Diamond Radeon HD 4870 1Gb Video card

For a while i ran a very old video card in my computer. It was sevierly underpowered and cound't handle any kind of decent 3D graphics on my Sceptre 24" + Dell 17" LCDs. So it was time to upgrade to something better that could handle multiple monitors and have enough power to draw all of it in 1920x1200 for 3D apps. Now, since I've always been a big fan of nVidia video cards (mostly due to their high quality, trouble free drivers, great support and raw power) I've looked at GeForce 9800GTX+, 9800GT and similar. The price point was about right for me and before the purchase I decided to make a little research. Well, good folks from www.Overclockers.ru pointed out the simple fact that in most very graphicly demanding apps (read games), bretheren from ATI produces much better results. Especially so at high resolution with all the anti-aliasing cranked up. After two days of further reasearch it became clear that even for the same money, ATI's current offering is better than that of nVidia. At the end I've decided to try Radeon HD 4870 1Gb by Diamond.

Pros:
- Very fast / powerful GPU
- Quiet cooling system
- Handles all newsest games and apps with ease
- Has enough potential to last a few years without need for yet another upgrade

Cons:
- Big card - barely fit into Antec Lan Boy case
- Requires two PCI-E 6 pin power connectors
- Takes up space of two slots
- Not cheap

If you are looking for a card that is capable of running everything you may want today and handling most of the future applications with ease - get Radeon HD 4870 with 1Gb of ram. It easily outruns nVidia's GeForce 260GTX and sometimes tops even more expensive 280GTX. It runs cool, quiet, and trouble free (at least in my config - Gigabyte EP35-DS3R, Intel Q6600 quad core CPU @2.4Ghz, 2x2Gb Patriot 4-4-4-12 DDR6400 800Mhz ram, 4 SATA-II 3.0Gbs drives, Antec NeoPower 650 watt modular PSU, 2x DVD+/- RW).