Layout Cont.

The HD4870 fits right smack in the middle between the 8800GTS 512MB and the 9800GTX, as far as size is concerned.  We'll find out where it fits performance wise, in just a second.

First off, to everyone that has a fetish about cable management, I apologize.  These cards are installed in a CoolerMaster CM690 case and the top card makes contact with my SATA ports.  Luckily, mine are rotated 90 degrees and the card doesn't interfere with cable installation.  If your board has SATA ports that are not rotated, do some research before buying a large card such as these.

Testing and Overclocking:

Testing is going to be done with a variety of synthetic benches as well as actual games.  The results will be compared to an XFX 9800GTX 512MB card, an XFX 8800GTS Alpha Dog Edition 512MB card, and an Sapphire HD3870 Toxic Edition 512MB card.  Even though this is the top of the line ATI card, it was designed to compete with the 9800GTX and not the GTX280.  That is the reason I chose the video cards that I did.  Well, that and the fact that I couldn't afford to drop $600+ on a video card just for comparison. ;)  Synthetic benches were tested using the benchmarks standard settings.  Games were tested using 1920 x 1200 and 1680x1050 at high settings and 2xAA.  Anything other than that will be listed.  ATI cards were tested using the beta 8.7 drivers and the Nvidia cards used the 175.16 drivers.  The test system is as follows.

Overclocking utilities are pretty limited right now.  I used the Overdrive function built into the Catalyst control panel.  The factory settings are 750 core and 900 memory.  ATI Overdrive took the core all the way to the sliders max of 790 core and 1100 for the memory.  Right now, I don't really recommend overclocking this card until there's a way to control the heat.  The ATI Overdrive feature does not have any settings to control the fan speed.  There's a way around this and I'll tell you how to modify your drivers when we talk about heat later on in the review.

3DMark06:

Futuremark's 3dMark06 has become the go-to benchmarking tool when it comes to synthetic benchmarking.  Love it or hate it, there is no question that 3DMark06 is the measuring stick of video card performance industry wide.

We will be using Version 1.1.0 professional.  The free downloadable version can be found here.

The single HD4870 is about 7% faster than the 9800GTX and crossfire yields about a 14% increase over a single 4870.  Let's break down the test and compare each stage of 3Dmark06.

Page 1: Intro Page 2: Specs & Features Page 3: The Bundle & Layout Page 4: Overclocking Page 5: Benchmarks Page 6: Games Page 7: High Quality Benches Page 8: Conclusion