Home > Consumer Reviews > Sapphire Radeon HD4870 512MB DDR5 Dual DVI / TVO PCI-Express Graphics Card

I bought this card 2 weeks ago. Very good one, has overclocked 830 / 1100 stable (tested with 3DMark, playn' falout3 several hours), at 840 has artefacts/system crash. Fan speed - 40% - very quiet, temperature - 43 degrees idle, 58 load, 50% - very little noise, 41 degrees idle, 57 load. Got about 16000 in 3Dmark 06. I downclocked it in 2d mode with RivaTuner for energy saving at 375/450, works great in Word, internet, playng movies etc. Temperature - 37-38 with fan speed 40%.

This is best 4870 imho, has no sence to pay more for other, even factory OC models, you can OC this one by yourself :)

I've upgraded recently from a 8800GTS 512MB and it was very satisfactory i must say, but the prices on these cards are just so outstanding that if you've got the cash there's no reason to spend it anywhere else. I still think that the 4890s are a bit overpriced and the real benefit from these 4870s comes when you overclock them. On 3D Mark Vantage my 8800GTS overclocked got a GPU score of 6669. this does 8463 at stock and 9530 at a stable overclock.
With the 4870 overclocked it now sits just below the GTX 280 which usually scores in the 9700s. Now compare the price of the GTX 280 with this card.
Gaming at 1920 x 1200 is challenging for just about any card (now i said just about, GTX 295s are in a league of their own) and it does all games flawlessly with a few exceptions.
On Gears of War with my old 8800GTS 512MB the card simply could not cope with the DX10 setting (now you'll find a hard time differentiating DX10 from DX9 in GoW but the real benefit over DX9 comes from using the DX10/antialiasing setting since you cannot force AA in DX9 in ATI's Control Panel). This card really shines in DX10 and the performance boost you get from DX10.1 in games that support it over DX10 is very noticeable especially in Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. and just to note: No NVIDIA card on the market supports DirectX 10.1
The Games industry is just starting to take advantage of technologies that have been on the market for more than 2 years (More games with native 64-bit and Multicore rendering support in upcoming titles) so if you're not the type to upgrade every year or so, it's best take to advantage of the latest technologies at a great price.
One thing that nvidia has that ATI doesn't is PhysX which is impressive with games that support it but good luck finding a good game that utilizes it. Some folks may see that as a future benefit but i disagree mainly because DirectX 11 (and no u won't necessarily need a new DX11 card when it comes out, it'll work fine with current gen DX10 cards) will have support for Physics calculations on the GPU through DirectX itself.
Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB DDR5 PCI-Express Video Graphics Card priced at $149 is a perfect example of just how ridiculously priced these 4870s are. With 4770s at $119 and 4850s at $135 this 4870 card is a no-brainer!
I am so pleased with this product that i ordered another 4870 for Crossfire.

I replaced my 9600 GT with this HD 4870. Huge difference. I was running a 17" monitor at 1280 x 1024. The old card couldn't really keep up with the eye candy (AA/AF) so I picked up this card. Then I could play Hellgate:London, The Witcher EE, and Mass Effect with all the goodies. I'll be getting a 19" widescreen monitor running at 1680 x 1050 and expect no problems.

On the downside, though, this card sucks power like there's no tomorrow. I was running the Folding At Home GPU client with a slight OC (800/1000) and my old Ultra VSX750 power supply just couldn't keep up. I had it replaced under warranty and even the new LSP750 replacement psu could barely keep up. I eventually got a Corsair TX750 and have since had no problems.

It's an awesome card for the money. Just make sure the rest of your system is up to its needs.

Plays Anything. This is a solid card the fan speeds up as needed makes my computer almost silent when not playing games. Plays any game.

My wife bought this for me as a birthday present (thanks to the Amazon wish list). It is big: I've got an Antec 900 case, so I assumed that anything would fit. When I took it out of the box, I had my doubts, though. I was able to get in place, but I had to move some components around. If you don't have a full-sized case, then I'd suggest that you measure carefully before you take the plunge.

I've been playing Left 4 Dead (L4D) and the graphics are smooth at 1280x1024. I was surprised to see that the game didn't turn on a few things, but, hey, that's why you might need two of these babies for ultimate performance. For my purposes, however, it screams.
There is a driver for Vista 64, so don't be concerned if the documentation doesn't list one. I can't wait till Windows 7, BTW and have already ordered my discounted copy on Amazon.

Funny story: I carefully worked the card into place and started the system. It would not boot and gave me a weird error while suggesting that I insert my system disk. I was puzzled and eventually tried booting with the system disk. It gave me an error suggesting that I may have installed an incompatible accessory (not exactly the wording, but it was vague). I was considering doing a full restore from backup, but went through the case again and found that I had managed to pull one of the SATA cables loose from my hard drive: duh.... I reconnected the cable and everything worked great. Moral of the story: check all cables twice when shoehorning a big component like this.