HIS Radeon 4870 ICEQ4+ TURBO review - From cool to cooler

From cool to cooler...

Roughly a year ago when somebody mentioned 1024 MB graphics cards we were all a little like... what the heck do you need 1024 MB on a graphics card for? Admittedly, yours truly included.

It's amazing how things evolve really, or more precisely... how fast things evolve in the technology sector. This year a good number of games were released that actually make good use of a frame buffer (the videocard memory your graphics processor can use directly) larger than 512 MB really well. Specifically, in higher resolutions with a decent amount of Anti-aliasing and DX10 games, the benefits of more frame buffer is showing more intensely. Don't be fooled though. Say, you stumble into a 1GB Radeon 4830 or something similar, chances are big it's a waste of money. Why you ask? Only in the higher resolutions or uber demanding games in DX10 it'll start to make a difference, and mid-range graphics cards just do not have enough rendering power for that.

So mid-range graphics cards really hardly benefit from exceptionally large frame buffers (video memory) over 512 MB. But for the high-end cards... that's a slightly different thesis to look at. We now have a good number of games like Crysis Warhead and Far Cry 2 where the benefits of that large frame buffer starts showing off. Though the benefits are not huge per se, when the conditions are right it can make a nice difference.

Suffice to say, we'll look at a 1GB graphics card today. It's based on the Radeon HD 4870 and comes from HIS technology. The all new ICEQ4 cooling based model.

And I have to admit to HIS, it's again looking good. Nice blue colored PCB, gold plated DVI connectors, the ICEQ4 cooler and heck, even (as small as it is) faster clocked core and memory. All these factors combined should make for an interesting review.

Today we'll start off the review with the help of a completely new Core i7 based test platform. Next to that our software test suite has been updated as well with mostly the newest games like COD5, Crysis Warhead, BIA HH, Fallout 3 and many more... plenty of stuff to cover. Let's head on over to the review shall we?