An important victory, we must say, and no, we’re not talking about the Beijing Olympic Games, but rather the heavyweight graphics category. Radeon HD 4870 X2 is currently the fastest graphics card on the planet.
The picture below shows a Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2 card, packing two powerful RV770 graphics processors running in Crossfire mode on one PCB. That’s why “X2” found its place in the name of the card, and note that this is a multi-GPU card. The product we have in front of us is called R700, it runs great, and the results speak for themselves. Geforce GTX 280 is finally dethroned, and Nvidia definitely has to do something about it, as we’re sure they will.
Radeon HD 4870 X2 is not the only card in AMD’s sleeve. RV770 obviously turned out better than many hoped, so ATI made another dual GPU card based on it. The named it HD 4850 X2, which means it’s a slower version of the HD 4870 X2. Apart from these two new dual GPU cards, HD 4870 with 1GB of GDDR5 was also announced.
You should know that HD 4870 X2 is the first card with 2GB of GDDR5 memory. The slower HD 3870 X2 also has 2GB of memory, but it’s a cheaper GDDR3 one. It’s important to note that dual chip cards don’t feature a shared frame buffer, meaning that a 1GB card actually features 512MB of memory per chip. In our HD 4870 X2 scenario, each RV770 core has 1GB of GDDR5 at its disposal.
Radeon HD 4800 cards are based on the same RV770 core built in 55nm, and it features an impressive number of 965 million transistors. Each card from the HD 4800 series comes with 800 shaders (HD 3800 has 320), 40 texture units (HD 3800 has 16) and 16 ROP units and DirectX 10.1 support, but cards run at different speeds.
Radeon HD 4870 X2 runs at 750 MHz, just like HD 4878. Of course, HD 4870 X2 is exactly that – two HD 4870s on one PCB, so this card will feature everything that HD 4870 brings – times two. One of the pros we found in this dual chip card is that it consumes less energy than two HD 4870s in Crossfire mode. Maximum consumption in Crossfire mode will hit 320W, whereas one HD 4870 X2 will consume up to 286W. The card is powered through one 6-pin and one 8-pin power connector located in the upper right corner of the card, just above the fan.
ATI kept the cooler from HD 3870 X2 card, only now both cooler blocks are made of copper, unlike HD 3870 X2 which featured only one. The fan is the same one you’ll find on a single GPU HD 4870 cards.
Opposite to the power connectors, you’ll find a Crossfire connector which will enable quad Crossfire, provided that you have another HD 4870 X2 card.
Below you’ll find a nice photo that shows all the cooler’s layers, all the way to the core. The photo shows two large and heavy copper blocks with a heatsink that doesn’t feature heapipes, but it has a lot of tall fins through which the air flows. Hynix memory is in contact with the cooler, whereas on the back it touches the metal heatsink.
The card is dual slot, so hot air will be blown out of the case. It’s important to know that appropriate case cooling is a must, as the air coming out of the card is so hot that we couldn’t expose our skin to it longer than 10 seconds. However, Nvidia’s dual chip card doesn’t fare better in this respect, either.
HD 4870 X2s fan is sometimes silent and sometimes loud, depending on the temperature, of course. During operation, temperatures hit up to 89 degrees Celsius.
Radeon HD 4800 packs 2.5 times more shader processors and texture units compared to the last generations, whereas HD 4870 X2 doubles that number. In order to run properly, the two RV770 chips must be interconnected, which is done using a second generation PCIe bridge called PLX. It enables bidirectional x16 lines connection between the two cores, providing up to 10GB/sec bandwidth as well as additional 10GB/sec towards the PCIe slot. It seems like ATI had some additional plans for their card as they included another interconnection among the graphics cores using a chip called Side Port. It’s actually unused, or rather a disabled connection that would, if it was running, provide additional 10GB/sec among the cores.
Sapphire's card looks quite sexy in red and black color.
HD 4000 features a newer UVD (Unified Video Decoder) 2.0 engine than enables dual-stream decoding as well as 7.1 channel audio. In order to enjoy HD content, both dual-link DVIs are HDCP enabled, but in order to get HDMI with sound you’ll need the DVI-to-HDMI adapter that Sapphire ships with the card.
The box is as appealing as the card itself, and this is the first time we got 3DMark Vantage as a gift, as well as CyberLink PowerDVD 7 / Cyberlink DVD Suite. Of course, there’s also the Ruby ROM with a couple of little surprises and the user’s manual.
Testbed:
Motherboard:
EVGA 680i SLI (Provided by EVGA)
Processor:
Intel Core 2 Duo 6800 Extreme edition (Provided by Intel)
Memory:
OCZ FlexXLC PC2 9200 5-5-5-18 (Provided by OCZ)
during testing CL5-5-5-15-CR2T 1066MHz at 2.2V
PSU:
OCZ Silencer 750 Quad Black (Provided by OCZ)
Hard disk:
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 80GB SATA (Provided by Seagate)
CPU-Cooler:
Freezer 7 Pro (Provided by Artic Cooling)
Case Fans:
Artic Cooling - Artic Fan 12 PWM
Artic Cooling - Artic Fan 8 PWM
Vista 32 SP1
3DMark Vantage
Sapphire HD 4870 X2 scores 9547 points in 3DMark Vantage, which is the highest graphics card result we’ve seen so far.
It beats GTX 280 by 19% and HD 4870 by 43%, and although these are nice results for synthetic tests let’s see how those translate to gaming.
Gaming
HD 4870 X2 is not a card for low resolutions and those “weak of heart” CPUs. We see that it properly jumps and starts performing only at the highest resolution. It beats HD 4870 by 65% and GTX 280 by 10%.
Call of Juarez has always been more Radeon-friendly, but in this scenario HD 4870 X2 beats its single GPU sibling, HD 4870, by almost 50%.
Unlike in the previous game, ATI is down on its luck in Crysis. It scores only 11% percent better than one HD 4870 and outperforms GTX 280 by 1fps.
ATI does nicely in F.E.A.R. and we see the dual chip card outperforming HD 4870 by 78R and GTX 280 by an impressive 43%.
In this game Sapphire HD 4870 X2 scores 30% higher than HD 4870 and 6% higher than GTX 280.
UT3 and World in Conflict only confirm that HD 4870 X2 has no real competition and that GTX 280 is slower, just like we’ve seen so far.
Conclusion
Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2 is the fastest card we’ve tested so far. Thanks to that, ATI is on the throne once again, but you could say that GTX 280 is its faithful servant. Yes, the card does consume quite a bit of power (although it’s lower than two HD 4870s in CrossFire) and it runs a bit loud and hot, but the results are simply great. If you’re looking for a card that will produce enough frames for a 30’’ screen, then look no further than HD 4870 X2.
Radeon HD 4870 X2 is the first card coming with 2GB of GDDR5 memory, each core featuring 1GB. The card is dual slot but single PCB, so you can handle it like one card. Length-wise, it’s the same as GTX 280 (10.5’’) and will fit in a standard sized case. Sapphire bundles 3DMark Vantage with it, so you can make friends jealous with your “new results.”
At press time, Sapphire HD 4870 X2 is available at about €410 and we think that price/performance ratio is good. You’ll pay about the same for two HD 4870 cards, and since HD 4870 X2 is one card, it will prove to be a much cheaper solution for those that don’t have a CrossFire motherboard.
