Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic Dual Edition 512MB Review

Palit HD 4870 Sonic Dual Edition

Palit Microsystems, or Palit for short, is a successful and popular video card vendor outside of North America. It is only recently that they have begun marketing and selling cards within North America so we are pleased to be able to present this review of their HD 4870 Sonic Dual Edition. This video card differs from the reference cards as it has a more effective heatsink, a display port interface, and a dual BIOS.

Anyone can slap on an aftermarket heatsink and call it a day but Palit’s implementation of two BIOS chips on this video card was a welcome improvement. I am notorious for killing video cards, and I’ve had my fair share of cards that I’ve bricked from bad BIOS flashes. So, having two BIOS chips on the card doesn’t immediately render it useless after a bad flash. Palit features two BIOS profiles, one with stock clocks and one slightly overclocked. The stock clocks are 750MHz on the core and 950MHz on the memory. Palit bumps this up to 775MHz on the core and 1000MHz on the memory for a modest and safe overclock.

The heatsink itself was also a great improvement over the leaf blower that sits on the reference cards. At stock fan speeds the heatsink kept the core very cool and when the fan speeds were cranked up it was only moderately louder than my QX9650 heatsink at 1800RPM. If you’d like more information on this card feel free to check out Palit’s HD 4870 Sonic Dual Edition product page. Now, let’s take a closer look at this card.