Conclusions

By this point in the game, you can probably guess a lot of what we're about to say regarding the Radeon HD 4870 without even reading our conclusions.  As ever, this board offers a compelling and well-rounded feature set from support for DirectX 10.1 through to superb High Definition video playback, and if AMD's "Stream" technology can begin to gain more traction then its GPGPU capabilities should also come to the fore.  Unless you're looking to game on a 30" LCD, then the Radeon HD 4870 can handle everything you throw at it with consummate ease to cement its place as the premier single GPU graphics solution currently on the market when you take both pricing and performance into account.

Of course, as you would expect from an XXX branded XFX offering, the Radeon HD 4870 XXX adds a few extra percentage points to the board's overall gaming performance figures to increase its firepower in more intensive games, a scenario that also makes gaming at 1920x1200 with 8x multi-sampling enabled a possibility in all but the most intensive titles.

As we saw with the Radeon HD 4850 XXX in our early review, XFX are also determined to be fiercely competitive in pricing terms with their AMD-based parts, and if you shop around (which is particularly important after recent price cuts to Radeon HD 4850 and 4870 boards) then there's a good chance that you'll find the Radeon HD 4870 XXX right down there amongst the cheapest parts utilising this SKU on the market - Not bad for a factory overclocked part.

Where the Radeon HD 4870 XXX does lose out however is in its use of AMD's reference cooling solution - Sure, it isn't a terrible cooler, but a lot of other AIBs have swapped it for their own custom solutions and with good reason, producing cooler and quieter designs in the process.  Thus, if heat and noise are concerns of yours, then you might want to consider shelling out a little extra for a Radeon HD 4870 board with a superior third-party cooler strapped to it.

If you aren't too concerned by such things however, then XFX's Radeon HD 4870 XXX is cheap (again, I urge you to shop around) and powerful, which is always liable to be a popular combination.  If you're on the look-out for a new high-end graphics board, then a Radeon HD 4870 for under £180 (at the time of writing) is a ridiculous bargain.

Product information

XFX Radeon HD 4870 XXX 1GB

- Vendor web site
- Vendor product information

Recommended retail pricing (at time of going to press):

Dabs - £227.22 including VAT
eBuyer - £252.07 including VAT
Overclockers UK - £178.24 including VAT
Scan - £213.30 including VAT

Many thanks to XFX for providing the sample for this review

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