HD 4870 review thread.

True but while the 4870 is relatively quiet, I do wish it was even quieter. I live in an area with virtually no ambient noise. So even the 4870 seems loud. But thankfully not as loud as some other cards. So for my 24/7 HTPC I have no choice but to go with a video card with a passive heatsink otherwise the thing is too bloody loud.

Now when I take it to a friends house who has an air conditioner, I really don't notice the fan noises from my computer.

All depends on your living conditions.

Regards,
SB

 

Just get an Accelero S1 (rev1 or rev2, doesn't matter). A low RPM 120+ mm tiewrapped to that should be enough to keep it cool ... unless your HTPC is completely passive that shouldn't increase the noise level appreciably.

PS. I think you will need to mod it a little for clearance so you can put a sink on the VRM though.

 

Maybe the thread was removed, but don't the Accelero's not cool the MOSFETs and therefore your card would soon be dead?

 

Reading this thread at XS, it looks like the majority of the thermal anomalies the board exhibits are originating from overheating those small heavy duty power transistors. The same is seen on the thermo-graph images I've posted earlier here, even with stock cooling! Miss-engineering here?

BTW, ATi should exclude FurMark from warranty cover, or at least use this small brave app in their qualification tests.
/Dave, don't take this too personally, please!/

 

Why do you need a 4870 in a htpc? If you buy a mainboard with a 780g chip in it that will decode HD content at good speed + no noise (and damn cheap).

 

From the pics I looked at earlier, the Voltage Regulators / Power Mosfets are cooled perfectly fine with the stock cooling on HD 4870. It's not until you add in an aftermarket heatsink that does not cover them that you have serious issues.

Do not get an Accelero S1 (rev1 or rev2, doesn't matter) for the HD 4870 unless you find a heatsink to also use on the voltage regulators / power mosfets.

 

As long as you have a dremel you can find it right on the card

 

No an no.. so far the only heat failure on a 4870 seems to have occurred when some Harvard-class guy removed the cooler from the card.

 

Sorry I wasn't clear enough. I don't have a 4870 in my HTPC. The whole point was that it was too noisy for my 24/7 HTPC, thus the use of a video card with a passive heatsink. In this case a 3470.

I generally get used to the noise of my gaming rig with a 4870 after I've used it a little while. But it's noticeble how noisy it is when I leave the room and then come back. But that's true for any card with a fan that I've tried. And yes, I notice it along with the low fan noise from my PSU and exhaust fan. Each has a slightly different sound. My HTPC is significantly quieter with 1 low speed 120 mm Scythe flex intake fan and a passively cooled PSU. CPU, Video Card and PSU all passively cooled.

Regards,
SB

 

That reminds me of something I saw in one of the reviews & I'm surprised not to have seen followed up round here: It said Dave is the Product Manager for RV770 which seems like a bit of a promotion And a job well done

I too would like some more offical control of the fan.

I took a different angle with the 3870 thread but that was before I actually got one & found that it cooked my Wifi card/mobo by heat transmission through the PCB/case & my previously stable with an X1900GT system started crashing after a bit of gaming.

I've since been using Rivatuner to manually bump up the fan & keep things nicely cool, with corresponding return to stability. (except when the fan profiles disappear & I have to reset them)

I'm running quite excessively cool even: 60C running at 877Mhz.
This is at least partly because Rivatuner only seems to pick up 3 fan speeds: 100% 50% and 25%. (pretty sure that last several generations have a controller with many speed steps right?)
The 3870 gets up into the 80s with 25% fan but sits happily at 60C with 50% fan.
What I'd like is to be able to set a target temperature in the Overdrive screen so that the fan automatically & progressively ramps up to keep the temperature at the set level.
I'm pretty sure that I'd sit on a quiet 35-40% fan & 70C or so.

 

AA Performance and IQ on HD4800.

 

The fan isn't the problem here. As I said before (as a HD4870 owner); the cooler can keep RV770 XT at ~80C, with only a 20-25% fan speed and that's at full load.

The problem lies with its heat output during idle usage. It (the GPU core) idles at 70-80C with the fan speed at 15-20%. Something tells me that the GPU voltage isn't being reduced [enough?].

Again, there's nothing wrong with either the cooler or the fan RPM brackets, IMO. However, the GPU is always at roughly 80C, no matter its workload (whether it be 1% 2D idle or 100% 3D load) or the constant ~20% fan speed.

 

Argh! Too many AA modes & MLCAAAs* to try to comprehend


*Many Letter Composite Anti-Aliasing Acronyms

 

Don't know if you could notice on those screenshots, so I did a animated gif zoomed in.



I'm seriously not that happy with nVidia's texture blurring in any of HOCPs images. Now, I cant see where they say they've enabled AA, but the 4800 looks like it, they wouldn't have forgotten it... would they?

Mind you, even they say they aren't sure why the roof is blurry....

 

AFAIK, powerplay is not working on the HD 4800 series, but will be soon. I still think they should modify the fan speed via driver to around 30% idle and 45% load. At least untill a more "custom" solution hits.

 

Rivatuner should be hitting soon, so is ATITool IIRC.

 

Oh no, not Soon(TM).

 

Any news on the 1gb version of HD4870? I read somewhere that Powercolor is going to release a 1gb version and it has announced it already, but is there any set release date? Any estimates? I mean, I have ordered my new machine which consists of following parts:

MSI P45 Neo-F
Intel Q9450
Radeon HD 4870 512
Antec 1200 + 700w PSU
500 Gb 7200 RPM Sata II
4GB DDR2 800 mhz
Vista Ultimate x64

I have every other part already except for my GPU HD 4870. I was thinking if I should wait for the 1gb version to come and buy it? So when will it be around?

 

I've finally finished our Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 review.

 

Thanks Hanners.

nice to see most review features packed in one review.


Any indication that the just release 8.7's perform any better than the 8.6 hotfix? or is that one truly the final whql candidate?