An important victory, we must say, and no, we're not talking about the Beijing olympic games, but rather the heavyweight graphics category. The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is currently the fastest graphics card on the planet. We are showing the Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2 card, packing two powerful RV770 graphics processors running in CrossFire mode on one PCB. That's why X2 found its place in the name of the card, and note that this is a multi-GPU card. The product we have in front of us is called the R700, it runs great, and the results speak for themselves. The GeForce GTX 280 is finally dethroned, and NVIDIA definitely has to do something about it, as we're sure they will. - FudZilla

Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2 Duo Video Card Review

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is not the only card in AMD's sleeve. The RV770 obviously turned out better than many hoped, so ATI made another dual GPU card based on it. They named it the Radeon HD 4850 X2, which means it's a slower version of the Radeon HD 4870 X2. Apart from these two new dual GPU cards, the Radeon HD 4870 with 1GB of GDDR5 was also announced. You should know that the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is the first card with 2GB of GDDR5 memory. The slower Radeon HD 3870 X2 also has 2GB of memory, but it's a cheaper GDDR3 one. The Radeon HD 4870 X2 runs at 750MHz core clock.

ATI kept the cooler from the Radeon HD 3870 X2 card, only now both cooler blocks are made of copper, unlike the Radeon HD 3870 X2 which featured only one. The fan is the same one you'll find on a single GPU Radeon HD 4870 cards. Opposite to the power connectors, you'll find a CrossFire connector which will enable quad CrossFire, provided that you have another Radeon HD 4870 X2 card. The card is dual slot, so hot air will be blown out of the case. It's important to know that appropriate case cooling is a must, as the air coming out of the card is so hot that we couldn't expose our skin to it longer than ten seconds.

The Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2 is the fastest card we've tested so far. Thanks to that, ATI is on the throne once again, but you could say that the GeForce GTX 280 is its faithful servant. Yes, the card does consume quite a bit of power and it runs a bit loud and hot, but the results are simply great. If you’re looking for a card that will produce enough frames for a 30inch screen, then look no further than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. This is the first card coming with 2GB of GDDR5 memory, each core featuring 1GB. The card is dual slot but single PCB, so you can handle it like one card.

Length wise, it's the same as the GeForce GTX 280 and will fit in a standard sized case. Sapphire bundles 3DMark Vantage with it, so you can make friends jealous with your new results. At press time, the Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2 is available at about $550 and we think that price to performance ratio is good. You'll pay about the same for two Radeon HD 4870 cards, and since the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is one card, it will prove to be a much cheaper solution for those that don't have a CrossFire motherboard.