The Radeon HD 4870 board is no stranger to us and today we add one more to the ranks, the ASUS Extreme AH4870 TOP Dark Knight edition. This special TOP model comes equipped with ASUS' famed Dark Knight cooler and claims of a nine percent performance lead over stock Radeon HD 4870's thanks to an impressive factory overclock. We will put this claim to the test and find out what kind of performance the Extreme AH4870 TOP Dark Knight brings to the table. There is a reason the Radeon HD 4870 is so popular, it offers one of the best price to performance ratios the GPU market has seen in quite some time. With recent price cuts going below $200, it's even better. - Benchmark Reviews

ASUS Extreme AH4870 TOP Dark Knight Card Review

Adn in fact, prices throughout the entire Radeon HD 4800 line have been steadily falling for several months. If you've been holding out on upgrading your video card, now is definitely a good time to go out and buy. With a custom heatsink and factory overclocking, the Radeon HD 4870 TOP Dark Knight should prove to be a great performer. Still, with prices on the rest of Radeon HD 4800 series dropping, some may be inclined to pick up a cheaper Radeon HD 4830. For this reason, we'll be pitting our test card against ATI's other high-end offering to find out just what kind of performance advantage the Radeon HD 4870 has over its siblings.

Until recently, AMD has restricted partners from using non reference designs on their Radeon HD 4800 series products. Now this is typically done to protect the consumer against possible design flaws, as well as AMD's own reputation during the launch of a product. And without the option of modifying the board design, manufacturers have had to find creative ways to differentiate themselves from the competition. To this end, several manufacturers, including ASUS, have developed their own unique branding and customizations. This particular Radeon HD 4870 from ASUS has been given the Dark Knight treatment.

In addition to its Dark Knight classification, the Extreme AH4870 board is also distinguished by its TOP designation. In ASUS lingo, this simply translates into factory overclocking. The stock Radeon HD 4870's run at 750MHz and a memory speed of 3600MHz effective. And this model, on the other hand, features a GPU clock speed of 815MHz and a memory speed of 3700MHz. With the memory, ASUS opted for 512MB of GDDR5 and these particular chips come from Qimonda which are rated up to 4000MHz effective. All of this computing power does come at a price, which is some increased power consumption.

The Extreme AH4870 TOP Dark Knight comes from ASUS already overclocked, but that wasn't good enough for us. Most manufacturers leave a certain margin of safety when establishing factory overclocking speed. This ensures that more cards will be capable of sustaining the set clock speeds and cuts down on warranty service due to failed overclocks. We decided to explore this margin, and after some stability testing, settled on 855MHz for the GPU core and 4700MHz effective for the memory. Needless to say, this card had considerable headroom left, even on top of the factory overclocking performed by ASUS.

As we've come to expect from ASUS, the Extreme AH4870 TOP Dark Knight is packaged in a well designed, full color package. The package further separates components into different compartments to guard against shipping dangers. ASUS earns top marks for construction quality as well. Recent price cuts have dropped this card down to $209. At this price, the Extreme AH4870 TOP Dark Edition is a great value compared to the +$300 prices we saw a few months ago. With prices the lowest they have been since launch, it's easy to recommend this video card to anyone looking for high-end performance at a decent price.