Force3D are up and coming, and working hard on product differentiation. Along that line they introduce a Radeon HD 4870 512MB model with DHT cooler. To be more specific, the cooling method is called Freezer DHT and should allow for clock speeds up to 800MHz according to Force3D. Now that's a very bold claim to make for any manufacturer, so rest assured we'll try that and see if the claim is valid. The direct touch heatpipe adapts new technology in which the heatpipe has contact with the GPU directly. The heatpipe absorbs heat from the GPU, cooling performance should really be excellent and it's surely better than the reference coolers from ATI, which can be improved. - Guru3D

Force3D Radeon HD 4870 512MB DHT Edition Review

As you guys know by now ATI's Radeon HD 4800 series are both using the same GPU. The codename for these chips is RV770. The number of transistors for a midrange product like this is extreme and typically it's best to directly relate that to the number of shader processors to get a better understanding. The Radeon HD 4800 series graphics processors have 800 scalar processors and now have a significant forty texture units. It's a bit lame and inaccurate to do but divide the number of ATI's scalar shader processors with the number five and you'll roughly equal the performance to NVIDIA's stream processor.

Force3D submitted their Radeon HD 4870 with 512MB memory size for a closer look. As explained, the cooler used is actually a DHT cooler. The cooler itself is heatpipe based with fins attached onto a copper mount. When we look at the PCB of the card, we immediately spot that the layout is completely reference, this is not a customized PCB, though in combo with the cooler hopefully we will yield some good overclocking results. The RV770 GPU itself on the Radeon HD 4870 card will run at a standard 750MHz clock frequency. The memory used is GDDR5 and runs just like a regular Rdeon HD 4870 at 3600MHz.

Force3D delivers an impressive product with the Radeon HD 4870 DHT edition. It's a very lovely product in terms of performance and yes, we are able to overclock the card to pretty impressive numbers, adding more value for money to the product. It unfortunately isn't all glory though. Though we can not deny that the cooler does a pretty good job keeping the GPU cool, even when overclocked there remains a concern. It's the actual noise level coming from that cooler. And please be aware of this as it is not a cooler to go with if you are into silent operation of your computer, it will come with some more noise.

What surprised us was the dazzling overclock we were able to achieve, literally in seconds we got it up and running with a 830MHz core frequency. Even more surprising was the memory overclock at 4864MHz. And wel all both know it, the RV770 GPU on this card just loves more bandwidth for it's frame buffer. Our end results for overclocking therefore were showing a very impressive increase of the overall gaming frame rateq, so you can gain another fifteen percent additional performance out of the product. It surprises us that Force3D does not overclock these products as standard, as then they would sell like hot buns from the oven.

So other than the noise factor, this really is a lovely product. The bundle could be a notch better, but the cooler and overclock compensates for that. It's a Radeon HD 4870, you will really love the performance as it is a fierce and competitive product with loads of features and options. So the golden trick with the DHT is really it's tweaking ability. Combine that with one of the best selling GPU based graphics cards of the moment and how can one lose?