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Palit Radeon HD 4870 512MB Video Card
Introduction
Like its lesser compatriot, the 4870 beats NVIDIA at its price point. ATI is the only company with a current $300 card--although runaway sales have bumped up that price, temporarily. Still, they could sell it for more; $400, to match the GTX 260, and people would still buy it. It's that good. And ATI has needed a card at this price point. HD 3870 was nice, but it wasn't great. It became a really smart deal when it dropped below $200, and then 9800 GTX came along, and AMD fell back into its old routine: selling decent cards at OK prices. They just weren't breaking ground. Which has, apparently, paid off. HD 4000 cards aren't revolutionary, design-wise. They're streamlined. And now, they're great cards at great prices. Palit's sent us a few Radeon HD 4870s. Reference designs, stock clocks, and pretty packaging are still enough to shake NVIDIA's foundation. First Looks The big, two-slot rectangular heatsink looks municipal, and uses two big heatpipes to shuttle heat away from the GPU. The heatsink's completely enclosed and vents no hot air back into the case. The fan looks serious, and takes up a third of the heatsink, between what's visible and what's exposed. Like the high-end ATI cards of the past, the card relies on solid-state power regulation; there are only three (aluminum) capacitors on the board. The PCB, thankfully, isn't full-length (about 9.5"). It's nice to have a top-performing card that you don't have to worry about fitting inside your case. The power connectors face the front end of the card. Of course, the card is CrossFireX-ready, with the standard two CF tabs at the top. The back of the 4870 is just as cluttered as a 4850; it's an expanse of transistors with no blanks on the component side for extra memory. The inclusions are very minimal. There's one component-out cable, a single VGA adapter, an HDMI adapter, and a CrossFire bridge, along with the quick-start guide. Instead of a vixen, the box sports Palit's mechafrog, nice. The card has a discreet pastel design--discreet for pastel, at any rate--also nice.            Specifications Manufacturer's Website: Board Specifications: - Bus interface: PCI Express(R) 2.0 - 2x Dual-link DVI outputs support 2560x1600 resolution displays - Memory Support: 512MB GDDR5 - Memory Interface: 256 bit - Memory Clock: 3600MHz (900 x 4) - Core Clock: 750 MHz - RAMDACs: 400 MHz - HDCP capable - HDMI function via dongle - 2-Slot board design Power Supply Unit Requirement: - 500 Watt or greater power supply with two 75W 6-pin PCI-Express(R) power connectors recommended (600 Watt and four 6-pin connectors for ATI CrossFireX(R) technology in dual mode) GPU Features: - Dynamic geometry acceleration - Game physics processing capability - ATI PowerPlay(TM) technology - ATI CrossFireX(TM) Multi-GPU Technology - ATI Avivo(TM) HD video and display technology - Built for Microsoft(R) Windows Vista(TM) - Full Microsoft(R) DirectX(R) 10.1 Shader Model 4.1 support Test Setup 
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Page 1: Introduction, First Looks, Specifications & Test Setup
Page 2: DirectX 10 Titles Page 3: DX9, OpenGL, and Synthetics Page 4: Video Quality, Power Usage & Noise, and Overclocking Page 5: Conclusion 
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