I'm looking to get one of these GPUs sometime. By the looks of it, it's a little behind the GTX 280. It's price range isn't too bad going from $290-$300. Any further thoughts or input?

Just make sure you have a neutral Chipset, ie. Intel, VIA, ect. If you try and use an Nvidia Card on an ATI Chipset of vice-versa you will experience crashes and blue screens of death.

Oh, and the 4870's are the best for performance/price. It's a great card.

Crunchbite

Just make sure you have a neutral Chipset, ie. Intel, VIA, ect. If you try and use an Nvidia Card on an ATI Chipset of vice-versa you will experience crashes and blue screens of death. Oh, and the 4870's are the best for performance/price. It's a great card.

nVidia cards on ATI chipsets won't cause stability or performance problems. However, SLI will not work with an ATI chipset.

Easy. If you don't care about heat, power consumption, and don't want to use Linux or FreeBSD, then you can easily choose the ATI card. If you care/need any of the things above, choose NVidia. Simple as 1x1. :)

What an unsupported, unadulterated, biased piece of advice above, can you say rapid fanboyism? Choosing one brand over the other will always result in better management of heat, power consumption, and OS compatibility, to the simplicity of 1x1? I also like how the above poster does not mention the fact that besides having the current performance throne, ATI cards right now are also, dollar-for-perfomance, cheaper than NVidia cards at the same weight class. Additionally, NVidia seems to have problems (especially the notebook sector) with a significant batch of cards dying due to bad die material from heat cycling, and the desktop cards run very, very hot.

Like with just about any industry, quality varies all the time, so I suggest you go on Google and read some reviews about the ATI 4870, and look up on some other competitive alternatives to that card and see how they stack up in terms of performance, price, and quality.

WaruiKoohii, have you ever tested that? I have people coming into the shop with ATI GPUs on NVidia Chipset Boards and it's always a bluescreen while running high graphic games. Not every board/gpu will do it but it's a major risk you have to think about.

If you think HD 4870 is the best GPU think again
cause now the monster has been born HD 4870 X2 replacing HD 3870 X2 that has been a lot of mistakes while being produce and also losing by Nvidia 9800 GX2 but today not even GTX280 is a match for this monster that has been arrive to correct the mistake make by HD 3870 X2| |

Well this is first hand experience. The hd4870 is EPIC WIN! I fell in love with it right when my computer booted up. I recently upgraded from a Nvidia 9600 GT and all i have to say is for $245 ($215 after rebate arrives), I am one happy camper. Runing Crysis highest settings but vsync and on x4 AA it's pretty much 40-50 fps. As for temperatures, if i leave the fan glitch unattended, it reaches 70+C but if i mess around with the fan speeds it immediately goes down to high 50's or low 60's during load. I might consider getting an aftermarket cooler like a Zalman but the hefty price on the cooler doesn't do it just when i have a back-up graphics card and a lifetime warranty on the graphics card i do not want to void.
I am one happy camper and as for Nvidia, sad to say but i have a faulty 8400 GS on my laptop and I hope for the best with it. It reaches 80C on idle O_O yet my proc stay a crispy cool 39C which is strange. Ah well that's what warranties are for =3. Oh also from what I hear with the BSoD with the Nvidia/ATi problem, it could be Windows Vista itself not properly installing the Video Drivers but I cant say since I have no problems and I use an Intel Chipset.

My system specs goes like this:
Intel Core 2 Duo e8400 oc'd to 3.8GHz (No voltage touching)
Gigabyte GA-EP35-D3SR
2x 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F1 series Hard drives
Visiontek HD4870
Antec Sonata i
500 Watt Antec earthwatts

Last wk the 4870 was on sale for $235 after rebate on newegg...I really should have picked one up, but I was broke then. Its always on sale at $284. I might pick it up on a month or so. Maybe then it will drop to $250 standard.

Overall, it is better to purchase a 4850, you will not notice the performance difference between that and a 4870, honestly, the best setup in the market is the 4850 crossfire, which you can purchase with the amount of money spent on the 4870.

I don't know where you are getting your numbers from. From what i've seen and tested the 4870 gets an extra 3k~4k on avrg. in 3DMark06. And its only $100 more.

They are just releasing the 4870 1GB, doubling the memory of the card with only a minor price increase. This is the best price/performance card on the market. If you don't want to spend over $500 for the 4870x2, get the 4870 1GB.

zealotbenz

Overall, it is better to purchase a 4850, you will not notice the performance difference between that and a 4870, honestly, the best setup in the market is the 4850 crossfire, which you can purchase with the amount of money spent on the 4870.

This may be true if you're running at resolutions under 1680x1050, for higher resolutions you're going to need more power. 4850s in crossfire offers a small improvement over a single 4870, or in some cases worse performance, while costing $60-100 more.

Negative!.The 4870 does have a better 3D mark score and it also has a better benchmark tests than the 4850.So you cant say that the 4850 is better than the 4870.Also 4870 is an awesome GPU :D
Go for it

GMSniper, wow 70+C temperatures, that's not bad at all for a high-end GPU, and to add insult to injury, you had to mention that you can get it to 50-60C =). My aging GeForce 6800 regular IDLES at around 50-60, and loads easily exceed 80 if playing games for prolonged periods of time. I don't know what voodoo magic you've casted or what polar regions you live in, but that's pretty amazing. Or, it could just be that the card is very good with heat management =)

The 4870 is basically an overclocked version of the 4850, both are great cards specialy at that price, but if you are looking to play in resolutions above 1680x1050 you might need something better.
Betwen the 4870 and the 280, I´d go for the 4870, but if you don´t care about the money and you want a couple more fps, go with 280.