Nekkid 4870X2

Surprises lie in wait underneath this black shell...

Following on from the sneak peek at the 4870X2 a few days ago, our curiosity piqued at what exactly was underneath that black monolith that was the stock cooler. So, in true warranty-voiding style, we grabbed a screwdriver and camera, and snapped some pics for you.



First up we have the backplate of the card, which contains about eight screws that are taken out first. Two screws are on the front of the card, and another two on the bracket (with a final one hiding between the cooler and the bracket).



With the back plane off, we can clearly see 1GB of GDDR5 memory, with 512MB for each graphics core. The X-shaped brackets have to be unscrewed, but then the whole cooling apparatus can lift right off, revealing some interesting intestines.



Using a slight twisting action, the cooler simply popped off the card, leaving it laid bare – just for you. On this side of the PCB we see the two graphics cores (the green squares with thermal goop still on them), the PLX bridge chip (which has been updated to a PCIe V2 version), the remaining 1GB of memory and a few strips of thermal padding to move the heat from the other components of the card to the heatsink.

While seeing the card in all its glory might have been enough for some, we decided that we’d find out what was actually inside the cooler itself.



What we found was very surprising – the cores were individually cooled by two separate heatsinks. Each heatsink has a base that is about 3mm thick, and each easily weighs about 400g. These are not physically connected to the black frame, but can move around freely when the X-brackets are loosened. No heatpipes are present at all – that little stick of copper on the right that looks like one is actually just to line the heatsink up with the black shell, not to improve heat transfer.

Expect to see some very big improvements over stock cooling when aftermarket heatsinks come onto the market, as the small volume of copper here can only do so well.

We’ll leave you with some pics of the PLX bridge and the board, and a shameless mag-plug about the review of this card in Issue 93 :)