Mine eyes have seen the glory... of the coming of the 4870
Warning... wall of text below! For geek eyes only!
In August 2007 my previous gaming rig went belly up (bad stick of RAM & my Shuttle SFF case's proprietary PSU was going flunky on me) so I was forced to build a brand spanking new gaming rig months before my planned upgrade. At the time there were no good deals on medium-high end 3D cards so I opted for a XFX 8600GT 256meg model to tide me over for 8-12 months. Fast forward a year and a half and the 8600GT has served me well despite it being a budget card. However I've officially grown sick of having to tweak settings in order to get smooth framerates for certain games and I was desperate to couple what I consider to be a decent gaming system with a 3D card that will really let it stretch its legs. And to be frank, the latest generation of 3D cards left me drooling uncontrollably this past holiday season.
Since their debut I've had my eyes on ATI's 4850 cards. They offer the best possible bang for the buck and having lived on both sides of the fence I agree with the notion that ATI cards offer superior 2D & 3D visual quality over Nvidia's offerings. However thanks to intense competition from Nvidia and the recent economic downturn (i.e. plummeting sales of electronics) high end 3D cards have never been more affordable. Suddenly 512meg 4870 cards are going for $200 or less and their 1gig brethren for under $250! My problem was regardless of whether I purchased a 4850 or 4870 I wanted one that sported an excellent custom cooler (let's face it, reference design coolers usually suck) and given my micro-ATX case one that would not dump all that hot air back inside the case. So I needed to look at a dual slot blower design. To be honest there's only one vendor that consistently produces great blower style custom coolers... HIS.
So for $241 after rebate this 1gig 4870 behemoth now sits in my case. Here's a few side by side shots to give you an idea of its size...
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Yes, it's a big card... a BIG card, 9.5" in length and heavy! It feels like a hefty brick of silicon, metal & plastic. So hefty in fact that it practically seated & locked itself in the PCI-ex slot without my help! If you can believe it despite its size it's still shorter than Nvidia's 260 & 280 cards by an inch or so and it actually fits comfortably in my SFF case.
Upon booting up I immediately noticed a sharper image & clearer text than the 8600GT offered. I also noticed the 'whoosh' of the blower. It's not bad at all but it is there, especially when it revs up the rpms for 3D games, it sounds like an extra case fan or two kicking in. And according to GPU-Z the HIS ICEQ+ cooler keeps the 4870 GPU running cooler than my 8600GT, roughly 50 degrees celsius at idle, 60 degrees at full load, very very impressive.
Fallout 3 runs like butter at 1680x1050 but with ALL the eye candy turned up, 4xAA and 16xAF enabled AND the ultra high resolution texture pack installed! I don't have Crysis or Far Cry 2 to check out but Bioshock & Company of Heroes: Opposing Forces look unbelievable now and run glassy smooth. No more notching down the graphics settings in Warhammer: Age of Reckoning during keep sieges & large skirmishes. And I can finally play Medieval 2 with maxxed eye candy, large/huge units and several armies on screen at once without it looking like a slide show... it feels like a totally different game. Pure joy.
Only thing I miss about the 8600GT is its lower power requirements and the ease with which I can set custom AA & AF settings for each of my games via Nvidia's drivers.
So was it worth it? Yes! With the arguable exception of my Intel E6550 I have never had an upgraded component perform so markedly superior to the one it replaced. In most cases the 4870 runs games upwards of 3-5 times faster than my 8600GT at the same resolution but with all the bells and whistles turned on, it's insane.
So this is what I've got running under the hood. Despite it's age it's still going strong and should hold me over for a long time to come. If anything I might consider upgrading the CPU in a year's time.
Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 overclocked to 2.80Ghz (7x multiplier w/400Mhz bus)
Cooler Master RR-LCH-P9E1 92mm UFO CPU Cooler (excellent & quiet CPU heatsink/fan)
HIS Hightech ICEQ4+ Turbo (H487QT1GP) Radeon HD 4870 1GB (using Catalyst 8.12 drivers)
Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R LGA 775 Intel G33 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
4gigs Corsair DDR2-800 XMS RAM (running @ 400Mhz w/4-4-4-12 2T timings)
Creative X-Fi Music sound card
Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD3200AAKS 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb hard drive
Samsung SH-S183L DVD+/-R Burner
OCZ StealthXStream OCZ600SXS 600W Active PFC Power Supply (excellent PSU, only $40 after rebate! Can power latest generation of 3D cards)
Apevia X-QPACK2-NW-BK/500 SFF (Small Form Factor) case (comes w/500W PSU that's fine so long as you don't stress it out with power hungry components)
HP W2207 22" LCD monitor
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