MSI R4870 Radeon HD 4870 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail

Good

Reviewed By: SkyDragon on 2/13/2009

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 week to 1 month

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: Bought this card for the cooler on it which does its job well cooling this thing to 56c doesn't go much higher then 63c at load and although this is very warm and in fact its the warmest thing in my case... it is well below most other video cards out there today so those are great temps... however... see cons...

Fan stays very quite at its idle fan speed of around 40% blending very well with my 6 case fans lol over 45% you really start to notice it but the temps do drop fast lol

Finally the price I'd say is just about right for this card.

Cons: The memory on this thing does not have anything on them to cool them... I can feel them warm but not hot...

A more serius issue I have with my card is that GPU-Z reports the MEMIO sensor to be at way higher temps then the others...
Right this moment sitting in idle it is:
DISPIO: 57c
Shader Core: 71c
MEMIO: 87c
Has you can see its all over the place... I've no idea how accurate that is but it is somewhat alarming... though still within safe levels.... Temps start to damage over 100c.... but this isn't exactly normal either... imo anyways =\

Other Thoughts: sigh. btw has many people pointed out... don't install anything from the MSI disk... get your drivers directly from amd/ati
ei the latest version of Catalyst =)

Fun extra is that this is my first video card... my first comp before this only had n integrated 64mb chip lol... yeah... big difference in mah games to say the least lol

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Worst on the market

Reviewed By: Foldspace on 2/12/2009

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 day to 1 week

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: None whatsoever

Cons: Like the previous two Sapphire 4870s I tried, this board fails to respond to ATI driver commands, meaning it works great as long as you don't plan to do anything with it. As soon as drivers, be they MSI or ATI release, are installed, the card cuts off any display. The only way to do any kind of troubleshooting is to boot into safe mode, delete the drivers, and start over.

Other Thoughts: A reviewer of the Sapphire card mentioned ATI support's claim that HD4870s were shipping with bad RAM. Guess it's not just Sapphire's problem anymore. The cash I've spent on the 15% restocking fee and return shipping so far would've bought me two HD46xx. A painful lesson.

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Reviewed By: Leslie on 2/11/2009

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 week to 1 month

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: Very fast, great price.

Cons: Fan is very loud until drivers are loaded.
Also the card is very long in length.
Runs hot.

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