With the recent arrival of the Radeon HD 4800 series, graphics cards prices have plummeted to the point where it is now possible to pick up a very powerful gaming solution for just $200. Just a month ago we checked iout the Radeon HD 4850, the value offering in the new ATI line-up, and in short we absolutely loved it. Since then NVIDIA has reconfigured their pricing scheme so that you can pick up either a GeForce 9800 GTX or Radeon HD 4850 for just $200. However, if you can spend a little more, AMD also has the Radeon HD 4870 on offer, boasting improved performance on a single GPU for about $285 and competing in the same price range as the GeForce GTX 260 graphics cards. - TechSpot

VisionTek Radeon HD 4870 512MB Style Card Review

The specifications of the Radeon HD 4870 are very impressive. The GPU boasts a staggering 800 shader processors, 40 texture units and 16 raster operation units, making it an somehow extremely complex unit. The huge boost in memory bandwidth is the result of using the latest GDDR5 memory which is clocked at 3600MHz effective. The Radeon HD 4870 GPU has been built using a 55nm design process and features a 256-bit wide memory bus. Like the older Radeon HD 3800 series, it also uses the PCI Express 2.0 bus and offers full support for DirectX 10.1 technology which may prove useful in the future.

Being an early introduction to the market, the VisionTek card could easily be mistaken for an AMD reference card. Other than the VisionTek label on the fan, there is very little distinguishing the two. That said, the card still looks quite impressive featuring a large dual slot cooler. Like the previous Radeon HD 3870, the new Radeon HD 4870 GPU uses a 55nm design. Despite of this, ATI has not been aggressive with the core speed, clocking it at just 750MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a more impressive frequency of 3.6GHz on this particular model. All in all, these are great specs for a card that costs roughly $285.

The VisionTek Radeon HD 4870 resembles quite closely an AMD reference card, making it hard to differentiate from many of the introductory Radeon HD 4870 based products that were released last June 25th. That said, the VisionTek Radeon HD 4870 did not disappoint offering an incredible level of performance for just $285. In terms of value you will be hard pressed to find anything better than the new Radeon HD 4800 series. Though NVIDIA has been quick to adjust their pricing accordingly, you will still have to thank AMD for bringing such a compelling set of products to the mainstream market.

As was the case when testing the Radeon HD 4850, we have trouble with the AMD reference cooler used in the Radeon HD 4870. While the cooler does remain relatively quiet even when under load, it allowed the VisionTek card to operate at some extreme temperatures. While on this topic, we have heard about users using third-party software like RivaTuner to tweak the card settings and fix the stock fan speed at a certain level. Unfortunately at around fifty percent where the fan starts to make a difference in temperatures, we found the fan to be too noisy, so it doesn't really help that much to increase the fan speed.

We also had no success overclocking the VisionTek Radeon HD 4870 using the stock cooler and the automatic fan speed settings. However, when using an aftermarket cooler we easily maxed out at 835MHz core speed using RivaTuner, while the memory also ran at 4.20GHz. We really hope that VisionTek is interested in offering an upgraded cooler like they did with their overclocked Radeon HD 3870 X2. So, unless you have a problem living with a very hot running video card, the VisionTek Radeon HD 4870 is an otherwise exceptional buy.