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ATI HD4870 replacement under £50?

Associate
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21 Sep 2007
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453
As the title says, I need an ATI HD4870 1GB replacement for £50 max. preferably cheaper. It'll be for gaming, seeing as my 4870 can/could handle Bad Company 2 on max, Skyrim on medium-ish, TF2 on max, MW2 on high, I hope I'm correct to assume any card in the HD5000 range will be an improvement on the 4870.

I notice a lot of the HD5000 range use passive cooling or have small heatsinks and fans? Did GPU tech improve meaning less cooling required?

Also, I'm not opposed to getting a Nvidia card - I simply don't know the equivalent to the HD4870 (and slightly above)

Cheers :)
 
Associate
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27 Nov 2010
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your looking for the radeon 6770 or GTS450 both of which can be had for around £70-80 brand new if you look around.

also second hand 4870 or equivelant cards have been selling below £40 on the members market
 
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OP
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Just curious, how are equivalents for old cards figured out? I wouldn't have considered a 6xxx range card to be one step up, but more like a million lol

Here's hoping I have access to the MM!
 
Soldato
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Just curious, how are equivalents for old cards figured out? I wouldn't have considered a 6xxx range card to be one step up, but more like a million lol

Here's hoping I have access to the MM!

Well you've got enough posts, join date and have trust activated, so just scroll down on main page and it 'might' appear ;). If you want to compare cards, you can look at Andatech.
 
Soldato
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Probably the best thing under 50 quid from the members market will be a 4890 which is only slightly better than your card.

It's a really tough segment of the market, as you really need to step up to something like a 2nd hand 5850 to see a big difference and you're looking at 80 quid for one of them...

If you can get 40 quid for your 4870 though - problem solved!!

5770/6770 both offer no better performance than your 4870 btw
 
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OP
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The reason I am looking is because I bust the fan on my 4870, and whilst the bodge job I did worked for a bit, yesterday for some unknown reason the temps sky rocketed after a while and went from 50 to 120 degrees (zero activity as well!)

I might just look for a GPU cooler. There is an Akasa one for under £20 I have spotted on a few sites.

Any one know of a good, cheapy GPU heatsink & fan combo?

EDIT - just compared the 4870 against the 5770 on AnandTach and the 4870 looks better! How so???
 
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Associate
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The 4870 will outclass lots of low end cards in a higher generation.

I assumed (yes, making an ******* out of me) that a newer card/higher model number == better card/higher performance.

I'm shocked to see my card still on sale for over £100 (on Google shopping)

So strange!

But that settles it, for now I will get a new GPU cooler for £20 :)
 
Caporegime
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5 Sep 2010
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This is a pretty decent cooler if it's the one you're thinking of:

Akasa AK-VC03-BLUV Vortexx NEO VGA Cooler

You're comparing a high end (in it's day) card with a lower mid range card of the next generation so it's no surprise that they're pretty similar.

If you look at the HD 5770 review here you'll see it has pretty much the same performance as the HD 4870.
 
Associate
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This is a pretty decent cooler if it's the one you're thinking of:

Akasa AK-VC03-BLUV Vortexx NEO VGA Cooler

You're comparing a high end (in it's day) card with a lower mid range card of the next generation so it's no surprise that they're pretty similar.

If you look at the HD 5770 review here you'll see it has pretty much the same performance as the HD 4870.

My flat mate has one of those on his 4850, it's very very good :D
 
Caporegime
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That's the one :) Do you have personal feedback on it?

I used them a few years ago on a couple of HD 4850's.

From what I can remember it did what it's supposed to, i.e. cooled the card, but it's not silent.

Quieter than the stock cooler but not silent.

I suppose it depends what you're used to.
 
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Will the GFX card work without a fan plugged into the little mini plug? That cooler has a 3pin that plugs into the mobo, but the stock cooler 2pin plugs into the card itself?
 
Associate
OP
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453
I used them a few years ago on a couple of HD 4850's.

From what I can remember it did what it's supposed to, i.e. cooled the card, but it's not silent.

Quieter than the stock cooler but not silent.

I suppose it depends what you're used to.

I was used to the stock one clogged up with years of dust that rattled constantly. This new one should sound like heaven :D
 
Caporegime
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Will the GFX card work without a fan plugged into the little mini plug? That cooler has a 3pin that plugs into the mobo, but the stock cooler 2pin plugs into the card itself?

It runs fine with the fan plugged into the motherboard and nothing connected to the 2 pin on the card.

I had mine connected to a fan controller so I could turn the fans down a bit when not gaming.
 
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