Reviews - Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 Vapor-X 2,048MB: big frame-buffer useful?

[HEXUS]

Is a Radeon HD 4870 with a 2GB frame-buffer good? We find out.

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[Lyall3s1]

Another card with a ridiculous ammount of memory?! Surely 1GB is more than enough.

[jim]

I'm actually surprised that you were so complimentary about the card. 2GB is just needless overkill - the only place where the memory is beneficial is when you go so over the top with the settings that the graphics processing can't cope anyway.

Coincidentally as well, graphics processing that can cope really isn't far away in terms of the extra cash required for dual-GPU solutions.

[this_is_gav]

Aww, it wasn't tested on a 32-bit OS.

[humax]

I find that 512 is more than enough for me at the moment

[Brewster0101]

I find that 512 is more than enough for me at the moment

I have 512 too but my next card (likely 4870) will have 1gb, seems to be foolish not too.

[humax]

I have 512 too but my next card (likely 4870) will have 1gb, seems to be foolish not too.

If i had the money i think thats what i would get to be honest

[Lozza81]

Nice review hexus as always, but something which cried out at me was I think you should demonstrate how much more overclocking potential is in Sapphire's Vapor-X cooled HD4870 1GB or 2GB compared to reference cooling ones and also the Nvidia cards.

If they overclock considerably more, does that not have a huge impact on their value and why perhaps some people might wish to buy one? i.e. it could be the most important thing to test for in the review and I didnt see a page on overclocking this particular card....did I miss something? Did you already overclock one earlier in the 512mb review?

Like a lot of people here I frankly see no point in producing a 2GB 1 x GPU 4870 as they've done here. It appears Sapphire were looking for something to help differenate their ATI range and didn't fully do their homework. This is surprising when they are the same company who only a few months prior gave us the HD4850x2

[CooperXS]

Im sure with Stream and OpenCL this card can do wonders. Games are just not made to utilize 2GB of Vram *cough* consoles *cough*...well apart from GTA4.
For gamer 1GB version is more than enough.

[Tidus]

I like the design of the Vapor-X cards but 2GB isn't needed for a 4870 and the price will place it too close to the upcoming Radeon HD 4890.

[shaffaaf27]

try gta?

[Brewster0101]

I like the design of the Vapor-X cards but 2GB isn't needed for a 4870 and the price will place it too close to the upcoming Radeon HD 4890.

Is there any performance charts yet for the 4890 comparing it to a 4870 or 4850?

[Tarinder]

Is there any performance charts yet for the 4890 comparing it to a 4870 or 4850?

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=17863