Palit Radeon HD 4870 512MB Video Card
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Max Slowik
Kurtis
Palit
Jul. 23, 2008
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Conclusion
For $200, the 4850 has a lot of competition. For $300, the 4870 is without challenge. Which, if it had a little more direct competition, I think people would be quicker to criticize it. Primarily, I think 512MB is too little RAM for the card; it could do a lot better anti-aliasing with some elbow room. Secondarily, the card consumes a lot more power than ATI cards do, traditionally. It's not a huge jump, but it's not a small amount, either.
The stock cooler does a loud job of cooling, and you'll have to go third-party if you really want to overclock. All that aside, the card is begging for CrossFire, a relatively easy configuration given the ubiquity of CrossFire-ready Intel chipsets. And like the 4850, it's Linux-ready, with open- and closed-source drivers good to go.
The real win is having a $300 card: NVIDIA made a lot of money with the 9800 GTX before the 4850 forced them to sell it for $200. Now that bracket belongs to ATI, who, for the first time in years, is dictating hardware costs, not following prices set by NVIDIA. We'll have to wait for board partners to add innovation. So yes, the card isn't perfect, but like they say, it's lonely at the top.

The Good
Compact
Perfect video acceleration
Great single-GPU performance
The Bad
Fan runs loudly
Overclocking's limited
Where's the 1GB version?
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VICE Nov. 20, 2009 - 7:17 pm
Wired Nov. 20, 2009 - 7:07 pm
BBC Nov. 20, 2009 - 6:38 pm
Wired Nov. 16, 2009 - 11:56 pm
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