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

A Closer Look at the Palit HD 4870 Sonic

The Sonic’s box is basically a carbon copy graphic-wise of past Palit cards but it is hair larger and has more muted colors. Overall, it is something which will definitely catch your eye in a brick and mortar store.

The accessory package is Spartan at best and it doesn’t even include a Crossfire bridge. This omission has been confirmed by Palit not to be a packaging SNAFU but rather a cost-cutting measure which shaves off a few bucks per card. Come on Palit, that extra $3 won’t break the bank, will it? Other than that one obvious missing CF bridge, you get the usual Molex to 6-pin power adaptor, a DVI to HDMI connector, a DVI to VGA dongle, a quick start guide and finally a driver CD.


The design of this card is nothing if not stunning with its dual slot cooler and red and black color scheme but the most distinctive feature of the Palit HD4870 Sonic Dual Edition is its signature dual fan heatsink. Oddly enough, it seems some sacrifices were made due to either financial or size constraints since the fans are not of equal size. Rather, one is an 80mm unit while the other is a smaller 70mm in diameter.


The heart of this beast is Palit’s custom 3-heatpipe cooler we will look a little closer at it in the next section but while we are here looking at it from the outside, there is one overriding concern we have: there is no exhaust area on the backplate. This means that all of the hot air generated by the core will stay within your case and drive up the temperatures of your other components. To have a dual slot heatsink and not include a slot of hot air to escape reeks of bad design.

Luckily, Palit will be fixing this with a new revision of this card but this brings another question to mind: if Palit is coming out with a new Sonic Edition, why buy this one?


The backplate of this card offers up some a unique feature in the way of a Displayport connector but as we already mentioned, lacks any type of exhaust grille. Something that should also be noted is that only ONE of the DVI connectors (the one above the DisplayPort) has dual link capabilities while the other is single link. Just remember this when hooking up a 24” or 30” monitor since the single link connector won’t allow you to run at native resolution on one of these large screens.

Also on the backplate we have a small switch which allows you to change between the stock BIOS and the one containing the pre-overclocked clock speeds. While this may seem completely pointless for some of you, I am sure that it brings up some very interesting possibilities for others. Even though we have not tried this (yet) it seems possible to flash your OWN custom BIOS to the card while retaining the original stock settings just in case something goes wrong. Unfortunately, if you don’t use it this way the switch does become a bit redundant.


The back of the Sonic doesn’t offer up anything interesting upon first glance but when it is placed next to a reference HD 4870, differences start rearing their heads. Not only is the Palit card about 1/2” shorter but it also sports a custom, deeper red PCB.