ASUS Released Non-Reference Radeon HD 4870 with Expanded Power Circuitry

[trez0r]

Does anyone have any user experience with this card?

EDIT:
Alright if no one does i'll respond to my own question.

I acquired this card for dirt cheap comparing to what it costs in shops. First i did was replacing the craptastic stock cooler with acc.s1.rev1. i had laying around. Temps dropped around 10° with accelero+quiet_12cm_fan compared to stock. Also i did attach copper ramsinks to ram bga's and as i had to remove stock vrm cooling - also to mosfets. Here are the rivatuner monitor shots of before and after:


Good upgrade i have to say.

Next i was going to find out how far i can take the card. When i fired up CCC overdrive i was pleased to see that this card (as probably other asus 48XX cards) does not have a limited overdrive freq limits and can be taken to 900mhz out of the box.
Though running atitool artifact scanner on stock i had an unpleasant surprise - the card had a small artifacting on stock clocks! What a piece of shiet i thought.. I had to back to 730mhz on the core to stop the occasional artifacts. On the other hand, memory (quimonda chips) did 1030 alright.
Next i was going to look at the bios of this rather wierd card. Saved it with latest gpuz and opened up with a RBE. So what did i see there..?

Ok seems that the artifacting at stock could be partially explained by the low voltage used here (1.203V) comparing to other 4870 default voltage. I wonder why asus did this and my guess is because of the poor stock cooler. Putting 1.263V (the highest the default bios allows) solved the artifacting and the card could now do 780-790mhz on the core for extended period atitool artifact free. T° did raise a bit but acc. can still do rather good to keep the card rather cool. Though 30mhz is a rather measly overclock don't you think? Either the core is quite a dud or the non-reference (4 phase!) design asus is using has some serious flaws..

Conclusion: if you have to buy this card at the same price as vanilla 4870 - don't ever do it! Nevertheless card performs quite on par with an aftermarket cooler and a small bios mod.

[generics_user]

Does anyone have any user experience with this card?

EDIT:
Alright if no one does i'll respond to my own question.

I acquired this card for dirt cheap comparing to what it costs in shops. First i did was replacing the craptastic stock cooler with acc.s1.rev1. i had laying around. Temps dropped around 10° with accelero+quiet_12cm_fan compared to stock. Also i did attach copper ramsinks to ram bga's and as i had to remove stock vrm cooling - also to mosfets. Here are the rivatuner monitor shots of before and after:


Good upgrade i have to say.

Next i was going to find out how far i can take the card. When i fired up CCC overdrive i was pleased to see that this card (as probably other asus 48XX cards) does not have a limited overdrive freq limits and can be taken to 900mhz out of the box.
Though running atitool artifact scanner on stock i had an unpleasant surprise - the card had a small artifacting on stock clocks! What a piece of shiet i thought.. I had to back to 730mhz on the core to stop the occasional artifacts. On the other hand, memory (quimonda chips) did 1030 alright.
Next i was going to look at the bios of this rather wierd card. Saved it with latest gpuz and opened up with a RBE. So what did i see there..?

Ok seems that the artifacting at stock could be partially explained by the low voltage used here (1.203V) comparing to other 4870 default voltage. I wonder why asus did this and my guess is because of the poor stock cooler. Putting 1.263V (the highest the default bios allows) solved the artifacting and the card could now do 780-790mhz on the core for extended period atitool artifact free. T° did raise a bit but acc. can still do rather good to keep the card rather cool. Though 30mhz is a rather measly overclock don't you think? Either the core is quite a dud or the non-reference (4 phase!) design asus is using has some serious flaws..

Conclusion: if you have to buy this card at the same price as vanilla 4870 - don't ever do it! Nevertheless card performs quite on par with an aftermarket cooler and a small bios mod.

so it's crap


seriously this PWM design is flawed, it has even LESS parts than the first 3870s had (4-phase ones)