PowerColor PCS+ HD 4870 1GB GDDR5

by Marco Chiappetta — Monday, September 22, 2008, 06:10 PM EDT

There is no way to categorize AMD's recent launch of the RV770 graphics processor powering the Radeon HD 4800 series of cards as anything other than a resounding success. Cards based on the GPU hit the scene offering very strong performance in their respective price brackets, and forced rival NVIDIA to react with a quick round of price cuts that will surely eat into NVIDIA's margins on the gigantic 65nm GT200 chip. Although actual sales figures aren't available just yet, we suspect AMD is going to show strong sales of every member of the Radeon HD 4800 series.

One common concern among analysts and users of AMD's latest flagship GPU has been heat, however. Virtually every evaluation of a reference Radeon HD 4800 series cards makes some mention of the extreme heat radiated by the cards. But PowerColor may have an answer. We recently got a hold of PowerColor's PCS+ HD 4870 card that features a completely redesigned cooler, with multiple heat-pipes and a dense array of aluminum heatsink fins, which the company claims can lower GPU temps by upwards of 10'C. And for good measure, PowerColor also pre-overclocks the cards and packs on 1GB of GDDR5 memory, double that of the initial lot of reference cards.

Considering the relative popularity of the Radeon HD 4870, we were eager to see what this custom variant had in store. Read on to see what PowerColor PCS+ HD 4870 1GB GDDR5 can really do and decide whether it's worth the extra investment...

PowerColor PCS+ HD 4870 1GB GDDR5

Tags: DDR, HD, PC, GDDR5, Power, PCs, Powercolor, 4870, color, GB, R5

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com