Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic: exclusive, with unusual features
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Date: 25.10.2008 |
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Recently, we examined Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic and were indeed pleased by it. At a price equal to that for the regular Radeon HD 4850, Palit offered its own version of Radeon HD 4850 which stands out for superb overclocking capability and a really efficient cooling system. But Palit also offers a much faster video card - Radeon HD 4870 - in its assortment. Like its "younger sister", Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic is made following Palit's proprietary design, is equipped with a proprietary cooling system, as well as some unusual features.
Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic is packed in a proprietary box with the image of a fully armed frog. To back the menacing image of the video card with specific figures, the designers put a silvery sticker with the mention of the key specifications of the video card.
Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic, box, rear view
The reverse side of the box for Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic is left for the list of specifications. But these are common for the Radeon HD 4000 and Radeon HD 3000 series, so Palit can use similar boxes for different models of video cards marking them with a silvery sticker on the front side.
The package bundle of Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic includes the following items:
- 6-pin power supply adapter for PCI-Express video cards;
- DVI -> D-Sub adapter;
- DVI -> HDMI adapter;
- drivers CD;
- user's manual.
The list is not long, but the lack of "frills" in the package bundle should favor the price of the video card.
Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic takes up two expansion slots in the PC housing, is equipped with a cooling system having two fans. The latter is eye-catching since the cooling system with two fans looks very unusual and will offer better cooling.
In addition to two DVI-I connectors, Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic is equipped with the Display Port connector which will certainly please to the fanciers of respective monitors. Also note the Normal/Turbo switch nearby. Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic is equipped with two BIOS chips, and with a switch the user selects the firmware to be used. The difference between the BIOS codes is in the clock speeds at which the video card runs. Note that switching to another BIOS will require to reboot the computer to apply the firmware.
The reverse side of Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic is not so remarkable. From that it is easy to see that in designing the video card the engineers at Palit used their own PCB design.
Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic, without a cooling system
To finally see how unique the PCB design of Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic is, just remove the cooling system. The power supply subsystem of the video card looks like made at a high quality, also due to a separate radiator used to cool MOSFET transistors. Note that this radiator is cooled with the second fan of the cooling system of Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic. The new product by Palit is equipped with 512 MB of video memory which is made up of eight GDDR-5 chips which are positioned near the GPU AMD RV770.
The video memory chips are made by Qimonda and aimed at operation at the effective clock speed 4000 MHz. Recall that the effective clock speed of GDDR-5 is four times as high as the real, while the previous generations of GDDR video memory had an effective clock speed merely twice as high as compared to the real clock speed.
The cooling system of Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic has a separate structure in which the fans are not attached to the radiator. The radiator is based on three heat pipes which distribute heat from the center over all its surface. The radiator is chromium-plated, which protects it against oxidation and gives more luster.
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