11-Way ATI Radeon HD 4870 Roundup
 

The maximum GPU clock that remains perfectly stable is in general between 790 and 810 MHz. The Asus card with a higher clocked GPU at the start can actually tolerate raising its clock higher. The MSI card also allows you to increase the GPU clock to a very high level, but it is difficult to draw any conclusions from this as it may simply be a particularly maleable card or perhaps carefully chosen by the manufacturer.


If you are looking for a low-priced Radeon HD 4870, we recommend you get the stock model and avoid the Sapphire, which is much too noisy unless you change the fan speed manually. Make sure then that this model is not sold as a “no-name” card. We found this noise problem on all the Sapphire cards we have seen. The manufacturer would do well to react. We’re now well into the 21st century and this is not longer acceptable for a card in this category.

http://www.behardware.com/articles/7...n-hd-4870.html