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Review: XFX Radeon HD 4870 X2: the last performance bastion for AMD?

by Tarinder Sandhu on 26 March 2009, 10:41 3.35

Tags: Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB (9.3), XFX (HKG:1079), PC

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qarlo

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The card

Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB is, ostensibly, a couple of Radeon HD 4870 1GB cards stuck together on to one PCB and CrossFired. There's no real magic at play here, and the twin-GPU card benchmarks at around the same level as two discrete HD 4870s.

Released in August of last year, you can read about its inner workings here. The vast majority of partners have grabbed the reference design and placed their sticker on top - differentiating on price, bundle, and warranty.


That's the case with the XFX effort, which ships with the big-ass reference heatsink and is clocked in at a reference-matching 750MHz core and 3,600MHz GDDR5 memory.


The 2GB frame-buffer is split equally between the GPUs - so 1GB each - and an internal PLX (PCIe 2.0) switch connects them together.


The monster pulls some 285W when under full load, necessitating both six-pin and eight-pin power-connectors. Want more? Simply add another, attached via the CrossFire finger, for two-card, four-GPU rendering. Just make sure you have a PSU up to the task.

Performance-usurped by the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295, released at the turn of the year, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 remains the fastest single-card solution from ATI - and will be so for some time.

Whereas NVIDIA's class-leading card is currently etailing for around £420 ($510), ATI's fastest is available for a chunk less change, at around £335 ($400). That's still a lot of money to shell out on a graphics card, though.






Reference in every aspect, XFX's effort is priced at competitive levels, coming in at around £340, including VAT and delivery.