Group test: Graphics cards£151+ GRAPHICS CARDS

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�����������HIS HD 4870 ICEQ 4+ TURBO 1GB

SAPPHIRE ATI RADEON HD 4870 X2£229 inc VAT • hisdigital.com£344 inc VAT • sapphiretech.com

Selecting a winner in the £151-plus graphics card category wasalways going to be tricky. There’s a gargantuan £221 gap between thecheapest and most expensive cards, which means the various models
are targeting different markets, and aiming to fulﬁl different criteria.
Nevertheless, the HIS HD 4870 stood out as the best deal. If
you’ve got £250 to spend and want some impressive framerates– but don’t feel the need to shatter the ceiling – this will do superbly.
Built around ATI’s mid-range 4870 chip, the 4870 gets deluxe
treatment courtesy of HIS. And while the brand name won’t
necessarily be familiar to you, this company has already garnered acouple of positive recommendations in the pages of PC Advisor. The
card is part of the ﬁrm’s IceQ 4+ range, so you’ll get a very elegant
cooling system, plus a little extra burst of speed that builds modestlyon the base speciﬁcations of the 4870.
The core clock has been increased from 750MHz to 770MHz. Thememory clock upgrade is more eyecatching, going from 900MHz to1GHz. In fact, this difference is greater than it sounds. With standard
GDDR3 graphics memory, the memory clock needs to be doubled togive the effective ﬁgure; with the 4870’s fantastic GDDR5 memory
you’ll need to quadruple that ﬁgure instead. So, the 1GHz core clock
results in an effective 4GHz rather than the 3.6GHz of the standard
4870. And you get a full 1GB of this souped-up memory, comparedwith 512MB on the original 4870.
The fantastic cooling system does a very good job of keeping thecard rolling along at a low temperature. It wasn’t the quietest cardduring our Crysis sound tests, although the 46-48dB generated byour test PC during normal use was very quiet indeed.
Compared to the cream of this chart, the 4870 isn’t a stellar
performer, although it still generates some very good framerates
and it ﬁnishes marginally ahead of the more expensive GeForce GTX
260 (page 66). It should be said, however, that a standard 4870 card
could provide even greater value for money.

First time around, the HD 4870 X2 didn’t make much of an impact
in the PC Advisor Test Centre. We reviewed this card back in ourNovember issue and, while we were enthusiastic about its power,
we were put off by the £400-plus price tag.
Since then, it’s been slowly dropping in price and, at £344, it’s
now good value. While you’ll still need to be reasonably well heeled
to afford such luxury, those shopping around the £350 mark will ﬁndthe Radeon HD 4870 X2 a mouthwatering purchase.
There’s actually nothing new about this card – it’s really two
4870s ﬁtted together so, even eight months ago, the technology
itself was far from cutting-edge. It doesn’t come with newer features
such as integrated PhysX technology or Cuda (for more on Cuda,
see the GTX 285, page 66). But you get a lot of brute force for yourmoney. With two chips, two memory interfaces and two dollops ofRAM, the 4870 X2 has an awful lot to throw at today’s games.
Its 2GB of RAM (two sets of 1GB) eclipses even the GTX 295 (page67). And, since ATI adopts a very forward-thinking approach towards
the memory market, it’s no surprise to see this card equipped withGDDR5 RAM. GDDR5 enables the X2’s effective memory clock speed
to be stretched to an astonishing 3,600MHz.
The 4870 X2 isn’t as large or heavy as you might expect, given
its wealth of hardware, but it generates a huge amount of heat. In
fact, once we’d put it through our barrage of tests, it was almost too
hot to handle. More encouragingly, it’s not particularly noisy, given
its ﬁrepower. You can barely hear the card during normal use. It got
louder during our games tests, but still remained a good 2 or 3dB
quieter than the GTX 295.
You will need supplementary power connectors with this card,
however. Ideally, you need a power supply that can ﬁt an 8-pin
connection. An adaptor is included.

VERDICT: This HIS card is the best deal on offer here. It’s a particularly
good choice for those with a slightly older CPU – if you’ve got a CoreDuo, your PC will struggle to get the most out of a high-end card.

64 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews June 2009

Graphics cards 167.indd 64

VERDICT: The 4870 X2 can’t compete with the GTX 295’s framerates– but that will set you back an extra £106. And, the 295 apart, theX2 is comfortably the fastest card here, easily slipping ahead of thenewer GTX 285. Given that the latter costs just £19 less, we reckon
the 4870 X2 is a much better deal overall.

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