Diamond HD 4870 512MB GDDR5 Video Card Review

The Card and Bundle

The Diamond HD 4870 ships in a very secure package with enough padding to insure that even the most violent shipping experience won’t damage the card. In addition to the video card, Diamond has bundled all the necessary adapters and cables to utilize the card with an HDMI connection, an analog 15-pin connection, and a s-video connection.

The card itself is completely encased in it’s rather hefty two slot cooler. Asides from a few capacitors showing on the front of the card, there isn’t much to make of the card. The backside of the card is equally mundane with an array of chips outlining each GDDR5 module, some status LEDs.However, with the simple twist of a screw driver a whole world of goodies is revealed!

Popping the hood of the card reveals a cluster of components. The memory utilized is Qimonda GDDR5 which is heavily sinked as the memory runs insanely hot compared to GDDR3. The core is fed with a 3-phase digital PWM and the memory is fed with a 2-phase digital PWM. The card has two 6-pin PCIe power connectors enabling a total of 225w of power to the board including the PCIe slot. Pretty much everything on this card needs some form of cooling so if you decide to use aftermarket cooling make sure to cool each component or risk a dead card.