HIS HD4870X2

The closest to a Dual-Core graphics card that you can buy.

Containing two RV770 cores connected via a PCI Express bridging chip in between, this card has a massive 2GB of GDDR5 memory running with a 256-bit memory bus. This huge amount of speed affords the card an insane amount of memory bandwidth, and with each core effectively getting 1GB of memory there’s plenty of room for textures here too. The HIS card runs at stock speeds, but this is able to be overclocked slightly if that’s your poison.

The cooler is the standard affair, a long red and black whale, ceremoniously tied to both cores to suck away the immense heat generated by what is effectively two whole cards in one. HIS has a small sticker on the fan – other than this there’s no way to tell the brand. Thankfully the cooler vents most of the heat out the back of the system, so the heat does not build up as significantly inside the case.

Temps do get quite toasty though, idling at 65 degrees and 50.7dBA, with a load of 78 degrees and 66.7dBA.

Performance (as you would assume) is very nice, with good scores in both 3DMark programs and Company of Heroes, though Crysis does take a performance hit due to driver issues. This is one of the fundamental problems with this card, in that close driver support is essential for two cores to work together well for a game. The good news is that a single core is usually fast enough for most games, so you shouldn’t get horrible performance – just not the best.

Accessories are the usual power cables, and no game, but HIS have thrown in a handy multipurpose screwdriver/LED torch/level (yes, you can use this to check if things are flat) to sweeten the deal.

If you’re after the best performance out of a single card, or simply want to extend your e-peen to epic proportions, a HIS 4870X2 is definitely a card to look for.

Temp Management
If you don’t care about warranty, an effective way of both voiding it and improving your temperatures is to take off the stock cooler and clean off the existing thermal goop (isopropyl alcohol is handy for this), and replace with a thin coating of your favourite paste. You should be able to shave a few degrees off your temps quite easily this way – but again, you’ll lose any warranty if you do it wrong.