As of recently, Gigabyte's offer includes a Radeon HD 4870 graphics board with 1GB memory that apart from DVI connectors features both native HDMI and the new DisplayPort connector. Unlike Gigabyte's board, that many might find much more appealing, the reference Radeon HD 4870 card features only the standard connectors. This is quite a change and we would think for the better, as HDMI is becoming more known with displays getting this type of interface more regularly. The good thing is as well that Gigabyte combined these changing while adding an extra 512MB of frame buffer that will have a nice effect on the overall gaming performance of the current and upcoming future game titles. - FudZilla

Gigabyte Radeon HD 4870 1GB Zalman Cooling Review

Instead of reference cooling, this Gigabyte Radeon HD 4870 comes with dual slot Zalman VF830 cooling that does a great job of cooling the RV770, but it's not exactly what we would call quiet when in 2D mode. Although 3D mode results in the reference card being louder than Gigabyte's card, our today's guest keeps its fan at constant speed as long as the card is running. Gigabyte's PCB is painted blue, but apart from the color there's not much difference between this one and the reference PCB. We found most changes to be made where DisplayPort and HDMI connectors, and Gigabyte chose to ditch the TV output on this one.

The opposite side, where the power components are located, didn't go through any significant changes. Unlike the rest of the PCB which is quite tidy, here we do see a bit of a clutter. The board is powered via two 6-pin PCI-Express power connectors, located in the upper corner. This Radeon HD 4870 features 1GB of high-speed GDDR5 memory that doesn't feature any cooling besides the air from the fan. The cooler isn't in contact with the memory but it's close enough to keep it from overheating. Although the clocks were left unchanged and the card still runs at 750MHz the extra 512MB memory should help gaming at high resolution.

The Catalyst drivers comes with integrated overclocking tool called Overdrive, but you can't go further than 790MHz using this, which is merely 40MHz more than reference. The fan control is unusable due to the fact that Gigabyte used a fan that doesn't support speed control, and the fan is connected to the card with only two wires. We easily overclocked the card to maximum 790MHz for the core and 4400MHz for the memory speed. The Gigabyte card has been improved with 1GB memory which is more or less the standard for the high-end graphics cards these days, and ATI is doing this by applying high speed GDDR5 memory.

The card kept the reference speeds, and is running 750MHz core and 3600MHz effectively for the memory. The card is unique as it brings two new connectors, being HDMI and DisplayPort. Next to them, you will find dual link DVI out which makes this card perfect for any type of modern displays. The board features Zalman's dual slot cooling, which does a great job and the RV770 core hits 57°C at max, which is about 30°C less than on reference cards. And Gigabyte also managed to slash consumption by about 20W. Our testing rig with the reference card did consume up to 300W, while this one only about 280W in total.

However, we are considering the lack of fan speed control to be a significant downside, as the fan runs at constant speed and gets loud in idle mode. However, in 3D mode it's still not as loud as the reference Radeon HD 4870. The Radeon HD 4870 prices went down, or will after the GeForce GTX 285 launches. The Gigabyte Radeon HD 4870 1GB edition can be purchased for about $250, whereas the reference 1GB card costs about $225. So DisplayPort and HDMI ports apparently come at a price, but if you're looking for exactly that then look no further, as it also features Zalman's cooling that enables stable overclocking.