Hardware Gainward Radeon HD 4870 1GB Golden Sample

[Tim S]

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/200...olden-sample/1

Gainward has completley redesigned the Radeon HD 4870 1GB from the PCB up. It has built an overclocked dual slot, dual fan, dual BIOS card which even packs in a fantastically old school turbo switch! Read on to find out how it fares in the ever competitive world of high performance graphics...

[Xtrafresh]

Originally Posted by last page, 1st paragraph

...pleasant 33°C at load and then just 59°C at idle...

Shurely you mean the other way around?

Also, while i think your conclusion is pretty solid (not worth the 30 extra pounds), i do think you should have mentioned two of it's merits in the round-up: power consumption and the shorter PCB. It may not be much, but both are potential buying decisions. Also, if the rest of your system is struggling to cool, it will certainly be worth sticking a card in there that's 35 degrees cooler in all scenarios . In other words, you conclusion is too much FPS, and too little other stuff

[Baz]

While the PCB is shorter, it is only one centimetre shorter - such a small difference in board length is unlikely to have an enormous impact on whether the card will fit in your case or not. In regards to power consumption, while the 30W saving at load is certainly a nice bonus, it doesn't justify the price difference - Even if your electricity is cheap (say 22p per KW/H), you'd need to run the card at continuous peak load for a full 187.5 days to recoup the extra £30 investment.

And while the card does run cooler, the dual slot nature of the stock 4870 cooler means that it really doesn't cook the inside of your PC like the 4850 can. Add in the fact that you can't use that extra cooling headroom to overclock thanks to the BIOS compatibility problems, and they all become issues that just aren't worth mentioning in a full review

[rpsgc]

I'm sorry but I can't agree with the conclusion. I know a whole lot of people who'd gladly pay that £30 price premium, even tough there is pretty much NO price premium for it in the rest of Europe (must suck living in the UK eh?), for a card with this kind of performance whilst consuming little power over a HD 4850!

[psychoti]

what about the noise of the card?

[Baz]

Originally Posted by psychoti

what about the noise of the card?

Originally Posted by Review

What’s even better is that the Gainward 4870’s cooler accomplished these excellent thermal results while also being extremely quiet into the bargain, although the 4870’s stock cooler was admittedly very quiet throughout testing too.

Also, I've only just noticed some errors on the power consumption page (I'd accidentally compared the card to a 4870 512 rather than a 4870 1GB). Power consumption at idle is roughly the same at idle, but is 19W lower at full load - apologies!

[Xtrafresh]

Originally Posted by Baz

While the PCB is shorter, it is only one centimetre shorter - such a small difference in board length is unlikely to have an enormous impact on whether the card will fit in your case or not. In regards to power consumption, while the 30W saving at load is certainly a nice bonus, it doesn't justify the price difference - Even if your electricity is cheap (say 22p per KW/H), you'd need to run the card at continuous peak load for a full 187.5 days to recoup the extra £30 investment.

And while the card does run cooler, the dual slot nature of the stock 4870 cooler means that it really doesn't cook the inside of your PC like the 4850 can. Add in the fact that you can't use that extra cooling headroom to overclock thanks to the BIOS compatibility problems, and they all become issues that just aren't worth mentioning in a full review

sorry if the message came across wwrong. It's a great review as always! I also said the conclusion is fine, i just think the benefits should have been included

[Bladestorm]

After an incident with a golden sample 6800GT card that artifacted heavily at stock and flat out crashed at the factory overclocked speeds, which went off for RMA, dissapeared for 6 months, then came back with a fan changed but still artifacting/crashing, I won't go anywhere near gainward.

[xaser04]

Originally Posted by rpsgc

I'm sorry but I can't agree with the conclusion. I know a whole lot of people who'd gladly pay that £30 price premium, even tough there is pretty much NO price premium for it in the rest of Europe (must suck living in the UK eh?), for a card with this kind of performance whilst consuming little power over a HD 4850!

The following card is £45 cheaper than this gainward card yet as far as I can see its the same:

http://www.tekheads.co.uk/s/product?product=609657

This despite its marketed name is a Palit sonic (read overclocked) model which features the same PCB and the same cooler (I would go as far as to say its the same card merely rebadged) as this Gainward card.

Why on earth would you spend an extra £45 for the same (or near enough identical) card?!

[xaser04]

EDIT to my above post: It looks as though the backing plate is slightly different (Palit is lacking the vents and the displayport?!)

Other than that its the same thing.

[SubtleOne]

Sadly, our overclocking adventures ended here, as none of the overclocking tools available to us were able to effectively adjust the card’s clock speeds – an issue related to an incompatibility between the card’s custom switchable dual BIOS and the various popular overclocking utilities.

Actually, Rivatuner is incompatible with ATI drivers version 8.55.1 (AKA Hotfix#2) and the latest WHQL 8.11. It isn't a BIOS problem. Try 8.10 and you'll see your OC limitations disappear.

[gebbly]

If you want an identical card but badged as Palit rather than Gainward then as far as I can tell try http://www.ginger6.co.uk/palit-radeo...l-p-31515.html which is the same right down to the vent and rear connectors

[WildThing]

Well, I've had this card for barely a week, and I'm happy with it so far. I must agree with the review though, I think a 7 is pretty fair. I was appauled at the bundle or lack of should I say lol! I was thinking about getting a stock 4870 1GB, but I guess I'm just a sucker for having things running cool AND quiet, which so far is exactly what I've got.

[HourBeforeDawn]

VGA really??? come on.. seriously... just drop it already ~_~ I think I like this arrangement a bit more then their x2 version which is three bays granted it does have a nice cooler on it but just the same companies should aim for no more then two bays being occupied.

[[USRF]Obiwan]

So basically you get a GPU cooler upgrade with lesser hardware components with no overclock possibility.
I rather buy a very good third party cooling solution and overclock the hell out of it if possible.

[Bindibadgi]

Originally Posted by xaser04

The following card is £45 cheaper than this gainward card yet as far as I can see its the same:

http://www.tekheads.co.uk/s/product?product=609657

This despite its marketed name is a Palit sonic (read overclocked) model which features the same PCB and the same cooler (I would go as far as to say its the same card merely rebadged) as this Gainward card.

Why on earth would you spend an extra £45 for the same (or near enough identical) card?!

Indeed, parent company.

[cyrilthefish]

A native displayport and hdmi port on the card?

*SOLD*

First non-mediacentre-ish video card i've seen with either of those ports native on them!

Got the 512MB version on order with scan now

[karsh]

got this card myself, sure the oc is a bit low still works great and is very quiet and cool

i wouldnt buy the 512mb version unless they "fixed" it, the 512mb has only one temperature controlled fan if i remember right the port layout is diffrent too and some other "little" bugs

[atilla101uk]

Originally Posted by cyrilthefish

A native displayport and hdmi port on the card?

*SOLD*

First non-mediacentre-ish video card i've seen with either of those ports native on them!

Got the 512MB version on order with scan now

Palit have been doing them for a little while now i.e. 9600gt sonic and also the 9800gx2's had hdmi ports on them

Originally Posted by Baz

While the PCB is shorter, it is only one centimetre shorter - such a small difference in board length is unlikely to have an enormous impact on whether the card will fit in your case or not. In regards to power consumption, while the 30W saving at load is certainly a nice bonus, it doesn't justify the price difference - Even if your electricity is cheap (say 22p per KW/H), you'd need to run the card at continuous peak load for a full 187.5 days to recoup the extra £30 investment

I'd just like to say that as a user of a thermaltake dh101 it does matter about the length of the board not just for fitment reasons but also for airflow reasons.

[thehippoz]

dunno if you guys used gainwards expertool before.. pretty neat little oc utility http://www.gainward.com/main/support.php?lang=en