Devil May Cry 4 (DX10)

4850 512MB left, HIS HD 4870 iCooler x3 1GB right

The DMC4 benchmark isn't completely repeatable as the scenes played are random, but the differences between runs are minimal so make the results valid enough. The 4850 gives us a B score at highest settings, 1680x1050, 4xMSAA. Only during really graphically intense scenes can you perceive a drop in frames below 60 without a framerate counter of some kind, and I would (and have) play the game at these levels throughout. The HIS HD 4870 on the other hand has no perceivable drops; I've never seen it as smooth at these settings before. We get a solid A here with the HIS HD 4870 and did every time we ran the benchmark (although obviously only one run through is shown for each card, but as with all our tests, three runs were made for each). With some games, you can get away with 30FPS or so, but DMC4 is not one of them. There is a drastic difference in perceived smoothness of gameplay at 30 compared to 60, and the HIS HD 4870 certainly lets you play with very high settings completely smoothly.

Overclocking

We used Ray Adams ATI Tray Tools to overclock the HIS HD 4870 as I rather like the program for all it's other features as well. The card starts out at a reference standard 750/900 (GPU/Memory). I was hoping to (at least) reach the 800/1000 mark ... and I did. It actually proved to be quite easy. Eventually I settled on 835/1056 and was all ready to use that (after extensive testing) as the final results but naturally the minute I'd decided it was stable Left 4 Dead crashed on me and the computer locked up. A few more tests and so far I've been running for a couple of days at 826/1047. It's a shame I had to come down that far, but still, 826/1047 is quite respectable for a HD 4870 1GB, and afforded us another 6 fps on average in Left 4 Dead.

Final Words

One thing that may seem like an obvious statement is that the relies on a good airflow into your case to maintain it's temperatures. Without it, you will know without looking at the temperatures that something is amiss as the card does tend to whine quite a bit when things warm up. Under load, the card can become a little noisy, but certainly it's to a much lesser degree than that of a standard 4870 card. If you watercool the rest of the system, be assured though that this card will be the loudest item you'll get.

have however got a nice balance between noise levels and temperatures with the iCooler x3. Yes, it can get noisy under load, but it's quieter than a reference cooler and keeps temperatures lower; increased air flow would mean increased noise levels too. Temperatures never rose above 65C even while overclocking with the iCooler x3. It also looks good. There are no flashy lights or UV elements as found on some other (and non HIS) products, and it is basically a heatpipe cooling setup covered with a gloss plastic shell, but it looks fantastic and would fit into any black coloured/themed case setup very well.

The performance of the card is nothing to sniff at either. At one time, only a few years ago, we would have said that 1GB of GDDR on a card would be pointless, especially compared to 512MB. But times have changed and many games do benefit from a card that can handle everything without a need to draw from system resources. PC Games have however somewhat plateaued of late with many being little more than console ports, but often you can increase the visual appeal past that of the consoles, and of course we are not stuck with console resolutions.

The 4870 makes for a good 20"-24" widescreen card and you can play with a quieter and cooler 4870 without having to spend much more than with a reference card. Many monitors in this range are these days showing up as 1080p with HDMI interfaces, and the fits in well with this setup with its native HDMI port to carry sound and high resolution visuals at the same time. The HDMI port also means you don't need to have an adapter, and because the card also has a DVI-I port, you can still run a multi-monitor setup with digital connections. Of course, using your old VGA monitor and one of the digital connections is also possible, keeping your options open.

The makes a lot of sense. Prices are around the $150 mark and while not the cheapest 4870 going, most of the cheaper cards don't have the cooling of this one. Even the cheapest reference 4870 with 1GB isn't much less than this . Only you can decide if this is the card for you, but there is certainly no reason why it shouldn't be on your list, and plenty of reasons why it should.

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