The positives of this card are many. With the updated Catalyst 8.9 drivers and the higher clock speed of the overclock button, this card can compete well against the ATI 1GB cards, with the increased memory not coming into play unless you use higher resolutions AA and AF settings. 8X AA and 16X AF is where the 1GB Framebuffer shines. Otherwise the Palit card beats the ATI reference 1GB card across the board when it is in overclocked mode.
The use of dual BIOS to enable overclocking is an interesting feature that allows quick overclocking of the card safely. During extended testing the temperatures of this card stayed nearly steady in the 57-60C range, while the reference HD 4870 without the dual cooling fans or the second BIOS reached over 80C under the same conditions. This is an incredible feat as the chips on the two cards are the same. The only negative I can see on this card is the dual fans on the card are very loud. In a case, with other noise sources this wouldn’t be much of a problem unless you are trying to keep noise levels down. In the open air environment we use for testing it was rather noticeable.
