Asus Matrix Hd4870

[MomijiTMO]

Yeah it is one nice looking card and it appears to have good cooling. Yeah the price premium is going to be stupid but you should factor in the cost that it comes with a good air cooler. However other companies less flashy cards with pre-mounted after-market air coolers are much cheaper.

[halo112358]

Anyone want to take bets that their "power saving" features are just underclocking the card to 500/300 in low power 3d mode?

[STEvil]

I want a 4870X2 version of this.

[chew*]

Although this would be great on a bench cooling wise I still cant get why manufacturers would rather blow hot air around a case instead of out of the case.......

That thing needs a complete shroud to force all the air out the back or its useless...the left fan is shrouded but the right fan I can see dumping plenty of heat in the case.

I have enough trouble keeping a quad cool with stock volts.........No need to have an oven heating it up even more.....

Sadly reviewers will review it on a bench and the "temps" will shine in the review.

Other than that rant it does look sexy.

[ColonelCain]

Somewhat interesting, especially with water on that GPU, then up the volts.

Though, knowing ASUS and its "Premium" products, it will be priced above the highest priced 1GB card.

I'm in the same boat and hoping that nvidia's new GPUs will put pricing pressure on ATI's highend parts, which is why I'm waiting... I'd love to pick up a 4870x2 for $100 (or more) less than what they go for now. Or perhaps if the shrink to 55nm really opened up shader clk for nvidia and they price their cards reasonably I'd consider a 55nm GTX 2x0.

I'm still hopeful Intel takes their 4Q outlook to heart and cuts prices on their penryn line. I'd love to pick up a q9650, but not for $500+ it needs to drop to $300 or less if I'm to buy one.

-EDIT-

As for the original topic, I'm worried Asus will charge way too much, especially considering the card has only 512mb GDDR5.

Indeed, if the Q9650 dropped to $350 and below, I would get it over an E8600.

[STEvil]

Although this would be great on a bench cooling wise I still cant get why manufacturers would rather blow hot air around a case instead of out of the case.......

That thing needs a complete shroud to force all the air out the back or its useless...the left fan is shrouded but the right fan I can see dumping plenty of heat in the case.

I have enough trouble keeping a quad cool with stock volts.........No need to have an oven heating it up even more.....

Sadly reviewers will review it on a bench and the "temps" will shine in the review.

Other than that rant it does look sexy.

I've no issues

[NightCrawler™]

That card just looks awesome... it's almost.... :banana::banana::banana::banana:ish..

[Rob94hawk]

Nice card but as with everyone else, 512MB's is such a turnoff.

[Breogan]

The 4850 Matrix just started to show up on some european sites for 208€, which is about 60€ more than the regular ASUS 4850. If I had to guess, these will sell slightly over 270, at the price point of a 4870 1Gb or GTX260+.

[JoeBar]

Put a shroud forcing air to exhaust out of the case and give it 1gb mem and then it would be sexy...

[iddqd]

Nice card but as with everyone else, 512MB's is such a turnoff.

Who needs that much video memory?

[woffen]

People with big screens? 1920 x 1080 and above..

[initialised]

Sod the card and the cooler, I want the BIOS, so many R770's just wont OC

People with big screens? 1920 x 1080 and above..

No 4870 512 is fine for 1920x1080 4xAA on most games with one obvious exception

[woffen]

Ok, above 1920 x 1080 then

[grimREEFER]

boo 512mb

[Breogan]

Not sure just the BIOS will do anything for you: I recall the 4850 having an aditional chip from ASUS to control the voltages.

[Caveman787]

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/10681/...rds/index.html

Seems even with all that voltage they can't get higher clocks then people could normally. But we'll see if it makes a difference once people here get ahold of them.

Still want to know how many heatpipes the 4870 cooler has I want it to have like 5

[Overgloc]

Wish the X2 Have cooler like this!!

[suddeath]

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/10681/...rds/index.html

Seems even with all that voltage they can't get higher clocks then people could normally. But we'll see if it makes a difference once people here get ahold of them.

Still want to know how many heatpipes the 4870 cooler has I want it to have like 5

Judging by photos I'd rather bet on 3 heatpipes, but it's hard to tell for sure.

[Caveman787]

I'm inclined to think more, the 9600gt one has 3 heatpipes.

This one shows atleast 3 but it also shows like 3 loops on top and 2 on bottom. Though some could just be longer heatpipes to extend to the other heatsink part.

[Caveman787]

We have some up for sale around....though no release date was announced.

Asus Matrix 4870
https://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=AS-487_51M $278

https://www.partspc.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProdID=6694 $367

http://cgi.ebay.com/Asus-ATI-Radeon-...30119012r36316
Ebay $286


Asus Matrix 4850

http://www.allstarshop.com/shop/prod...GV6830B4FG1QJ6 $200

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Produc...odlist=froogle $190

Prices seem pretty crazy to me...when someone can get a 4870 with 1gb for $250 now, 4870 512mb's for $200 and can get 4850's for $130.

[BababooeyHTJ]

I cant really tell from the pics but it looks like the memory and vrms are bare like on the dark knight. I know that they run very hot on the refrence coolers, too.

[Loque]

damm I should paint my gainward golden sample black, the pcb that is :p

[Caveman787]

I'll look and see how the vrm and memory are cooled on the other asus matrix models, I was hoping that maybe some of the heatpipe loops were connected over them.

Found this in a legion hardware 9600gt matrix review

"There is one problem with the design of this graphics card which has annoyed us slightly, though I must stress it is only a small issue. While four of the eight memory chips are located on the front side of the PCB along with the GPU, the other four can actually be found on the rear side of the card. The problem with this is while the four on the front are cooled via a nice big heatsink designed specifically for those memory chips, those found on the back of the card have been left naked. This really makes the front memory heatspreader more of an aesthetic item."

Since the memory on the 4870 seems to always be on the front of the card the memory and vrm should be cooled by the heatpipes.

Also found this picture from a 9800gt matrix review at techgage.

http://techgage.com/reviews/asus/en9...n9800gt_05.jpg

It seems to be using some aluminum coolers on the vrm's and low profile aluminum heatsinks on the memory.

[just a noob]

i'm just curious here, but with the voltage control, is there a point to voltmodding the card?