Palit Radeon HD 4870 X2 Video Card Review :: Palit Radeon HD 4870 X2 Card

The configuration of the HD 4870 X2 card is similar in appearance to the ATI HD 3870 X2 card in most respects in terms of size, heatsink and fan. Palit has put their logo and the name of the card, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 on the front of the PCB. The fan is a radial fan that covers the very rear of the front of the PCB. It blows air through the two graphics chips out the front grill to keep the card from overheating in normal operation conditions.

The rear of the card has the mounting brackets for each of the graphics chips, and a huge heatspreader running the length of the card to help with additional heat dissipation. Each mounting bracket is shaped like a metal X with four pins holding the front assembly into place. The Part Number sticker and Serial Number sticker is also located on the rear of the card.

PCI Express was released in 2004 along with the Intel 925X Xpress chipset replacing the AGP standard. The HD 4870 X2 is a PCI Express Generation 2.0 card. PCIE 2.0 has the advantage of having double the bandwidth between the graphics card and the system over the first generation. PCIE 2.0 offers up 8GB/second bandwidth between the card and the system.

Power requirements on high-end video cards like the HD 4870 X2 have evolved to the point where the graphics card requires two power connectors to run. The HD 4870 X2 has an 8-pin power connector as well as the standard 6-pin power connector. Note that ATI states that the card requires 248W of power, which is more than any other single chip video card on the market today, but considering what you get in terms of performance well worth the price.

Drivers

ATI drivers are updated every month with improvements to performance and compatibility. ATI’s latest drivers are the Catalyst 8.7 drivers. The review card came with an updated driver based upon ATI’s 8.52 drivers which are designed to work with the HD 4870 X2 card. Using the Overdrive utility in the drivers I was able to overclock the HD 4870 X2 card to 790MHz for the core, and 990MHz for the memory. The card was stable at those clock speeds. An aftermarket water block could also help to get better overclocking as it helps reduce the heat buildup caused by increasing the cards clock and memory speeds.