Palit Radeon HD 4870 512MB Sonic Dual Edition Video Card Review

Temperature Testing

Overall, heat is kept well within the norms but we were expecting a bit better idle temperatures especially considering the speed one of the fans spins at (more on this below). Load temperatures were suitably impressive but we expected nothing less considering the size of the heatpipes Palit used along with the high quality construction of the heatsink itself.

You may also see we tried something a bit different here. Even though I am telling you the results before the acoustics section, let’s just say that this sucker is loud and it is only because the smaller fan spins at a constantly high speed. Since the 2-pin fan header this fan uses is easily accessible from the side of the card, we decided to disconnect it to see what results could be achieved with the single (larger) 80mm fan running. As you can see, temperatures did rise, but not significantly.

Acoustics

This is where the Palit HD 4870 Sonic Edition falls flat onto its face since it is loud as hell for no real reason other than horrible design. As we saw, the 70mm fan only has a 2-pin fan connector so it is either completely off or it is running at full tilt which in this case means 4000RPMs at a whooping 36dB according to T & T’s tech documents. To us, that is loud.

When installed into a completely closed case, the noise level goes down dramatically but if you have side opening like on the Gigabyte Aurora 570 or many other cases on the market with side fans, you have been warned.

When the card is turned on you are greeted with a high-pitched banshee howl that will quickly drive almost anyone nuts. At least now we know why Palit didn’t include a Crossfire connector: two of these cards would put out as much noise as a 20 amp dust buster on steroids. We may never know why Palit didn’t combine the two low amperage fans onto a single temperature controlled fan header but we do know that the novelty of a cooler GPU core wears out really fast when the fan sounds like this one.

However, as we saw above, simply unplugging the 70mm fan doesn’t result in outrageous temperatures yet it makes this card whisper quiet. Are you willing to take a hit of a few degrees if it means suddenly near-silent operation? I know I would.

Power Consumption

For this test we hooked up our power supply to a UPM power meter that will log the power consumption of the whole system twice every second. In order to stress the GPU as much as possible we once again use the Batch Render test in 3DMark06 and let it run for 30 minutes to determine the peak power consumption while letting the card sit at a stable Windows desktop for 30 minutes to determine the peak idle power consumption.

Please note that after extensive testing, we have found that simply plugging in a power meter to a wall outlet or UPS will NOT give you accurate power consumption numbers due to slight changes in the input voltage. Thus we use a Tripp-Lite 1800W line conditioner between the 120V outlet and the power meter.


Even though it has a significantly different design when compared to the reference version, the Palit Sonic still consumes more power than its stock-clocked brethren. It isn’t a significant increase but we would still recommend you use a good 600W power supply if you are running this card with a quad core or overclocked dual core CPU.