apparatus and it’s hard to tell the two boards apart, aside from the Sapphire’s blue PCB. It’s our second choice here—and should be your first choice if you need analog video output or just can’t stand to hear fans whirring.
Palit has gone the furthest to differentiate its offering from that of AMD’s reference design. Take a look at Palit’s naked card and you’ll see a number of tweaks, ranging from beefier inductors and capacitors for voltage regulation, to the power sockets conveniently mounted on top of the board, the inclusion of a DisplayPort connector, and that Turbo switch on its mounting bracket. There’s even a dedicated heat sink for dissipating the heat generated by the board’s metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors (or MOSFETs, which handle voltage transformation). While it’s true that these features didn’t contribute to significant gains in benchmark performance, it’s also evident that Palit’s engineers gave great consideration as to how they could improve on AMD’s reference design to create a custom PCB. What’s more, the cooling features and over-engineered component choices should endow the board with a longer life.
And when you consider that Palit’s Sonic Dual Edition was the least-expensive of the three Radeon HD 4870 boards we examined, it emerges as the clear winner of this roundup.
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nice one, this is good to know as the 4870 runs so hot..and obviously better cooling will lengthen the life of, well probably any card.
cheers,
bill
p.s. stuff & nonsense: http://www.eupeople.net/forum
Nice write-up.
I have a Sonic Dual 4870, and I am blown away by it. The fans are not too noisy on mine at all, the overclock is a nice bonus, and the temps are ridiculously low, which can only be a good thing. Plus it only cost me £150 + vat... Bargain.
Interestingly enough, you can change the fan speed.
The default overclocks in themselves are of mild interest. I would like to see these cards overclocked to see if the extra cooling helps at all.
nice one,,,,
Thank you..
i have a Gigabyte Radeon 4870.. i changed the fan speed in the bios to keep it at 50 degrees celcious at idle.
did not notice any increase in noise.
I purchased some time ago a Visiontek HD3870. It died for excessive heat, given the known heat problem of this card this i not a surprice. What instead surpri ed me a lot is the denial of repair form Visiontek. To my opionion what matters at the end is support, price and bundle offer. Support is at first place, so please share you support experiences to give people visibility of what a vendor can effecctively offer. I persinally prefer to spend few more bucks but be sure to have the card repaired if something goes wrong, without silly excuses. my personal suggestion is: do not puchase Visiontek!!
Mastro59 is a moron, he either installed an aftermarket heatsink, bought a used card of ebay, or doesn't have a receipt.
My personal suggestion : mastro59 should grow up.
Anonymous is a bit harsh on mastro there, i think mastros post had a good point and he didn't really bash anyone without a reason here.
Anonymous 26/12 is a moron because Mastro59 clearly states that he purchased his 3870 with the expectation that the after care service would be an honourable affair. In some such cases the manufacturer would replace the card or the gpu to enhance its reputation as a quality manufacturer and Mastro would just cover the transportation costs but some manufacturers dont give a hoot once theyve sold the card.
If a company produce a bad card and they are blowing up left right and centre, rather than do a mass recall or take on the cost of mass repair, they will simply follow a policy of denial of liability until it blows over and that Visiontek 3870 is whats commonly called a duffer in the trade.
This article is dated 28th December, but has a rev. 1 version of the Palit card. I bought mine on the 9th and am sure rev. 2 was out for at least a bit before then.
One of the gripes about the card was the smaller fan was a little noisy and always on at full speed.
I think the fan is different on rev2, but it certainly is now speed controlled like the larger fan.
The big change is at the back, instead of 2xDVI + 1xDP, it now has: 1xDVI, 1xDP, 1xVGA, 1xHDMI and comes with 1xHDMI->DVI adaptor.
The VGA port sits alone on the second slot, the rest of the space is now used for exhaust. TBH, not a lot of air seems to come out, but it's something.
These changes polish up the card further and make it even better.