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Palit - ATI Radeon HD 4870
Temperature
To evaluate load temperatures I ran hardware monitor simultaneously with 3DMark. I do know that graphics cards get hot, really hot, but the temperature that I saw made me think that the card will deep fry from inside out. The load temperature that the card exhibited was 85.1C at the core and approximately 60 or so degrees Celsius at the exhaust. These temperatures were taken with the stock cooler so those of you that are planning on overclocking your cards, it might be a good idea to invest into water cooling or a superior air cooler.
Conclusion
In conclusion reviews and numbers are relative to what you are doing. If you are looking for the best performance out there, then this isn't. However, if you are like most of us who are money conscious and don't really want to throw away a thousand dollars to get "best of the best" that will be outdated in a couple of months, then this is definitely the right choice. If you are someone who is worried about the drivers and the rate at which AMD is pushing them out, then you will also be pleased to know that the version used in the testing Catalyst 8.8 was released approximately 1 month after version 8.7 and offered a significant boost in many games as well as provided fixes for existing problems. The Palit versions of the ATI Radeon 4870 can be found hovering around $269.99 at amazon.com
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