Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic Dual Edition 512MB Review

The Card and Bundle

Compared to the stock cooler and reference card, the backside of the Palit HD4870 Sonic Dual Edition is much cleaner and the cooler is much more substantial. Other than this there isn’t a whole lot that you can see until you pop the top.

Popping the plastic shroud and fan assembly off reveals a three heat-pipe assembly with aluminum fins. The heatpipes are soft-soldered to a mounting plate while the VRM area has a separate dedicated heatsink for the mosfets.

Removing the heatsinks completely unveils the non-reference card with its analog 4-phase core PWM and 2-phase memory PWM. Unlike the reference card, there are no heatsinks covering the GDDR5 but there is plenty of air blown through the heatsink fins.

Last, but not least important, are the output ports on the card. There is a DVI port that has an HDMI adapter, another DVI port, a display port “port,” and the all important BIOS switch. It is this switch that you move to choose between the stock and performance BIOS available on the card. Make sure to do this only when the card is powered down.

The box itself features the trademark Palit frog while clearly stating what product you are buying and some of the features included. The card itself is safely nestled away inside the box within a second box surrounded in foam.

The bundle contains all you’d need to get this card up and running. There is a DVI to VGA converter, a DVI to HDMI converter and a molex to PCIe power plug. When plugging this card up make sure to power both 6 pin connectors. Palit recommends a 500 Watt PSU with two 75W 6-pin PCI Express connectors for single card operation and a 600 Watt PSU with four 75W 6-pin PCI Express connectors for dual CrossFire configurations.