PowerColor HD4870 PCS+ Review

gotdamojo06 - September 1, 2008
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Testing:

I am very interested and excited to see how the new PowerColor HD4870 GPU from ATI will compare when it is tested using a few different video benchmarks to measure the card's performance. I will be putting the PowerColor card up against a few different video cards that are out on the market, including the PowerColor HD4850. I am also extremely interested in seeing how the cooling solution PowerColor has added to its HD4870 is going to handle the temperatures. All of the settings will be set at stock for all of the cards; I will also be overclocking the HD4870 to the maximum level so that I can compare the difference in performance when overclocked, and see how beneficial it is to overclock all components in your system.

Testing Setup:

Processor: Intel Core2 Quad Q9450
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X48-DQ6
Memory: Mushkin XP2 Redline 8000 2 x 2GB 5-5-5-12
Video Card: PowerColor PCS+ HD4870
Power Supply: Mushkin 800w Modular Power Supply
Hard Drive: Seagate 1TB SATA
Optical Drive: Lite-on DVD-RW
Case: Cooler Master Cosmos S
OS: Windows Vista Ultimate

Comparison Video Cards:

Overclocking:

Overclocked settings:

PowerColor HD4870: Core - 860MHz Memory - 1100MHz

When it comes to overclocking the PowerColor PCS+ HD4870, I used a piece of software called AMD GPU Clock Tool. The HD4870 was an extremely easy card to overclock; I was able to get it up to 860MHz stable on the core very quickly, and was able to jump around 10MHz every increment. I was able to get it all the way up to 870MHz, however it was unstable and unable to run 3DMark06 all the way through. I feel that if I were to perform a voltmod to the card, I would be able to achieve a higher overclock - maybe near 900MHz. During the overclocking process, the temperatures did not go up more than a few degrees; however, after those few degrees, the final temperature was between 53 to 55°C under a full load. A substatial decrease over the reference cooling solution.