ASUS 4870X2 TOP

An overclocked 4870X2? Is this madness?

No, this is Sparta! Sorry, we couldn’t resist. Seriously though, a factory overclocked 4870X2 is a very big deal ‘round these parts, for many reasons. Firstly, you’ve got the somewhat tricky nature of two cores playing nicely with each other on the one board. Secondly, when you take two cores like that, put them right next to each other under a confined space, you get a lot of heat. And finally, to overclock these cores makes you relatively mad, since there’s already so much heat, and overclocking will just increase that. Well, here’s a card that defies logic and reason.

The ASUS 4870X2 has two RV770 cores, and a total of 2GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit memory bus. This memory is split between the two cores, so you essentially only get a usable 1GB of space, but it’s still extremely handy to have all that room (and great for anti aliasing with large textures turned on). You’ll need a beefy power supply to keep this gear chugging along smoothly (this is a very subtle hint to turn to page 54), however, even more so if you want two of them.

The cores have both been overclocked to 790MHz, which is an impressive 40MHz up over stock settings. This means that every single card is guaranteed to be run at these settings 24/7, and warranted to as well. Memory also gets a nice bump, though it’s nothing really worth wetting oneself about. This is an interesting choice by ASUS, especially considering that when you increase stress on something, you also increase the likelihood of it not working.

The stock cooler does seem to be doing a good job with the temperatures though, hitting a ceiling of 80 degrees and 67.5dBA at load. Idle isn’t so great, with 68 degrees at 46.5dBA, but it is quieter than most other idle speeds. If you really don’t care about the amount of noise generated, cranking the fan speed up in CCC to 100 per cent will give you an idle temperature of about 35 degrees. This can be very handy, especially if you need to remove your card – just cool it off before shutting down. Naturally, the cooler has a generic CGI woman on it, with a bow and arrow. We still don’t really get what the connection is here, but you won’t hear us complaining too loudly about it – unless we get arrowed in the chest.

The bundle is depressingly light, with the power cables, DVI adaptors, driver disc and manual included. There’s also a faux leather CD wallet, but for the price tag attached it could at least have a game thrown in as well. Even a benchmark would’ve been nice.

The bundle disappointment is offset slightly by the very nice performance, returning solid scores in all the benchmarks, especially Company of Heroes, though it falls down in Crysis for reasons that we couldn’t work out. There were also graphical errors in one run of Vantage, but we couldn’t get them again in a second round of testing.

All in all, this is a very fast card, but with that price tag you’ll have to be exceptionally keen (or particularly careless with your money) to pick this card up.