SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 4870 1GB

[P2Mc28]

NewEgg has a new 4870 for sale today: A non-reference cooler 4870.

It seems pretty new and I wasn't able to find any reviews on this particular card. Anyone out there have any info on the thermals/acoustics of this thing?

 

[P2Mc28]

Off topic:
Holy crap Google already indexed this thread... it's the #1 search result for "SAPPHIRE 100259-1GL Radeon HD 4870" haha.

 

[Zillatech]

Sweet, looks like a tamed version of the Toxic without taking up too much heat pipe space. This is a brand new card so its a little early to know the specifics but it looks like one to watch. If its quiet and doesn't run too hot then it they will have definitely hit the "sweet spot" for the 4870 series.

 

[P2Mc28]

Yea, exactly what I was thinking. I'm eager to here this one out... it looks like exactly the card I've been waiting for.

 

[Dadofamunky]

Originally posted by: P2Mc28
Off topic:
Holy crap Google already indexed this thread... it's the #1 search result for "SAPPHIRE 100259-1GL Radeon HD 4870" haha.

Dude, you're famous!!!

If you buy, definitely review it. Looks like a good deal. Nice looking cooler too.

 

[Zillatech]

The cooler sticker says "Silent Efficiency" (Silent + High Performance)

Sounds good to me

 

[postmortemIA]

what doesn't sound good is thread above this "Sapphire HD 4870 Problems Thread" with 65 replies.

 

[P2Mc28]

What you neglect is the sub title "Update: All issues have been resolved." right beneath it

Warrants some checking out though... brb. lol.

[EDIT]
Back!

Apparently there was a problem with a couple of Sapphire's 4870 SKUs, both were 512mb models. Sapphire released an updated BIOS that solved the problem.

I would figure, being new cards, that this particular problem would simply be a non-issue (since it apparently doesn't affect any 1gb cards either, so they seemed to have stamped it out from their system)
[/EDIT]

 

[aclim]

That card looks good. But this one looks better, plus its factory OC

clicky

 

[P2Mc28]

Nah, I thought the same at first too, but as several people on these boards pointed out, that card disperses all the cards heat right back into the system. Everyone who commented on it regarded the default cooler a superior solution, if I'm remembering right. Not to mention, the factory OC is quite skimpy and negligible, in my opinion. I'm quite sure the Sapphire, or any other 4870 for that matter, could easily be pushed beyond those numbers.

Also - the Sapphire has what I'm guessing (hoping?) is a nifty cooling solution. Check out the overhead picture - there are heatpipes jutting from the top (err... side?) of the card. Pop off the casing and maybe there's something elaborate and/or pretty under there. not to mention, the exhaust out the back not adding to internal system heat.

Man, I want one of these things xD

 

[thilanliyan]

Even in that card doesn't part of the heat end up in the case?

 

[badnewcastle]

I was looking at this card too! Someone please buy and review, I'd do it but I'm waiting for Nv refresh then buying.

 

[BDawg]

Of course, 2 days after I buy my Sapphire 1GB 4870.

 

[P2Mc28]

Originally posted by: Some d00d on NewEgg
This card is truly the one to get. After installation I quickly opened up CCC, to check the temps. This cooling solution from Sapphire is extremely efficient. I'm idling in the low 40's. Best of all its very quiet and compliments the rest of my quiet case fans.

I always take comments regarding volume on NewEgg with a grain of salt, because it seems some people think "quiet" means "not quite as loud as a jetliner at takeoff" but then some people seem to think anything heard above the sound of snow falling is unbearably loud.

That said... it does fit in line with what I was hoping for. As soon as I've got the money (next paycheck, maybe? Guitar Hero: World Tour comes out on Sunday and that takes precedence... maybe NEXT next paycheck...) I'll pick this thing up once and for all and check it out myself.

 

[Zillatech]

Well, I just ordered one! I'll post back when I've tested it out. I hope it works out (finger's crossed). I was going to wait for Nvidia's refresh but I don't think the cards will be any smaller so they wouldn't fit my case anyway. Plus I play with max AA & AF when ever I can and the 4870's kick butt with 8xAA enabled

 

[ViperV990]

This is - I think - the first blue PCB 4870 1GB out there.

Damn. I just received the MSI one from newegg yesterday. Wish I had waited, as it'd match the EP45-DS3R perfectly. Oh well, at least I get to fill out the $30 rebate.

 

[Zillatech]

Well good news & bad news.

1st, the fan is very quiet! Its using an 80mm fan and you can't even begin to hear it until about 50-55% (Approx. 2000rpms).

The card idles around 58-60C and doesn't seem to go much above 72C under load either.

2nd, My particular card might have a bad fan sensor because it spins from 0% to 80% then back down to 0% again. The software (ATI & GPU-Z) is not registering that the fan is actually spinning when in fact it is (around 16%). So the "Spin Up" factor of 80% keeps going "On/Off" in Windows. I'm pretty sure I just got a bad one (I've had rotten luck lately) so I'm going to RMA it for a replacement.

Other than that, I'd say the card is pretty sweet & definitely quiet! The MEM/IO sensor runs the hottest and thats probably because of the 1GB Memory being 2x more dense than the 512MB models.

Other than that, so far its running things super smooth as expected. 3DMark06 score under Vista x64 was 15,251

 

[CLChrist0]

I purchased this card from newegg. Didn't have the fan issues that Zillatech had, so hope for his sake he really did just have a bad one. It only spins to max at startup which has been normal with other gfx cards I've used.

The included drivers disk, which was physically undamaged would not install (read fail about 1/2 way through every time) but I DL'd the drivers from ATI and have had no problems, I used it with the Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P motherboard, which is a downright amazing motherboard.

First impressions are pretty lacking so far, I only got the system running last night, lack any benchmarking software atm, and the only games I tried to play with it was WoW (not exactly a gfx card benchmarker) and CoD:WaW ... which is horrifying. Cod crashed during first install attempt, crashes if a mic isn't plugged in (using default mobo realtek sound atm) crashes if I select 7.1 instead of 5.1 sound, and after all the sound/mobo related fixes, it's now crashing for "unknown issue" which may or may not be gfx card related. I was pulling great framerates with all settings jacked during the short bursts of playability. Activision/Treyarch really seem to have no good answer for PC players here ("reset your desktop and game settings to 800x600, and reduce your gfx card to minimal hardware accelleration" is NOT the correct answer to "I just want to play the friggin game, wtf!")

The card is quieter than any of my other case fans even during load, and in fact my whole new setup is downright silent compared to my previous PC. I didn't have an exact temp reading, but having the open case computer by my leg I could feel an uncomfortable amount of heat coming off the side-exposed heatpipes. With that much radiant heat I would worry about it heating up the rest of the case, the rear exhaust doesn't help those exposed pipes.

My setup is:
GIGABYTE GA-MA790FXT-UD5P - AM3 DDR3 790FX/750
SAPPHIRE 100259-1GL Radeon HD 4870 1GB (duh)
CORSAIR XMS3 DHX 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3
AMD Phenom II X4 810 2.6GHz

I've been considering overclocking, but have never done it before, and right now just want the damn thing to work (so far been having headaches with Vista and IE7 ... time to go firefox, now if only IE7 wouldn't crash every other page so I could DL it...) Oh yeah, and I do want to buy another one of these cards to xfire it, just cause I can

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: CLChrist0
I purchased this card from newegg. Didn't have the fan issues that Zillatech had, so hope for his sake he really did just have a bad one. It only spins to max at startup which has been normal with other gfx cards I've used.

The included drivers disk, which was physically undamaged would not install (read fail about 1/2 way through every time) but I DL'd the drivers from ATI and have had no problems, I used it with the Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P motherboard, which is a downright amazing motherboard.

First impressions are pretty lacking so far, I only got the system running last night, lack any benchmarking software atm, and the only games I tried to play with it was WoW (not exactly a gfx card benchmarker) and CoD:WaW ... which is horrifying. Cod crashed during first install attempt, crashes if a mic isn't plugged in (using default mobo realtek sound atm) crashes if I select 7.1 instead of 5.1 sound, and after all the sound/mobo related fixes, it's now crashing for "unknown issue" which may or may not be gfx card related. I was pulling great framerates with all settings jacked during the short bursts of playability. Activision/Treyarch really seem to have no good answer for PC players here ("reset your desktop and game settings to 800x600, and reduce your gfx card to minimal hardware accelleration" is NOT the correct answer to "I just want to play the friggin game, wtf!")

The card is quieter than any of my other case fans even during load, and in fact my whole new setup is downright silent compared to my previous PC. I didn't have an exact temp reading, but having the open case computer by my leg I could feel an uncomfortable amount of heat coming off the side-exposed heatpipes. With that much radiant heat I would worry about it heating up the rest of the case, the rear exhaust doesn't help those exposed pipes.

My setup is:
GIGABYTE GA-MA790FXT-UD5P - AM3 DDR3 790FX/750
SAPPHIRE 100259-1GL Radeon HD 4870 1GB (duh)
CORSAIR XMS3 DHX 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3
AMD Phenom II X4 810 2.6GHz

I've been considering overclocking, but have never done it before, and right now just want the damn thing to work (so far been having headaches with Vista and IE7 ... time to go firefox, now if only IE7 wouldn't crash every other page so I could DL it...) Oh yeah, and I do want to buy another one of these cards to xfire it, just cause I can

Can you tell us what your VRM temps are like under heavy load? (GPU-Z VDDC readings)

 

[josh6079]

Both those Sapphire and Powercolor cards look fine. The Sapphire one will disperse some heat into your system too, as the air blows down towards the pcb and escapes where it can. It's very similar to the 7900 GTX reference coolers.

I've heard they're quite quiet and seem to get good temps. If I were to be getting a 4870 instead of a GTX 260, I'd get the Sapphire. The heat dump into case temps shouldn't be a problem for your other hardware if you know how to put a rig together.

 

[CLChrist0]

Followup:

Took me a while to get good info because of other issues, but this was the end result.

Highest I got that I bothered to notice was 93C with some crap running in the background while playing WH40KoW2 on "Ultra" setting and 91C running CoD:WaW at whatever setting the game is barely stable at (seriously... F* that game for being the buggiest pos I've bought in a long time)

These temps were with case-closed, all air cooled, basic Apevia fans that came with the case +2 dynex PoS fans I had laying around. My cpu is using the stock cooler as well and I have had no problems whatsoever with heat, it in fact feels actually cool to the touch. I'm impressed with the heat management, though I'm sure it helps that the case actually has a vented area right next to the ever-so-warm heatpipes on the side of the card

I have a couple of questions that are only barely related, if anyone knows the answer, please let me know, I've been away from system building for 4 almost 5 years and feel like a noob putting this thing together

1) I'm running vista ultimate 32 (I want 64, but I'm waiting on 7 at this point, or to have 64 fall in my lap, cause I got 32 legally for essentially free) it sees my computer as having 3325gb ram. I expected it not to see the full 4gb correctly, but I'm a bit puzzled. Windows live showed it as being 4.00gb ... so not sure whether it's being utilized correctly and only displaying incorrectly, or what.

2) the motherboard doesn't see the ram as it's correct speed (1600) or automatically get it's timing correct. This doesn't worry me too much as I can manually set them. I manually set it to 1600, 1.8v and 8-8-8-24 timing and it worked mostly OK, though not nearly as stable as I wanted. I got it stable by reducing it 1333, but still have the occasional crashes that may or may not be the games and not the memory. I don't know what I should to make it work with the ram at the correct (higher) speed. My bios is up to date, and as of yet, everythings been set with the auto settings except the ram. Under the ram configuration section, after the normal timings of 8 8 8 24, there's a whole string of numbers that I don't recognize, but all are adjustable. Where's a good reference to learn what these are and if they matter to me?

3) What's a good program to use to test the memory itself to make sure it's not just an issue with a bad DIMM? I couldn't get Memtest to work.

 

[Schmide]

I have the Sapphire 4870 512mb and my temps never get over 50c, even in the crappy WaW

 

[P2Mc28]

Ha. I forgot about this post...

Anyway, I picked up this card mid-November and have been loving it. I used the auto-tune feature to overclock it and I think it go way too aggressive... I've since toned it down to 815 core 1020 memory. Haven't really found a sweet spot yet, haven't really been playing with it much.

One thing though - I've been having mysterious system crashes. I've had them before I got this card - I've got a finicky mobo that does NOT cold boot while overclocked, I blame it mostly - but since I got it I'll occasionally blackscreen while the GPU fan spins up to max. I had the fan on auto and the fact that the fan % in CCC was at zero was because it simply couldn't read the fan. Until I heard the fan spin up and saw the number climb. I've set the fan to a continuous 55% (probably a lot more than I need, I set it so I could actually hear it, just for my piece of mind) and I'm going to see if I get any more video-seemingly-related crashes.

All-in-all though, I love the card. I've heard it's overkill for a 1680x1050 setup, but I have dual monitors so the extra juice is definitely noticed and appreciated.

 

[evolucion8]

I also had ths card since november and I haven't had any single issue, it never goes beyond 74c with the latest version of furmark with a room temperature of 84F, and CLChrist0, your RAM amount is normal, I have 4GB of RAM and Windows can only use 3325MB, that's a 32 Bit Windows Limitation because it can only address up to 4GB of virtual address including the videocard's RAM, you will need to install Vista 64 Bit to reclaim the missing amount of RAM.