It is hard to turn around and say that the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is one of the most anticipated cards of recent times, due to the plain fact that there have been so many cards released over the last three months. While some had thought that the new Radeon HD 4870 would become the fastest single card solution on the market, the price AMD launched the card at gave indication that the chances were going to be pretty slim. Fast forward a few months and we've got a new card that sits at around the same price of the GeForce GTX 280. And it's packing two Radeon HD 4870 cores on a single PCB, the same core and memory speed as its single card and a whole bunch of extra performance. - TweakTown

Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2 Duo CrossFireX Review

Apart from being a fair bit bigger than the Radeon HD 4870 package, it follows a similar style. Across the top of the card we have the Sapphire logo, to the right of that we have some ATI logos and the mention of the card sporting two video processing units as well as being PCI Express 2.0 compatible. Across the bottom of the box we have the model. Above that, we have some of the main features. In the middle of the card we have mention of the card coming with 2GB of GDDR5 memory along with some of the software that also comes in the package. Turning the box over, we have the Sapphire logo also across the top.

Opening up the box and checking out the card, we see it closely resembles the Radeon HD 3870 X2 from last generation. There isn't a whole lot to see as the cooler manages to take up the majority of the PCB. Sapphire has of course placed a sticker over the cooler to let us know the brand and of course the model of it. As far as power goes, we have two connectors located at the back of the card. One is an 8-pin while the other is the standard 6-pin we're used to seeing. Across the other side of the card we can see a CrossFire bridge that lets us install two of these cards. And yes, we will be making use of it today.

Moving to the back, we can see there is a heatsink that runs across the top. The whole card has a high quality feel and finish that we’re used to seeing from AMD cards. The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is really two Radeon HD 4870's on a single PCB. We have two sets of 800 stream processors, two sets of 40 texture units and 16 raster operation units. Each 55nm core sports the same 956 million transistors we saw on the Radeon HD 4870 and two 256-bit memory buses. Unlike the Radeon HD 3870 X2, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 clocks aren't down. We see the same 750MHz core clock and 3600MHz clock on the 2GB of GDDR5 memory.

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 card performance isn't really much of a surprise. It's two Radeon HD 4870's clocked at exactly the same speed on a single PCB. For the most part we see the card performing almost in line with a pair of standard Radeon HD 4870's. Thanks to the release of the Radeon HD 4870 X2, this is something you don't need to worry about anymore. It really is great news for people who want a super fast graphics card solution from AMD in their P45 rig. Unfortunately CrossFireX still has issues, but hopefully AMD is still working hard on new drivers. It's not something that we would rush out and do at the moment.

Without forgetting the company behind the sample, Sapphire have done a decent job with the package by including a number of applications, and including a full version copy of 3DMark Vantage. The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is going to quickly become a popular card among people at launch and hopefully can allow AMD to become a fearsome force in the graphics card arena once again over the next twelve months. Now we just have to see how NVIDIA are going to retaliate, it's doubtful that they're just going to sit back and watch AMD enjoy the sales of their new card.