With the two core graphics card are on the roll in the gaming shack, the two players NVIDIA and ATI are going ahead with the raw power of two cores in their newer names, presumably the 3870×2 and the newer 4870×2 but with NVIDIA only having the 9800GX2 as their premium when it comes to graphics cards, With NVIDIA just going the single core of the GTX200 series but with a default memory count of A single GB of memory, with the 65nm architecture and to be proclaimed one of the most heavily designed chip, but for ATI the 4870 x2 is more on raw power and also both in power consumption and GPU processing, in which they did with the 4870X2 with a whooping 2.5 Teraflops per second, but with the NVIDA side is just able to reach the one teraflop mark.
While we talk, the Sapphire version of the 4870X2, has a reference design cooling for the graphics cards, with a picture of Lara Croft with sex appeal with the card while this thing is hot as, the heat generate by both core is astonishing, I don’t think that the reference card cooling wasn’t the purpose of cooling the massive behemoth, with the same power connector as the GTX200, you need to have a 800Watt or more PSU to power the thing up or it will never boot. With the quarrel on the cooling system is done the tech specs of the thing are a 2GB memory for those quick loading of games, 750MHz core clock frequency, 900MHz of memory frequency with it 1800MHz effective, with no overclocking needed on this thing well first of all the cooler cannot even cool it right down to 508C but to 80*C at load, and the thing is blistering fast playing Crysis in high detail at 95fsp.
But with the dual quad core of 4870X2 is a bit disappointing, because the thing has bottlenecks with between CPU, which is a stock QX9650. With the score of the games go down by a mere 10fsp, but the temp rose to a whooping 100*C, well, I try to use water-cooling combo just to bring the temp only 30*c down, that’s how hot the thing can go! With the 4870X2 is the fastest GPU in the consumer market being in the record being one of the fastest cards. While ATI got gold in the performance market the cooling and the noise of the card cooler is kind of an issue with me, with the effects on the whole board and heat sharing with other hardware is an annoyance, with the NVIDIA, it runs cooler and it is as quite only 50dbA while ATI’s 4870X2 is ate 68dbA.
Then it comes to you, if you want a fast fat video card, ATI 4870X2 is a good choice even the heat and noise, while for the quite alternative is the NVIDA GTX280, with the prices getting lower every month it is a good buy, if you are both, you have to buy 4870X2 with a water-cooling combo for it.
