The Card

HIS' HD4870x2 is no small card.  This isn't unusual as all of the top tier graphics solutions are monstrously big.  The HD4870x2 measures a full 10.5 inches long and weighs over 2.5 pounds.  As with any oversized VGA card, be sure your case will accept this extended length or be prepared to be shopping for a new box.  The top view of the card shows you how big this thing is and the back side shows you in part why.  As you can see, the x2 means two GPUs.  Two HD4870 GPUs to be exact.  The HD4870 runs hot under ordinary circumstances so I'm curious what type of heat two will generate.

  

The two HD4870 GPUs are clocked at 750MHz each and interconnect with one another at 6.8GHz/sec.  This is a significant increase over the last dual GPU ATi card that was PCI-E 1.1 we looked at in the HD3870x2 instead of the PCI-E 2.0 we are seeing here today.  Also remember that between the two GPUs you have a total of 1600 stream processors.  The memory is GDDR5 with one gig for each of the GPUs.  That makes the HD4870x2 a card with two gigabyte of memory.  Granted that each GPU is allocated one gig each but just saying two gigs like that gives me goose bumps.  The memory is GDDR5 as we said and is rated at 3.6GHz.  All this memory coupled with two GPUs is going to need some serious cooling.

This heat is addressed through a massive copper/aluminum cooler.  The entire cooling assembly is shrouded by an acrylic shroud that channels air from a 70mm turbine type fan in the rear over the convection fins and out of the case through a vented slot cover.  Dual slot graphics cards can be a pain because of their size but having the ability to exhaust all the hot air outside of the case is a huge plus.

  

Given the length of the card, the power connection points have been moved to the side edge.  As you can see below, an 8-pin and a 6-pin PCI-E power line are necessary to feed this beast.  A minimum 650 watt power supply is recommended unless you run two of these cards in Crossfire where that minimum creeps up at 1000 watts.

As we move from back to front we get a look at the external cooling rods that span part of one side of the HD4870x2.  We have seen these cooling rods before on other high end ATi cards.  For my part, I'm not a big fan of these rods being outside the air shroud.  Expanding the plastic shroud would allow a more efficient transfer of their heat to be moved outside the case.  In this reference design, any heat coming off these rods stays in the case.  As we mentioned earlier, I fully expect to see HIS release a HD4870x2 with a modified version of their very popular IceQ3 cooler.  They already have an IceQ4 out.

  

Previous Crossfire cards you have seen have two interconnect posts.  Being that the HD4870x2 already has two processors talking, only one Crossfire post is necessary if you look to double your pleasure.

The business end of the HD4870x2 has two DVI ports with an HD S-Video out port.  Over these you can see the finger guard over the air exhaust.  The dark gunmetal of the slot cover makes a clean sinister look against the dark smoke color of the acrylic shroud and black PCB.

Installation/Operation

After having cleared the room of small children prior to attempting to install the card (should a $500 card not fit in your rig you can bet even Captain Kangaroo will set off some 'F' bombs) we prepared ourselves.  Physical installation into our test bed, a Zalman GT1000 case, provided a snug fit with the HD4870x2's 10.5 inches.  There was approximately 3/8 of an inch clearance between the back edge of the card and the Zalman's drive rack.  See the pic below.  Software wise, driver installation and getting the card running went without any difficulties.

Now remember that you will need at least a 650 watt PSU with an 8-pin and a 6-pin PCI-E connector to power the HD4870x2.

Temperature

The Catalyst Control Panel sensor gave us an idle GPU temperature reading of 78 degrees Celsius.  In spite of an hour's fragging we never saw the temps cross 84 degrees Celsius.  The HD4870x2's cooler is a reference design unit and no doubt could easily be improved upon. 

Sound Level

The variable rate 70mm cooling fan on mounted on the HD4870x2 adjusts its temperature based on the readings of an internal diode.  This fan's operation was much better than similar units we've seen.  The fan's speed and sound signature would slowly increase under load but never reached the full on Dust Buster level we experienced with this similar cooler design when it was on the HD2900XT.  The sound level during game play and at all other times was tolerable and with it running inside a closed case, was minimally detectable over normal room sounds in the context of game sounds.

 

BACK                    NEXT

Pg. 1 - Introduction
Pg. 2 - The Card/Installation/Noise
Pg. 3 - Test Bed/Benchmarks
Pg. 4 - Benchmarks
Pg. 5 - Image Quality/Overclocking/Conclusion