by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko
05/21/2009 | 11:58 AM
The Radeon HD 4870 X2 provoked a sensation in its time. Based on two RV770 cores, the dual-chip monster delivered then-unprecedented gaming performance and Nvidia could not offer anything like that. But when the first thrill of excitement had subsided, the new king of the 3D graphics market was found to have a number of blemishes.
Besides an expectedly high price, it had huge power consumption and, consequently, heat dissipation. To remind you, the ordinary single-processor Radeon HD 4870 has a power draw of about 130 watts under load. When two such cards are combined into a single product with one PCB, the power draw naturally grows twofold, up to 260 watts. Thus, the cooling system has to take off 260 watts of heat, keep the temperature of the components within reasonable limits, and produce an acceptable amount of noise – you don’t want to play in sound-insulating headphones, do you? Designing such a cooler is a daunting task because of the restrained dimensions determined by the dimensions of the graphics card itself.
AMD’s graphics department did their best to meet all the requirements, but did not succeed much. The cooler had proper dimensions but was not quite efficient. Notwithstanding the copper heatsinks, one of which had a special evaporation chamber for better performance, the GPUs were as hot as 90°C under load. And that was but half of the problem. Such a high temperature is not something lethal for modern electronic chips and one could put up with it if the cooler were silent. However, AMD failed on that point. The cooler was rather quiet in 2D mode but unbearably loud under load. What made things worse, the too smart system of fan speed control would be constantly varying the speed of the cooler’s fan and the resulting fluctuations in noise were very irritating.
So, it is no wonder that the reference Radeon HD 4870 X2 cooler received a lot of deserved criticism, yet most samples of that card would still come with that cooler. The makers of alternative cooling systems were not much interested because the Radeon HD 4870 X2 was not very popular due to its high price. To put it briefly, developing a complex alternative cooler that would be able to cool the Radeon HD 4870 X2 with all its graphics cores and other components just did not make any commercial sense.
However, not all of AMD’s graphics card partners agree that the name of Radeon HD 4870 X2 is synonymous with the word loud. One such partner is Palit Microsystems. Although this manufacturer is mostly known for its inexpensive products, this time it has taken up a rather ambitious project with the purpose of developing the world’s best Radeon HD 4870 X2 that would be a fast, universal and quiet solution. The project has an ambitious name, too. The new device is called Revolution 700 Deluxe. We’ve got one such card and are going to check out its practical worth.
Notwithstanding the revolutionary name, the packaging of the described product does not try to impress you with some extraordinary design. The card comes to retail in a rather large box made from thick glossy cardboard and painted dark red. A picture of a frobot - frog in armor - is on the face side of the box. Not the best emblem choice, in our opinion.
The text on the box mentions the type of the card’s graphics memory but does not indicate its amount quite correctly. The card indeed carries 2 gigabytes of graphics memory on board, but 3D applications can only use half of the total amount, i.e. 1 gigabyte, due to the dual-processor design. This is quite enough for any modern game, though. Besides, there is a mention of the card’s native support for HDMI and DisplayPort.
The box does not have a carry handle, which is a problem considering its size, but its protective properties are good. Inside the box there is a foam-rubber container with a cap. The graphics card is securely fixed within the container. Its rather scanty accessories are placed in the small grooves nearby.
Besides the Revolution 700 Deluxe, the box contains:
The accessories are too few for a product that claims to be exceptional. The included power adapter is not standard even. It uses one connector of each type but the maximum load capacity of the 6-pin connector is only 75 watts whereas the 8-pin connector of the Radeon HD 4870 X2 has a load of over 140 watts. Practice suggests that 6-pin power connectors can work under higher loads than those they are rated for, but there is no good in pushing them beyond the limit. Again, it is especially sad since the Palit Revolution 700 Deluxe claims to be an exceptional product.
So, there seems to be no revolution at first sight: the packaging and accessories of the Palit Revolution 700 Deluxe might be better. On the other hand, these factors are unimportant for a top-performance graphics card, so let’s see what else it can offer us.
Palit’s card obviously differs from the reference Radeon HD 4870 X2. It has a very tall cooling system that has a triple-slot form-factor. It also has a nonstandard selection of I/O ports. You can see two large fans that are meant to cope with a Radeon HD 4870 X2 without making much noise:
Palit Revolution 700 Deluxe
PowerColor HD 4870X2 2GB GDDR5 (reference design)
As usual, the most exciting things are hidden under the cooler’s heatsinks, so we removed them. That was easy enough.
Palit Revolution 700 Deluxe
PowerColor HD 4870X2 2GB GDDR5 (reference design)
The PCB design is largely borrowed from the reference ATI card. That’s wise since developing such a PCB from scratch is a time-consuming and costly affair. On closer inspection you can note a number of small differences, so this design can be considered unique. Most of the differences are in the area of the card’s mounting bracket and power connectors. As opposed to the reference Radeon HD 4870 X2, the latter are placed flat on the PCB, making it easier to plug the connectors in if the card is already installed into the system case. The power subsystem is copied from the Radeon HD 4870 X2 and consists of two independent three-phase GPU voltage regulators, each of which is based on a dedicated Volterra VT1165 controller. And there are also two one-phase memory voltage regulators.
As we found in our earlier reviews, the 8-pin PCIe 2.0 power connector is required for the Radeon HD 4870 X2 because its load exceeds the load capacity of the 6-pin PCIe 1.0 connector (75W).
A PEX8647 switch from PLX Technology is responsible for the communication between the graphics cores and the PCI Express 2.0 interface.
The switch has 48 lanes and supports direct communication mode for the GPUs. An additional communication channel between the GPUs called Sideport is present but is still disabled. It will hardly be turned on in the current generation of dual-processor ATI Radeon HD series products.
There are two sets of GDDR5 memory chips on board: eight chips for each GPU. Half of the chips are installed on the reverse side of the PCB as there is no place for them on the face side. The chips are Qimonda IDGV1G-05A1F1C-40X. They have a capacity of 1Gb (32Mb x 32), a voltage of 1.5V, and a rated frequency of 1000 (4000) MHz. The memory frequency of the reference Radeon HD 4870 X2 is 900 (3600) MHz but the Palit version is slightly pre-overclocked to 950 (3800) MHz. Such a small frequency growth can hardly affect the gaming performance of the Revolution 700 Deluxe much, though.
The PCB is equipped with two RV770 graphics cores clocked at 790MHz, which is also slightly higher than the reference card’s 750MHz. Both GPUs are dated the 40th week the last year and are rather old. As usual, they have the maximum configuration possible for the RV770 chip: 160 superscalar computing modules, 40 texture processors and 16 RBEs per each graphics core. This is an impressive arsenal and our readers already know how brilliantly a Radeon HD 4870 X2 can perform in games with its total of 1600 ALUs, 80 TMUs and 32 RBEs.
As opposed to the ordinary Radeon HD 4870 X2, the Revolution 700 Deluxe offers connectors for every type of a monitor available today: D-Sub VGA, DVI-I, HDMI and DisplayPort. This makes it a truly universal device that only lacks support for analog video outputs, but analog interfaces are hardly required anymore. These I/O connectors have a potential inconvenience, though. If you’ve got two monitors with DVI interface, the connection through the included HDMI→DVI-I interface is less reliable as it has an extra link in the chain. It also does not look tidy. The D-Sub connector is connected to the PCB via a flexible cable which can affect image quality at high resolutions. This may be a problem for obsolete CRT monitors and for early TFT panels with a diagonal of 24 inches that do not have a digital interface. Owners of such monitors can try to use the DVI-I→D-Sub adapter instead.
Besides the I/O ports, there are slits in the card’s mounting bracket that are theoretically meant for the hot air to leave the system case, but these slits perform almost no function as we will explain shortly.
Like the reference card from ATI, the Palit Revolution 700 Deluxe can work in a quad-processor CrossFireX subsystem and offers an appropriate onboard connector for that. It is alone there, meaning that you cannot unite more than two cards together. On the other hand, even this kind of a graphics subsystem will largely be overkill. As opposed to traditional dual-processor multi-GPU solutions, its compatibility with games is worse but it has a terribly high level of power consumption and heat dissipation. Besides, installing two such cards into the same computer does not sound reasonable to us because of the triple-slot cooling system installed on the Revolution 700 Deluxe.
It is the cooling system that presents the biggest interest in the Palit Revolution 700 Deluxe. As we have written above, the reference cooler from ATI is deservedly criticized for mediocre performance coupled with much noise. Developing such a cooler is not easy because 130 watts of heat must be taken off each graphics core of the Radeon HD 4870 X2, besides such other components as memory, power transistors of the voltage regulators, etc. Let’s see how Palit has solved the problem and got rid of the abovementioned downsides.
Even before we removed the cooler’s casing it was clear that the manufacturer had gone the easiest way. The developer had used a three-slot cooler design in order to increase the height of the heatsinks and their heat dissipation area.
As you see, each of the two graphics processors of the Revolution 700 Deluxe is cooled with an individual heatsink consisting of thin aluminum plates.
Each heatsink has a copper base connected with two heat pipes to the ribs and is fastened to the PCB with four screws and an X-shaped back-plate that ensure proper thermal contact with the GPU die. The thermal interface seems to be ordinary gray thermal grease, but it is actually some thermoplastic material that is dry when cold. At least we had to scrape it off carefully before applying a layer of fresh thermal grease when we assembled our Revolution 700 Deluxe.
The other hot components on the face side of the PCB, such as memory chips, are cooled with a large aluminum plate with additional heatsinks. Two kinds of thermal interfaces are used here: green elastic pads for the memory chips and PCI Express switch and dark-gray grease for the power transistors of the voltage regulators.
Another such plate is installed on the reverse side of the PCB and fastened to the first plate with screws. It cools the memory chips located there.
Two 9-blade 80mm fans from Power Logic (PLA08015B12HH, 4.2W, 12V, 0.35A) are installed on the cooler’s casing. They are connected in parallel and have PWM-based speed control.
This cooler seems to have high potential and should cope with a Radeon HD 4870 X2 without much noise, but it has one serious downside. It does not exhaust the hot air out of the system case. The heatsink ribs are positioned in parallel to the mounting bracket and the airflows from the heatsinks are oriented likewise. Thus, most of the hot air remains within the computer – and the total heat dissipation of two RV770 chips is as high as 250W! This graphics card really needs a well-ventilated system case. Otherwise, not only the graphics card but also other system components may overheat.
Before we proceed to the gaming tests, we will see how effective Palit’s original cooler is and how it affects the overclocking potential of the Revolution 700 Deluxe.
The power circuit of the Revolution 700 Deluxe is identical to that of the reference Radeon HD 4870 X2. Thus, both cards should have the same power consumption and we only checked out the Palit card’s noise, temperature and overclockability.
The numbers seem to indicate that the idea of creating a quiet Radeon HD 4870 X2 has failed even though the Revolution 700 Deluxe is better than the reference card from ATI, but there is one important nuance. For an unclear reason our testbed’s power supply would increase the speed of its fans during our tests of the Revolution 700 Deluxe. Since we could only measure the noise of the whole system, the numbers are big although the card itself is very quiet. This is quite a surprise considering the identical power circuits of both cards, but it is a fact nonetheless: our power supply (Enermax Galaxy DXX EGX1000EWL) behaves differently with the Palit Revolution 700 Deluxe than with the reference card from ATI.
Judging by the data reported by Catalyst Control Center, Palit’s cooler copes well with its job:
The GPU temperature is never higher than 75°C under load, which is an excellent result for a Radeon HD 4870 X2. For comparison, the GPU temperature of the reference card can be as high as 90°C. So, while the Revolution 700 Deluxe’s cooler is not blameless in terms of noisiness, its cooling performance is all right (but don’t forget that the hot air does not leave the system case with this card).
We were not successful in our overclocking attempts. Even when we increased the core frequencies by 5-10MHz above the default, the card would fail and reboot the driver after working in 3D mode for a while. Therefore we benchmarked our Palit Revolution 700 Deluxe at its default frequencies, i.e. 790MHz GPU and 950 (3800) MHz memory.
We are going to study the performance of Palit Revolution 700 Deluxe graphics card on our universal testbed with the following configuration:
The ATI Catalyst and Nvidia GeForce graphics card drivers were configured as follows:
ATI Catalyst:
Nvidia GeForce:
The list of benchmarks includes the following gaming titles and synthetic tests:
First-Person 3D Shooters
Third-Person 3D Shooters
RPG
Simulators
Strategies
Semi-synthetic Benchmarks
We selected the highest possible level of detail in each game using standard tools provided by the game itself from the gaming menu. The games configuration files weren’t modified in any way, because the ordinary user doesn’t have to know how to do it. We made a few exceptions for selected games if that was necessary. We are going to specifically dwell on each exception like that later on in our article.
Besides Palit Revolution 700 Deluxe we have also included the following graphics accelerators to participate in our test session:
We also tested ATI Radeon HD 4890 in CrossFireX mode together with another similar card. As usual, we ran our tests in the following resolutions: 1280x1024, 1680x1050, 1920x1200 and 2560x1600. Everywhere, where it was possible we added MSAA 4x antialiasing to the standard anisotropic filtering 16x. We enabled antialiasing from the game’s menu. If this was not possible, we forced them using the appropriate driver settings of ATI Catalyst and Nvidia GeForce drivers.
Performance was measured with the games’ own tools and the original demos were recorded if possible. We measured not only the average speed, but also the minimum speed of the cards where possible. Otherwise, the performance was measured manually with Fraps utility version 2.9.8. In the latter case we ran the test three times and took the average of the three for the performance charts.
Starting from version 1.3 we use the game’s integrated benchmarking options together with a custom demo record. Unfortunately, this method does not report the bottom frame rate.
Despite the increased frequencies of the Palit Revolution 700 Deluxe, the Radeon HD 4890 CrossFireX configuration is always faster at every resolution. The gap may be as large as 14%, and the Revolution 700 Deluxe is not much easier to handle than a couple of individual cards because it occupies as many as three slots. That doesn’t look like a revolution to us.
The gap is even larger than in the previous test, amounting to 15-17% depending on the resolution. The Palit card is also no better than the reference Radeon HD 4870 X2. There is no talking about any competition with the GeForce GTX 295, of course.
We disabled the integrated frame rate limiter in the game console. The game’s built-in benchmarking options do not provide information about the bottom speed.
The Revolution 700 Deluxe is ahead of the ordinary Radeon HD 4870 X2 by 1.5-4% but slower than the Radeon HD 4890 CrossFireX and GeForce GTX 295 by up to 17% and 14%, respectively. The results are overall good but not worth the three occupied expansion slots. The lower noise is a factor in favor of the Palit product, though.
At the two lower resolutions the Palit is almost as fast as the Radeon HD 4890 CrossFireX but the latter goes ahead at 1920x1200. The difference is especially conspicuous at 2560x1600 where the CrossFireX tandem can maintain a bottom speed of over 30fps whereas each version of Radeon HD 4870 X2 barely reaches the playability limit.
ATI’s multi-GPU solutions differ at resolutions of 1680x1050 and higher, but the overall picture is the same: the Palit is but slightly ahead of the reference card while the CrossFireX tandem based on Radeon HD 4890 delivers much better average and bottom speeds.
The GeForce GTX 295 is inferior to the Palit Revolution 700 Deluxe in average performance but better than it in terms of bottom speed. This advantage in bottom speed may be more important for the gamer, especially at 2560x1600.
The game runs on the Source engine and has an integrated benchmark, but the latter does not report the bottom speed information.
The Radeon HD 4890 CrossFireX is competitive to the GeForce GTX 295 at every resolution whereas the Palit Revolution 700 Deluxe is somewhat behind them in every display mode, excepting 1280x1024 which is unpopular among owners of such top-class products.
Besides, like in some other games, the multi-GPU solutions are redundant. The performance growth they provide may not be noticed by the user whereas the higher power consumption, heat dissipation and noise will be all perceptible. Fortunately, the Palit Revolution 700 is free from the latter drawback – it is very quiet, actually.
To achieve a playable speed in this game we disabled FSAA and such resource-consuming options as Sun rays, Wet surfaces and Volumetric Smoke. We use the Enhanced full dynamic lighting (DX10) mode for our test and additionally enable the DirectX 10.1 mode for the ATI cards.
Judging by the bottom speed results, the GeForce GTX 295 is preferable, except at 2560x1600 where the Radeon HD 4890 CrossFireX takes the lead, probably due to its larger amount of graphics memory. The Palit Revolution 700 Deluxe takes third place, being barely ahead of the reference Radeon HD 4870 X2, yet both deliver comfortable speeds even at the highest of the tested resolutions.
Like in Left 4 Dead, the multi-GPU solution is overkill. A single Radeon HD 4890 is quite enough even for 2560x1600. However, we can note that the Palit Revolution 700 Deluxe outperforms the GeForce GTX 295 at 1680x1050. Alas, the Radeon HD 4890 CrossFireX is faster yet, preventing any revolution. We should wait for a similar card based on two RV790 cores for a breakthrough to happen.
It is at low resolutions that the Palit enjoys the biggest advantage over the reference card. The gap in average performance is 10% at 1280x1024 but only 5% at 1920x1200 and 2560x1600. The bottom speed of the card is below playable at the highest resolution, though. Under the same conditions the Radeon HD 4890 CrossFireX can deliver a frame rate of 25fps and higher, which is a strong argument in favor of building such a configuration to be used with a 30-inch monitor.
It is hard to name the winner here, but ATI’s solutions are obviously in the lead at 2560x1600. The GeForce GTX 295 has a lower average speed even though it makes the game playable, too. The only advantage of the Palit Revolution 700 Deluxe is its low level of noise.
The GeForce GTX 295 wins at 1680x1050 and 1920x1200 while the other two resolutions are won by the Radeon HD 4890 CrossFireX. The Palit is not much faster than the reference Radeon HD 4870 X2 just as you could expect from its modest factory overclocking (+40MHz GPU and +50 (200) MHz memory frequencies). The Palit’s card has a barely playable bottom speed at 1920x1200.
The game prefers ATI’s solutions. The Palit Revolution 700 Deluxe is about as fast as the reference Radeon HD 4870 X2 again. Both cards are far lower than the pair of Radeon HD 4890 cards working in CrossFireX mode. The difference is unimportant considering the overall high level of performance, though.
We use the in-game benchmarking tools that do not allow to measure the bottom frame rate. We also enable DirectX 10.1 support for ATI’s solutions.
At the highest graphics quality settings the Palit Revolution 700 Deluxe and the Radeon HD 4870 X2 can be used at resolutions up to 1920x1200 inclusive. The same goes for the Radeon HD 4890 CrossFireX, though. Neither of these solutions can be used to play at 2560x1600 because of their very low bottom speeds – the jerkiness of gameplay is quite noticeable. SLI mode does not work for the GeForce GTX 295 here.
The game has a frame rate limiter fixed at 30fps.
Every graphics card, save for the GeForce GTX 285, deliver almost identical performance at resolutions up to 2560x1600 but the Radeon HD 4890 CrossFireX tandem is in the lead at the highest display mode while the Radeon HD 4870 X2 and Palit Revolution 700 are about 12% slower. Nvidia’s products still have problems with this game.
The GeForce GTX 295 is in the lead at resolutions up to 1920x1200. Starting from it, the multi-GPU solutions behave in the same manner and cannot give you comfortable speed at 2560x1600 although the Radeon HD 4980 CrossFireX is very close to doing that.
ATI’s solutions are close to each other. It is only in the SM3.0/HDR tests that the Radeon HD 4980 CrossFireX tandem leaves the RV770-based products behind thanks to its higher GPU frequency. There is nothing else that we can see in this obsolete test that runs at 1280x1024.
We minimize the CPU’s influence by using the Extreme profile (1920x1200, 4x FSAA and anisotropic filtering). We also publish the results of the individual tests across all display resolutions to provide a full picture.
The GeForce GTX 295 is unrivalled in 3DMark Vantage due to its software PhysX support. But without this feature, the difference between the GeForce GTX 295 and Radeon HD 4890 CrossFire is not too big in the GPU tests.
Alas, 3DMark Vantage does not run well on the Radeon HD 4870 X2 because the current official version of Catalyst (9.4) has problems with this benchmark. Every dual-processor solution from ATI, including a Radeon HD 4850 X2, shows visual artifacts here that look like that:
The root of the problem is unclear, but AMD is working on that. Discrete CrossFireX tandems are not affected.
The revolution promised by Palit has not happened. And we could hardly expect it from a unique Radeon HD X2 that used RV770 rather than newer RV790 cores with better frequency potential. With the GPU frequency only 40MHz above the reference card’s (790MHz against 750MHz), the Palit version has an average advantage of only 2.5-3% over the latter. Let’s take a look at the summary diagrams.
The Revolution 700 Deluxe would be the fastest solution with ATI GPUs if it were not for the Radeon HD 4890. The release of the new generation of RV790-based cards makes it possible to assemble a CrossFireX tandem out of two Radeon HD 4890 cards and enjoy a rather quiet and economical gaming system of the premium class. The Revolution 700 Deluxe will be up to 15-20% slower than such a tandem, the average gap amounting to 6-11%.
It’s up to you to decide if this difference is worth one expansion slot and the trouble of messing with the CrossFire connection bridges but we guess the Radeon HD 4890 CrossFireX is preferable even though it requires a mainboard with two PCIe x16 slots.
It is not so clear with the GeForce GTX 295. Although the Revolution 700 Deluxe is faster by an average 3-10%, it may be slower in some games and resolutions and better in others. We can only advise you to base your shopping choice on the games you are going to play. Generally speaking, the Revolution 700 Deluxe is preferable for 1920x1200 and 2560x1600 but only if you don’t want to mess with discrete multi-GPU configurations. Otherwise, a Radeon HD 4890 CrossFireX configuration will suit you better due to its higher performance.
As we know from an earlier test session, a hypothetic Radeon HD 4890 X2 will be superior to the GeForce GTX 295 in most games and will regain the crown of the maker of the fastest single graphics card for ATI. However, such a solution is not yet on ATI’s plans, but we guess that homogeneous multi-GPU graphics cards are a dead-end in the evolution of gaming graphics hardware. Modern GPUs feature terrific resources no one could dream of just a few years ago, but game developers do not use these resources effectively. Instead, they produce such monsters as Crysis that barely run even on a GeForce GTX 295. GPU developers have to solve this problem by increasing the amount of processing cores and introducing application-specific optimizations into the driver but this approach is not beneficial for end-users. Besides compatibility issues, the power consumption and heat dissipation of multi-GPU solutions are just awful.
That’s why the trend towards multiplatform projects is in fact a good thing because game developers have to account for the architectures of modern game consoles and have to optimize their projects carefully for the capabilities of graphics processors of the Sony PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Xbox 360.
The Revolution 700 Deluxe is an original product indeed. It uses a unique design of the PCB, an original cooler, and supports all modern video interfaces including DisplayPort. Most importantly, Palit Revolution 700 Deluxe is quieter than the reference ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2, but its cooler achieves such performance by utilizing a triple-slot form-factor. The cooler does not exhaust the hot air out of the system case, which is a downside, too. Your computer won’t like having 260 watts of heat being pumped into it. The accessories to the product are rather scanty and without any additional bonuses. It would be nice if Palit followed ASUS’ example here.
Summing it up, the Revolution 700 Deluxe is the best version of Radeon HD 4870 X2 we have ever seen, mostly thanks to its quiet cooler. However, this product is not even the fastest of single graphics cards, let alone discrete tandems like Radeon HD 4890 CrossFireX or GeForce GTX 285 SLI.
If you don’t want to mess up with connecting bridges and do not plan to overclock, but you have the money and want to play comfortably at high resolutions, the Revolution 700 Deluxe will make a good buy for you. Just do not forget that its cooler blocks two neighboring expansion slots and that your system case should be ventilated well if you want to use this card.
Highs:
Lows: