Palit Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB Video Card Review

Disassembling the Heatsink

In this section we will take a good long, hard look at what keeps this dual-chip card cool. There has been much criticism in the past directed at ATI for making some pretty lackluster heatsinks designs but while the 55nm RV770 cores on this card do not produce copious amounts of heat, ATI seems to have stepped things up a bit.


ATI has designed the HD4870 X2 heatsink much like the way they did with the HD3870 X2 but where the older card had one copper and one aluminum fin array, this one features a pair of all-copper heatsinks. The layout is done in such a way that the fan will suck in and blow cool air over the first set of fins where it is then directed towards the second set and out through the back of the card. This is a good layout but it will naturally cause the core which is further away from the fan to operate at a higher temperature.


Each of the heatsink contact plates along with the fins is made out of copper and weighs a ton. Copper is one of the best conductors of heat so while they may not have a lavish heatpipe design, these pieces should work sufficiently well to cool off the cores.


Other than the two copper contact plates, the rest of the heatsink assembly is made out of black-painted aluminum. There is an additional fin assembly in the very middle of this structure which serves dual purposes of increasing the surface area and also directing the airflow towards the second contact plate. Meanwhile the fan is a somewhat small 60mm unit like the somewhat loud one we encountered on the HD3870 X2.