Despite NVIDIA's efforts, ATI graphics chips continue to set the bar for today's top performing add-in board solutions and there have been efforts by certain add-in board companies to further the technology a bit to suit their own demographic. One of the leading companies setting this trend comes to us with a name that's been around a long time, namely Diamond. The Radeon HD 4870 card has been available since July and continues to be favored by gamers who want a great performing graphics card for today's top-end games. Diamond has ramped it up a bit by slapping on an additional 512MB for a total of 1GB and while we are the first to admit that there's not going to be a big performance delta. - Boot Daily

Diamond Radeon HD 4870 1GB Graphics Card Review

Diamond's retail bundle includes a driver CD, component video output cables, an analog adapter, an HDMI adapter and a single CrossFire connector. Though no fancy game bundle that ends up being reflected in the overall price tag, just a straight forward approach that many of us can really appreciate. And from an installation perspective, there is really nothing too crazy to keep in mind outside of the fact that you'll need enough clearance to make sure your case can house the overall length and the fact that it takes two PCI Express power connectors. So indeed it is a big card but it is considered an high-end graphics card.

Keep in mind however, that the price difference between the 512MB and the 1GB version isn't that big of a delta, so there's really no compelling reason to get the 512MB at this time. Even though there's no real overall performance gain in most games with the additional frame buffer, it certainly doesn't hurt having it either. Now games developers are always creating content with larger, more detailed environments so the more data you can keep in the frame buffer on the graphics card, the less it'll have to load and refresh that data across the system bus. This alone will already give quite a boost especially in future and upcoming games.

Diamond has a very solid product on its hands with this card, it's readily available at most major online retailers and is a product we can easily give a heartfelt recommendation to. If you feel the need to improve your graphics card, then we'd highly recommend the Radeon HD 4870 1GB edition from Diamond.