Yeps the bionic frog is back again, only this time with a few tricks up his metallic sleeve. And this new version of our Kermit commando features dual BIOS, which enables the smart switch to shift between Sonic and Turbo speeds. Also onboard are dual DVI heads, HDMI and an DisplayPort. We take not one, but two of these bad boys out for a spin in a nice CrossFireX setup and tell you whether or not the smart switch is really worth your time. It is certainly something different which we haven't seen that frequently, though such a dual fan cooling is becoming a more regular solution. And we will find out whether or not this graphics card has what it takes to leap forward to crush the various competition. - TechwareLabs

Palit Radeon 4870 BiSonic CrossFireX Edition Review

These Palit Radeon 4870 Sonic Dual edition comes packaged in a quite nice eye catching box featuring their bionic frog or frobot as they like to call it. We like the fact that they don't plaster their logo everywhere, like most companies and fill up the remaining space with logos of certifications. Palit keeps it nice, simple and artsy. They only have a few logos and show a very nice graphics of their mascot. Taking a closer look at the video card, we see that it has a few features that set it apart from the rest. This graphics card is a beast, taking up two slots. This is to accommodate the large heatsink, dual fans and heatpipes attached to it.

The color that they used on the board would not be our first design choice. The solid orange color makes it look kind of cheap and plastic like. You will notice that the faceplate does not have any vents on it. We felt this was a rather poor engineering decision, as their fans are forced to blow the hot air back into your case. Now this means you need to make sure you have a good cooling system before you invest in one of these monsters, as they do put out a bit of heat. This is one of those instances of, if you got it flaunt it. So the Turbo switch isn't really necessary, when they could just as easily clock the card at the Turbo specs.

The only real reason you could need it is if you are rather super eco conscious and want to save a watt or two by leaving it down clocked whenever you're not gaming. The nice thing is that the specs on this card beat out the other cards in the same price range. For only about $265 you are getting a very good deal. The cooling system could have been engineered a bit better, to not blow hot air back into the case. The main boost we found from the Turbo switch was in synthetic benchmarks, which don't always mean that much in the real world. We were able to play Crysis on max settings as long as we didn't go crazy on the anti-aliasing.

With two of these babies you are just over the cost of a lower end GeForce GTX 280, for a setup that can beat it in some tests. It all comes down to how much you want to spend on your graphics setup. ATI's current strategy of not aiming for the stars in performance, but instead shooting for the atmosphere seems to be working for them so far. By aiming for the mid-range market, they are able to cash in on just a larger user base, as opposed to the enthusiast market, which NVIDIA has always succeeded at. We would recommend this graphics card to someone with a well cooled case and a desire to get a little more performance.