Today we've got an article about the Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 512MB product, which we will take a closer look at. Just a couple weeks ago we looked at the Smooth Creations LanShark gaming system, and it had this card in it, and we were asked to check this card separately. So that is exactly what we are doing todat, but it's also a comparison of just what differences, if any between having 512MB or 1GB of memory on your video card. We are comparing the Sapphire version to the Diamond Radeon HD 4870 with 1GB of frame buffer to figure out if it's worthwhile or not. Both video cards run the same 750MHz core and 3600MHz memory clock, and both have the 256-bit memory interface. - TestFreaks

Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 512MB Review

The Sapphire card is large just like the other Radeon HD 4870's. It's a dual slot card as well, and has the same cooling system as our Diamond Radeon HD 4870 version, just the sticker is different on the cover and the circuit board is blue as opposed to the red of the Diamond. So in essence both cards are identical when just going from the looks, and many will just not even catch which is which. In that aspect the box itself is essential to detail the difference around the frame buffer size taking into account that the recent and upcoming game titles will certainly do better with the extra memory at hand for rendering game sceneries.

The Sapphire Radeon 4870 512MB card is not a bad choice for a video card, it performs admirably well and runs cool and quiet while in idle. The frame rates you will get will of course depend on the resolution you are running and the settings of the game, you can always adjust to get better performance. Taking a quick look over at Newegg we see the Sapphire card runs normally $260, while the Diamond runs normally $300, but personally after seeing the performance numbers of having the extra 512MB of memory we think it's well worth it to spend the extra $40 for the 1GB strong graphics card.