Sapphire 4870 first impressions

I have tried the Saphhire 4870 in my new system. Less than 2 days old used for less than 24 hours in total.

At first glanec and without elaborate testing I'd say it is 40% faster than my 8800 GTS 512.

However:

It runs with its fan at a very low and "idling" temperature of 75 C. With graphics load it shoots up to 85 C, the fan sort of speeds up a little bit, temperature is maintained at 83C.

Even at max load it is very quiet, the fan never speeds up too much.

Placing your hand at the back of the card you can feel the hot air coming out of its vents and yes it is very hot, hottest I have ever seen.

To make matters worse, I noticed the top back end of the PCB has warped!! There is absolutely no tension on the power supply cable so the damage must have happened from some other reason. I have never seen a PCB warp, so I do not know what might have caused it. I do not think it is heat since there are no hot electronic components there. The card works just fine, but am wondering if this warping/bending may have stretched tracks, solder joints etc and it is an accident waiting to happen.

83°C is not so bad considering performance, nvidia can get even more hot.
As for pcb warping, it could be from manufacturing and usualy it not make serious problems unles warping is realy strong or its warped on bad places, for example where chip touch cooler as it can affect cooling or even damage huge chips like G200.

Oh man, it was about a month ago, got tons of hits, cant remember the name of the thread, that was the last one. My 1900xt also had this happen, and never a problem. Maybe others can confirm this as well, so you feel better about it, but like I said, I wouldnt worry

The warping is just from the cooler. The GPU sticks up in the middle which causes the PCB to bend a bit when you screw the cooler in on both ends, it's normal.

Should i buy it? :S