Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic - what's it worth ?

R

RiverRed

n00b
Joined
Nov 1, 2006
Messages
41
Is it worthwhile getting the Palit 4870 Sonic over a normal one ?
Without volt modding, would the new power circuitry yield better overclocks ?
Techpowerup only managed a measly 793 on core though.
Also, would I be able to flash the Asus Top / Diamond bios onto it since it's a non-ref card ?
 
tech powerup says the cooler is way too loud. I think this is key consideration in purchase. biosh flashing sounds... excessive for me.

best thing to do is Watercooled. then overclocks.

overclocks often don't have real noticible performance benefit and can result instability.
 
I'm not too concerned about the noise, as I'll probably end up swapping the fans for a 120mm loon .. or 2 =P
What I'm wondering is if the new power circuitry will yield better clocks out of the box, and if those bioses will play nice with the Sonic. There's 3 reviews so far but not much in the forums regarding flashing and volt mods.

OCing my 7900gs made a whole lot of difference to framerates and allows me to turn up the IQ a notch, so personally I'd take OCability over noise anytime.
 
I have a palit 4870 sonic and I can attest that AT FIRST the cooler's 70mm fan is very loud and annoying.

However, I managed to fix it even though you cannot change the fan speed using a program (it's a 2-wire deal). Now that I've fixed the fan, it runs cool and nearly silent.

Basically I modded the fan to run at 5v instead of 12v...
Here's what I did:

1) I cut a molex connector off of a case fan that I had laying around so that 1 1/2 inches of wire were sticking out. Make sure to get the male molex connector (I messed up the first time and figured out the female end wouldn't fit with my power supply, ugh)
2) I cut off the wires in positions 1 and 2 (the plastic part of the molex connector has little numbers: 1 + 2 = 12v, 3 + 4 = 5v, and 1 + 4 = 7v), and stripped the wires in 3 and 4 to prepare it for soldering.
3) After removing the video card, I pulled the 70mm fan power cord from the socket and cut the wire at the plastic adapter. I then stripped the wires, soldered them to the molex connector, and plugged it in.
4) I turned it on and couldn't hear anything about my case fans (which are two 25 db Silverstone 80mm)

Good luck!
 
How far were you able to overclock it ?
The few reviews seems to indicate that it's not a magic bullet for overclocking, Techpowerup didn't even break 800.
 
I DISCONNECTED the 70mm fan altogether by removing it's fan header from the hard.

The card how idles at 61c and gets no hotter than 73c under load. The other fan takes care of cooling the card pretty well. There is no way in hell that the stock cooler is tolerable from a noise perspective with the 70mm fan belting away.

1000
 
I've run rthdribl and Crysis Warhead for a few hours now and temps peaked at 75C for rthdribl and 69C for Crysis with GPU overclocked to 801 mHz and memory to 1110 mHz. 75C is perfectly acceptable by me.
 
I also forgot to mention that I used Rivatuner to set the 80 mm fan to 55%. It's quieter than my case fans. At 60% there's an ever so slight humming noise; at 70% you can hear the fan but cooling increases significantly at this point.

I also unplugged the 70 mm fan altogether but I noticed that the 80 mm fan would constantly adjust speed, which gets a little irritating. And I just don't feel right buying a two-fan cooling product and not using one of the fans :p
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top