The high end card for the 4800 series is the ATI Radeon HD 4870. The GPU’s core clock speed comes in at 750 MHz while the card contains 512MB of GDDR5 memory running at 900MHz. The brand that was sent to us to look at is from VisionTek and it looks to be a full retail version containing all the necessary connectors. While the 4850 has 1.0 TeraFLOPping power, the 4870 gets an extra 20% increase with 1.2 TeraFLOPS of goodness. The faster memory, increase in core clock speed, and other changes make this card retail for $299 which is a $100 premium over the 4850. AMD has positioned this card to compete with the GeForce 9800 GTX.
While the 4850 are single slot cards, the Radeon HD 4870 card is a dual slot solution with an oversized cooler. Those that have cards in slots adjacent to the PCI-E slot will need to keep that in mind. Two six-pin power connectors are needed to power the card. It’s slightly longer than a Radeon HD 4850 but not too much. Max power draw is rated at 160W.
The fan is quiet but the automatic settings AMD has it set at is pretty low. When you first turn on the computer, you are greeted with an incredibly loud whirl of the fan and it can be pretty surprising the first time you hear it. Even setting the fan to run at 65% capacity generated a pretty loud noise. Now most users probably won’t need to touch the settings but those that want to do some overclocking will want to push the fan speed be prepared to endure some pretty ear rattling noises.
Included with the card are a few connectors. For starters a DVI-HDMI dongle will let use one cable for both video and audio allowing for 7.1 surround sound to be passed to an audio source. Those stuck with VGA monitors can use the DVI-VGA convertor. Component cables will give you HD signals to a TV if you don’t have a DVI or HDMI connector on your display. The box also includes a flexible Crossfire connector to let you link up another card.
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