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Today we check out the ASUS Extreme AH4870 TOP graphics card which sports the latest and greatest GPU from AMD. Boasting 1.2TFLOPs of computing power, the Radeon HD 4870 is a serious gaming weapon and ASUS has overclocked this version for even more power... Just over a month ago now Nvidia unleashed the latest and greatest gaming product, the GeForce GTX 280, boasting an incredible 1400 million transistors in a die that measures 576mm2. With an MSRP of $649 US the GeForce GTX 280 was merely a pipe dream for most, but why now, just over a month later, can you buy one of these amazing graphics cards for up to 34% less than the original asking price? The reason is really very simple, AMD released the Radeon HD 4870 very soon after.  The launch of the new Radeon HD 4870 was hot on the heels of the GeForce GTX 280, and at $300 US this new Radeon was only slightly slower than the significantly more expensive Nvidia flagship product. However even for as little as $429 US, is the GeForce GTX 280 really worth 43% more than the Radeon HD 4870? Honestly we think not, and looking at the sales figures it would seem that most gamers agree with us. However it is not all good news for Radeon HD 4870 owners, as this product does have one weakness, albeit a small weakness, it is a weakness all the same. Without any software tweaks we have found that Radeon HD 4870 graphics cards using the reference cooler do tend to operate quite hot. In fact they get very hot, with the average idle temperature exceeding 70 degrees. Increasing the fan speed does help, but then that also increases the volume, turning an otherwise quiet graphics card into a bit of a hair dryer. So far we have found that the best solution is to replace the reference cooler with something a bit more efficient, such as the Arctic-Cooling S1 with the turbo module installed, for example. Sadly we are still yet to see a Radeon HD 4870 that does not use the reference cooler, and today’s review item doesn’t change this. While ASUS do have modified Radeon HD 4800 series cards in the works, this particular model keeps the reference cooler while boosting both core and memory clock frequencies. Clearly this is not going to help the ASUS Extreme AH4870 TOP deal with operating temperatures, and will only make things worse. That said, this overclocked Radeon HD 4870 should only run slightly hotter than the standard cards as the fan will simply throttle up more regularly to deal with the additional heat. Therefore we do expect that this Radeon HD 4870 will make a little bit more noise than usual, with the advantage of a little extra performance. |
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