Supercharging the Radeon HD 4870 - PowerColor does it properly

Graphics

Published: Friday 19th September, 2008 | Author: Tarinder Sandhu
Products: HD 4870 1GB PCS+
Companies: PowerColor (All PowerColor content), AMD (All AMD content)
External reviews: PowerColor HD 4870 1GB PCS+

printer friendly layout discuss this review in the forums

discuss in the forums email this review to a friend

email to a friend

Next page: Card appearance

Introduction

Following the launch of the HD 4800 series, there has been ferocious competition in the high-end graphics arena, spurred by ATI's triumphant return to form and NVIDIA's counter through product repositioning.

Whilst the competition has been undoubtedly good for the consumer, there has been limited differentiation, with the vast majority of products closely following the reference designs.

PowerColor's Radeon HD 4870 1GB PCS+ looks to address the biggest weakness of the HD 4870 reference design - the toasty cooling solution, whilst also raising clockspeeds and upping the framebuffer to a NVIDIA GTX 280-matching 1GB.

How do these changes affect performance? Read on to find out.

Next page: Card appearance