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Radeon 4870: Does It Matter Who Made Yours?

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December 11, 2008 3:33:12 PM

Nice work Mike, lots of info there.

More about : radeon 4870 matter made

December 23, 2008 6:30:03 AM

Once you’ve found the GPU that best fits your needs, does it really matter which vendor sells you the card? We take a look at AMD's reference 4870, Sapphire's, and Palit's to get a better sense for what differentiates graphics cards.

Radeon 4870: Does It Matter Who Made Yours? : Read more
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-8
December 23, 2008 6:58:50 AM

You can raise the fan speed of the reference card very easy using the 8.11 and 8.12 drivers.

My totally stock card runs idle at 45 degrees with 35% fan speed ( inaudible ) and at 55 degrees full load ( in Crysis ) with 45% fan speed (audible). During the summer I'll probably raise the speed by 5-10% to compensate for the increased ambient temperature.

non-reference is overrated...
Reference has a problem with bios settings and NOT with the cooler itself.
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3
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December 23, 2008 7:42:33 AM

The Palit may be the best in a well cooled case, but regardless I'll take the Toxic. Rear venting, 48-60C temperatures at a whisper quiet 34% fan speed.

Good article though, especially since many here in the US have been curious about Palit lately. You might have added more about Vapor-X. My understanding was that ATI intends to make it reference design.
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Anonymous
December 23, 2008 10:03:30 AM

I think what really matters about the vendor is at what quality the card was built. For example, If the vendor used a poor quality BGA process, one vendor may have more problems with artifacting in 3D applications later on down the road vs a different brand may have a higher percentage of product that makes it several years if need be without a single glitch.
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December 23, 2008 10:10:43 AM

talking about third party hsf - i bought the force3d dht which whilst it has a fantastic heatsink, decided to couple it with a fan that does not allow the fan speed to be controlled by software (yes i have tried the usual), so ive ended up replacing their fan with a new one which can be controlled.

surely their engineers must have realised that the fan was stuck at 100%?
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December 23, 2008 10:25:32 AM

Hmmm I wondered why my 3870 pc/mac hybrid card was blue in color. Now I know why.
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December 23, 2008 10:48:19 AM

I put mine on water... 29ºc idle - 41º full... I just hope ATi uses the same pcb layout in the HD5800... That way I can re-use the waterblock
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December 23, 2008 11:16:34 AM

Exactly... how many times can you beat that horse to death? The cooling is fine on the reference 4870's. Just manually set the fan speed with the new catalyst control center and it will run cooler than the previous generation of ATI's products.
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December 23, 2008 11:38:56 AM

Good write up. But I don't care much for the software, but rather the cooling & Ocing. Tbh, you can find smiler software for totally free (ie VCL, Zoom,etc)
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December 23, 2008 12:46:18 PM

I have the Palit in question and its awesome for two reasons.
First, the card is physically shorter than the reference card so it actually fits in my case. The second is the amount of cooling comes from ONE fan. I unplugged the smaller fan due to noise and set the large fan to 45%. Its totally quiet and never goes over 70 degrees C. I highly recommend that card and whenit becomes obsolete, the HDMI and Display port connectivity will be great for a HD Media box.
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December 23, 2008 2:23:03 PM

Interesting.

Essentially, there's no difference amongst them.

Cheers,
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December 23, 2008 2:23:16 PM

80 degrees won't burn you, it is hot to the touch though. I enjoyed this article, I still run a Tyan made ATI 9700 Pro card in my old PC which stays on all the time, that card is a champ!
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Anonymous
December 23, 2008 3:14:28 PM

OMG, Catalyst 8.10, I didn't even bother going through the benchmarks.
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December 23, 2008 3:14:40 PM

add fanspeed control to catalyst for most cards.
written by spyral,
"START -> REGEDIT (RUN AS ADMIN) -> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SYSTEM -> CurrentControlSet-> CONTROL -> CLASS -> {4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} -> 0000 (be sure to tweak your CURRENT drivers key MINE IS 0000)

THEN LOCATE AND EDIT THE VALUE DATA FOR EACH BELOW TO (2)

FanSpeedPercentActual_NA
FanSpeedPercentTarget_NA
FanSpeedRPMActual_NA
FanSpeedRPMTarget_NA

SO AFTER THEY WILL ALL HAVE DATA VALUE 2


EXIT -> REBOOT -> GO TO CCC -> OVERDRIVE"

under the overdrive menu, if it shows up, it works. if it doesn't, then your card doesn't support it. simple.
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5
December 23, 2008 3:35:45 PM

I have an Asus 4870. I think it's pretty much the same as the reference board.
I set the fan speed at 30% and it usually sits at 55-70 degrees.
It has a dual slot cooler with rear exhaust.
750 core, 900 memory.
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December 23, 2008 3:38:08 PM

malveauxInteresting.Essentially, there's no difference amongst them.Cheers,


Actually, there is a big difference in name brands. It's known as "customer relations". All companies can have lemons in any part, and it is their willingness to stand by their respective parts that counts. Sapphire is one of these companies that *will* stand by their products, and give customers very little hassles during such unfortunate circumstances *if* a RMA is imminent. However, I am not saying there are no other brands out there that may practice the same objective, but now days, with shoddy workmanship around every corner, I tend to not stray from something that works( and works well ).

Driver support is another gotcha, but mostly now days ATI, and nVidia products are covered by their respective 'parent' companies. Overall system stability with said products installed would be another. But in the later situation here, there can be more than a single variable at fault.
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Anonymous
December 23, 2008 4:03:43 PM

I can't say the voltage regulation of the Palit model is a step up, it's just cheaper and allows them to sell the card for less. Personnally, I'd stick with the Volterra system.
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December 23, 2008 6:07:59 PM

These benchmarks show one thing. Nothing.

The slight fluctuations determined by the benchmarks show that a change of FPS by .7 or even two FPS mean absolutely nothing. Half a frame isn't going to make or break the playability of a game. For all we know a tiny background process decided to run at the exact moment the FPS snapshot was taken.

Stick to differences of steady 5 FPS differences or more, or don't even bother writing these types of "articles."

The difference is minimal at best, and even an OC'd card will barely make any difference over a stock card. 100mhz does little for gaming today. Maybe it made a difference in the Commodore era, but it makes very little difference now.

Anyone with a brain knows that the difference between vendors is the over-clockability, but the following are really the deciding factors:

1. Price.
2. Silence.
3. Included adapters.
4. Included software.
5. Consumer relations.

Any 100mhz increment or frame rates over any other similar card is next to pointless.

Tell us something we didn't know.
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December 23, 2008 7:17:27 PM

Be aware that most if not all new graphics cards Nvidia or ATI ( Or a subset like powercolor ) all have poor OGL support and if you use the cards for modeling with sketchup or 3dMax or similar CAD programs they are useless. If you are a modeler get recommendations from your software supplier or your gray hairs will increase accordingly

We recently tried ATI Pwrclr AGP 3650 and the performance and support was atrocious
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-2
December 23, 2008 7:17:39 PM

Michael, I just wanted to say don't pay attention to cranky people that impose destructive criticism, you should have got used to them by now.
Your article is so good and it answers questions I've had in mind for a long time about the diffrences between the available 8800 GTs for example, I guess the same results apply there, right?
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December 23, 2008 8:47:21 PM

I had the Palit mentioned in this article. It was amazing for about a month and then the smaller 70mm fan started dying and making the most horrendous whining noises. That's probably because the 70mm fan runs at 100% constantly as it doesn't have a 4 pin adjustable fan. I ended up replacing it because of the noise. They fixed the problem with the 1GB version by replacing the 70mm with a 4 pin adjustable fan. Great card though while it lasted. Also the size was awesome.
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December 23, 2008 10:49:06 PM

who cares? overclocked or non overclock you might see a whopping 3fps difference. if it's not overheating (ie crashing the game) then its fine. if it is, just turn up the fan of the reference cooler. problem solved.
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December 23, 2008 11:35:28 PM

I actually got a Sapphire 512 MB 4870 for $184 with a promo code, and can't wait to play with it when it arrives. On top of that, I got a $20 mail-in rebate that I hope makes it through.
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December 24, 2008 12:12:58 AM

Ive accually been having trouble making a choice between venders for all the reasons that tthis article had stated, how well are each cooled, what is the quality of these products, will I see perfomance gains if I buy a "suped-up" card versus a stock card and all these were questions were answered by this article...kudos

Niva, 80 Celsius (keyword Celsius) is 176 Fahrenheit...ya it would burn you
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December 24, 2008 3:06:39 AM

yyrkoonActually, there is a big difference in name brands. It's known as "customer relations". All companies can have lemons in any part, and it is their willingness to stand by their respective parts that counts. Sapphire is one of these companies that *will* stand by their products, and give customers very little hassles during such unfortunate circumstances *if* a RMA is imminent. However, I am not saying there are no other brands out there that may practice the same objective, but now days, with shoddy workmanship around every corner, I tend to not stray from something that works( and works well ).


Unless Sapphire has changed their practices, I find that hard to believe. A friend of mine recently had to RMA his 1900GT, Their RMA process is slow, nothing is usually done locally, they have a fee for the RMA so they can send it to Taiwan(or china where ever they are located) to be fixed. IF you happen to forget the check/money order for the fee, instead of emailing you a reminder to send it in, They send the card back to you.....making you pay for the shipping again. and further lengthening the whole process. It was such a pain in the ass that he gave up and bought the 2900 Pro he was borrowing from me.

For comparison, EVGA I had a 7900GT stop working(after being pulled working from my computer when i bought the 2900) I also somehow managed to sever one of the fan wires on it as well, I submitted an RMA form, by the next day I had my RMA #, Sent it in, within 2 days of them receiving it, the status on their site was updated to product shipped, and 4-5 days later I received the replacement, only money spent by me was on FedEx.

Thats a hassle free RMA and they even overlooked the user inflicted damage to the fan wire.

So Yes I agree Customer Relations(support) is very important, and until XFX actually starts producing ATI cards, I do not see any chance of me buying ATI.
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Anonymous
December 24, 2008 4:53:52 AM

"80 degrees won't burn you, it is hot to the touch though." Thats 80 degrees Celsius about 190 Fahrenheit. water boils at 210 lol thats really hot.
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December 24, 2008 4:58:56 AM

It's true palit card is the coolest but it's also the noisiest card =/ We have to keep that in mind.

I guess if we want a quiet and cool solution we have to pay more =(
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December 24, 2008 6:21:44 AM

jjjmanThats 80 degrees Celsius about 190 Fahrenheit. water boils at 210 lol thats really hot.

You obviously never saw how hot the X1950XTX got.
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December 24, 2008 8:30:43 AM

Hmmm. Again no power consumption tests? ...just like in the HD4830 comparison article. Not that people buying that kind of cards would care about power draw, but it would be nice to know....
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December 24, 2008 11:59:04 AM

it's because power consumption will be the same between the cards. unless you don't know the draw of the HD 4870 then they should have stated it then.

i like the reference design, quieter and exhausts hot air.
it won't lessen the card's life since i don't see cheap capacitors on the amd card. i don't have any video card that had died since year 1997 and those had cheap capacitors.
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December 24, 2008 12:18:37 PM

Care to update the article with idle clock speed? Idle clock speed and power consumption are important to people who don't game 24/7.
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December 24, 2008 10:03:42 PM

I have a VisionTek reference 4870 512mb that I OCed to 775/1085 and fan speed is at 30% Cant hear it. And Idle is 42c and load is never over 58c So all of this 78c idle is crap. I drop the speed down to 20% and the temps go to 65c at load.

And mine is Over Clocked too.

I find that visiontek is a really brand because of the lifetime Warranty.
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December 24, 2008 11:33:54 PM

When people wright off the stock heatsink for the 4870 by reporting the out of box temps it leaves me really disappointed with the lack of investigation. This isn't just your article, it happens in every single article that looks into the 4870's heatsink design.

Two factors come into play that usually aren't considered or tested; Quality of the thermal paste and fan control.

The thermal paste that is used for the reference design cards, IMO, is of very poor quality. If you replace it with high quality thermal paste, you will see a significant drop in the temperatures. It is a valid argument however, that most people won't be able to replace the paste and that the out of the box temps should be the official temps but that is a separate issue and not a heatsink design flaw. I am not saying that you stated that the reference heatsink has flaws, but listing the out of box temps doesn't accurately represent the potential of the cooling system on reference cards.

Second, the fan control. The CCC auto-fan setting is horrible...again, IMO. The fan in some cases goes down to 1% speed and allows the GPU to heat up before going to a higher RPM. It makes for an inefficient yo-yo'ing of the GPU temps. If the fan is just left at a constant 20-30%, the temps of the card stay pretty low, stable, and best of all the fan never ramps up to the hair dryer noise level.

I was actually shocked when I toyed around with my reference 4870 sapphire card. Out of the box, it was 80C at idle. I replaced the thermal paste and it dropped to 60C at idle. CCC would drop the fan speed to 1% and let the card heat up just to blast it with a fan burst. Controlling the fan speed to a set 35%, which is inaudible over my case fans, holds the temps at 48-58C even under a full load while OC @ 790/1100 clocks. That is pretty impressive for a reference heatsink if you ask me.
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December 24, 2008 11:56:17 PM

Mr Brown: Overall good article as usual, however I disagree with your choice of the winner. Sapphire here, in my opinion, was clearly the better choice. Readers place more emphasis on noise level than you realize. While I praise Palit for it's changes to the board, they don't seem to really yield real world results...except for a tad lower degrees C below Sapphire at idle and a supposedly higher life expectancy. Sapphire already gets you to considerably lesser temp levels over AMD, all the while saving your ears.
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December 25, 2008 12:26:30 AM

liquid0hSapphire already gets you to considerably lesser temp levels over AMD, all the while saving your ears.

Price is the most important factor for many people though.
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December 25, 2008 12:47:09 AM

randomizerPrice is the most important factor for many people though.


Good point. But is a $30 difference really that important considering the crowd that these cards are aimed at?
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December 25, 2008 1:03:39 AM

liquid0hGood point. But is a $30 difference really that important considering the crowd that these cards are aimed at?

$30 is $30, and I'd save that whenever possible. Although maybe I'm a little more stingy than most people :kaola: 
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December 27, 2008 2:00:08 PM

Ive got a HIS 4870, after replacing the cooling paste with arctic mx2 it never gets over 65ºC at full load, fan @40. I suppose the future cards from ATI & Nvidia will be 45nm or less so cooling and power will not be such an issue like today.
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December 27, 2008 5:56:46 PM

wavetrex...Reference has a problem with bios settings and NOT with the cooler itself.


Thanks for the great feedback; it's good advice for someone who buys a stock reference-design card. The reason I didn't tweak with any of the cards' BIOS settings is because I believe that during benchmarking, you should eliminate as many variables as you can.

Ideally, anyone would be able to take one of these cards, benchmark it, and get the exact same results that I did. In reality, that would be impossible because there are so many variables: My results are unavoidably colored by everything from the other components I used (the CPU, memory, power supply, case, cooling fans, and so on), to the ambient temperature in the room I tested the cards in. Even the room's acoustics played a role in my opinion.

My objective was to see how the cards performed out of the box; introducing even more variables would only make it less likely that a reader who bought one of these cards would get the same results.
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December 27, 2008 11:31:04 PM

Any particular reason why half the field was left out of this review? HIS, Powercolor, ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI also have Radeon 4870 cards with 512mb memory and they have different designs as well. One look at the ASUS Dark Knight version of the 4870 will make you wake up and wonder how it compares to the "two" reviewed here. Powercolor and Diamond Media also have 4870 cards that have non-stock coolers. HSI & MSI seem to have stock ones. At any rate there are other video cards with non-stock coolers on them and designs. I think we need to look further and just two third party vid cards IMHO.
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December 28, 2008 1:54:04 PM

Myself being a buyer from Sapphire (AMD) and XFX (nVidia), I have never had a problem with either manufacturer. And Sapphire's RMA service is a breeze.
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December 28, 2008 6:54:28 PM

Nice article, except the conclusion, which puzzles me.

The first card was to hot, so not a good option
The Saphire and Palit where simular temprature under full loads and almost no difference in performance.

Being more quiet, the Saphire should be the obvious winner I would say. Here in Euro land, I can't get the Palit, so I cannot compair on price. Only if the palit is cheaper, it might be an option.
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December 29, 2008 9:13:34 PM

I'm actually looking into getting a 4870 and plan on ordering it on new years day. So this article was very helpful to me but I can't see how your claim of palit being the cheapest is true. Not only do some of the major online reatilers like newegg don't carry it but I've seen the 512mb version go for $266 while the 1GB versions of other manfucators are going for $240. So what is the point of going with palit even if it slighty outpreforms and runs cooler?
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Anonymous
December 30, 2008 1:05:06 PM

Hi,

I dont know if any of you guys noticed but Palit has a new revision of the Sonic Dual out, where also the second fan is speed-adjustable. This makes for a really really quiet an well-cooled card. Plus it has separate connectors for HDMI and DisplayPort. Got mine 2 weeks ago and am really impressed with it.
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January 5, 2009 5:46:14 AM

MrBradleyMyself being a buyer from Sapphire (AMD) and XFX (nVidia), I have never had a problem with either manufacturer. And Sapphire's RMA service is a breeze.


You're just incredibly lucky I think. I've had cards from both of these brands. My best friends 8800gtx (identical to mine) took xfx two months to replace (counting from when they received it). It took so long in fact, that he decided to buy a 8800gts320 after a month, while waiting. So when mine broke, I didn't even bother sending it in, cause 1) they require you to ensure the package, costing 80€ or so. 2) the card as new was only worth 230€ retail at the time. 3) I didn't want to wait months for a replacement.
So instead I bought the sapphire 4870 with the annoying fan bug. Took sapphire a couple days short of two months to respond to my ticket. They did address the issue, but serveral months to do so is a lot longer than I'd expect.

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Anonymous
January 5, 2009 3:53:09 PM

Why do even tom's reviewers have problems with the high temperatures on the HD 4800 series? You can be sure AMD has tested the chips for operating at 80 degrees Celsius. So why not let the chip reach 80 degrees and let the fan run slower (quieter)? Because of the larger temperature difference it costs less cool air flowing through the cooler to dispatch the same amount of thermal energy. Great work of AMD engineers witch is unfortunately not always recognized by the public.
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January 6, 2009 6:32:22 AM

anoniemWhy do even tom's reviewers have problems with the high temperatures on the HD 4800 series? You can be sure AMD has tested the chips for operating at 80 degrees Celsius. So why not let the chip reach 80 degrees and let the fan run slower (quieter)? Because of the larger temperature difference it costs less cool air flowing through the cooler to dispatch the same amount of thermal energy. Great work of AMD engineers witch is unfortunately not always recognized by the public.

The reason is very simple, and you may have overlooked it!
AMD supplies cards with only one year warranty. So they're fairly sure that most of their chips will survive a year. Unfortunately in the real world, customers often intend to keep their investment for more than a year. Higher operating temperaturs cause the chips to fail faster. So to avoid cards failing after just 14 months or so, a better fan might actually be worth the extra noise, or cost.
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February 6, 2009 3:40:43 PM

johnnydough said "Stick to differences of steady 5 FPS differences or more, or don't even bother writing these types of "articles." "

Dude the whole point of the testing was to see if there was a difference, not who has the baddest benchmarking scores. Stick to reading what the article's intention is... or don't even bother writing these types of "comments."

I must agree with yyrkoon about what is really important. When you need support for your hardware, that is all that matters. Weather someone is getting 3-5FPS more in a benchmark is the last thing that comes to mind.

Great article guys. It was a breath of fresh air to not see another graphics card "horse race", and have someone offer some clarity where it involves marketing hype.


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