A new graphics card can provide a significant computer upgrade.
Video cards are used for graphics or video-intensive applications on personal computers. The two largest manufacturers of video card technology are ATI Radeon and Nvidia. The two companies are in direct competition, and this has led to many quality, competing products driving the price down for the consumer. The ATI Radeon HD 4870 is one of the products that sits in the balanced sweet spot of price versus performance.
Identification
The ATI Radeon HD 4870 video card is designed for use with personal computers (PCs) as a graphics accelerator. According to AMD, once you add the card to your PC, you can "watch Blu-ray movies and play HD content with incredible visual fidelity, or take your experience to another level with new multimedia capabilities. Do it all with break-through efficiency that doesn't compromise performance."
Features
The Radeon HD 4870 offers numerous improvements over its predecessors. According to AMD's product site, the card has a new TeraScale graphics engine at speeds of up to 1.2 teraFLOPS, a GDDR5 memory GPU, full Microsoft DirectX support, anisotropic filtering and 24x custom filter anti-aliasing, accelerated video encoding, and a 2x performance increase from the previous generation of AMD graphics cards.
Function
The Radeon HD 4870 is a graphics card designed for computer gaming and HD video playback. It is a powerful card that can run the latest games at recommended settings. Tom's Hardware gave it the following review: "For once, our assessment of this Radeon HD 4870 will be simple: It's an excellent high-end graphics card! With the same architecture and most of the strong points of the Radeon HD 4850, it's in a higher category performance- and price-wise."
Considerations
The Radeon HD 4870 is an ideal video card solution for users that play many computer games and enjoy watching HD video or BluRay movies. However, a graphics card with this kind of performance has a price tag to match. While still considered a budget card, consider exactly what your graphics needs are before investing in a piece of hardware like this.
Warning
When buying expensive hardware like the Radeon HD 4870, be sure to only purchase from reputable retailers that have liberal return and exchange policies. Delicate hardware that is shipped can sometimes break during transit, and buying from a company that will provide a new product free of charge can save you many hassles.
Tags: Radeon 4870, graphics card, video card, card designed, hardware like
