Hardware Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 Atomic

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/12/19/sapphire-ati-radeon-hd-4870x2-atomic-review/1

The Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 Atomic is a heavily overclocked, pre-watercooled version of ATI's dual GPU monster and it's been tearing up the bit-tech test benches all week. We find out just how fast it is, and whether it justifies its monster price tag.

 

great idea, concept, and appearance but just not worth it for the performance gained over its cost, oh well.

 

It does seem a little odd putting the pump on the cpu block, especially as they tend to dump heat into the loop? I also currently run a single loop for GPU and CPU (although obviously custom) and would not recommend it, modern graphics processors dump so much heat it scares me sometimes to look at the CPU temps

 

^^^ well the whole pump/block combo type argument as been around for a while and honestly a pump makes next to no heat so really there isnt much of a change and this looks like its using the Siberian block/pump combo which is the only competition that I know of to the swiftech version but as far as I know isnt sold in the states. Either way it offers no better then low level entry water cooling comparable to that of high end air cooling.

 

There is no way the single "slim" 120mm radiator could cool a high mainstream gamers CPU (such as a Q6600 or Q6700) AND a HD 4870 X2 comfortably. As your tests show the CPU actually ran hotter than stock. Just a gimmick.

 

^^^ at stock no problem, again that setup has similar results as highend air cooling, OCed well if we are talking q6600 up to 3-3.2 ghz would be alright but anything higher well of course not.

 

they should have just released the card with the waterblock on. i think they have narrowed their market by producing a entire loop

 

Would also be cheaper for the consumer to purchase (if they have a pre-existing loop).

 

Would be interested in three things... temps with a Q6600 rather than the heatmonster Prescott, temps without a CPU in the loop and what sort of difference adding a second fan on the radiator in a push/pull arrangement will have. I realise that you probably aren't going to be testing those, though, as you've likely got better things to be doing.

Even so, this is a nice idea that fails because a single 120mm radiator really can't take two hot GPUs and a CPU all at the same time. A dual would have coped better, but even then wouldn't have been perfect... and case compatibility goes out the window with a dual radiator.

If it's going to be cutting close to £600, that really doesn't do well enough to be justifiable. A 4870X2 and a decent custom watercooling setup will cost the same, and give far superior temperatures. Of course, that introduces the whole complexity issue again...

 

Great review (I love how in depth Bit-tech go for these reviews and also the inclusion of min framerates are a god send compared to other reviews)I can't help but think thought tthat the choice of wording 'heavily overclocked' seems wrong for this card.

In reality its a bump of 50mhz on the core and 100mhz on the memory (quad pumped for GDDR5) is simply just an overclock.

Maybe its because I am used to seeing card like the my old 8800GS (XFX alpha dog edition) clock from 550 - 750 on the core, 1500 - 1950 on the shaders and 1400 - 2100 on the memory. Not thats a heavy overclock!

 

Crompersitto,was thinking the same.Sort of along the lines that BFG took,i think,with some Nvidia cards.

 

So....in the new year its a choice between a £600 Gfx card or food and water...

I'll choose the latter, but want the former...

 

Looks like they should have done just the GPU and left the CPU cooling to whatever the consumer wanted/had to use.
I've always wondered about having separate, dedicated loops for CPU cooling and GPU cooling .. from the figures, it looks as if a single 120mm fan/rad would cool the 4870 x2 just fine, and without the GPU dumping all that heat into the CPU loop, I wonder if another 120mm/rad would cool it too?

 

The US price is supposed to be in dollars, ahem.

Will the 4870 X2s ever drop below $350, I would really like to get an X2 over the regular one, but the price is so much higher.

 

Eh no thanks!

So lets say you have the cash for this, then in a few months want to buy another card for crossfire? What are you going to do with the extra cpu block and pump?

 

I apologize for not reading the whole article, I just skimmed through it before heading off to class, but is it possible that you didn't get a good mount on the CPU waterblock? The only other review I've read about this card said the CPU waterblock did a very good job.

 

Double checked and fitted twice - it's not that the waterblock does a bad job, it's just that the loop struggles to deal with all the heat being dumped into the loop by the 4870 X2, the point where the CPU is actually being warmed by the loop rather than cooled!

 

US Price (as reviewed): £700 (ex. Tax) - MSRP
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Shame they chose 1/4" tubing.. 1/2" or 3/8" might have made some slight differences, but it's pretty obvious the radiator was just incapable of dumping off the heat.

I wonder if it's a dual-pass radiator, it's look a bit too thin to be dual-pass.

The concept is good though.


Wouldn't the fluid eventually need to be topped up though?

Interesting how it didn't have a reservoir either, so it would mean the system has the exact amount of fluid. I wonder if it makes any thermal difference to have reservoirs for liquid to sit for a while and dissipate heat before being pushed back through the loop..

 

did you guys try to squeeze any more performance out of it? or didn't want to risk it?