When AMD Stuck 2 Graphics Cards Together - The HD4870X2

Hello and Welcome to another Budget Builds Official Video where today we’ll be taking a look at the AMD Radeon HD4870X2, which was one of AMDs most powerful GPUs at the time of release in 2008, and all reviewers agreed that they were onto something special, however, that was a whole decade ago. Just how well is this old GPU Holding up in 2019, is it a good buy, is it even useable. Join me today as we find out, the results may surprise you…
Streaming Channel: / @budgetbuildsliveunoff...
HD4870X2 Running GTA V: • HD4870X2 - Running GTA...
Music: Simcity 3000 - Building
Airline Tycoon - Funk
Metal Gear Solid 3 - Hidden Jazz
Why not become a Patreon you get to:
-Vote on the Next Video
-Support the Channel in an Amazing Way
-Get Previews to New Videos
-Exclusive/Unfinished Content
/ budgetbuilds
Twitter: / budget_builds_
Specs:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 1600
RAM:8 GB DDR4 2666Mhz RAM
GPU: AMD R9 Fury

[@budgetbuildsliveunofficial7896]

[@BudgetBuildsOfficial]

Hey I love this guys content

[@drsenseihugo]

@@BudgetBuildsOfficial Looked like a fake channel ad before I saw your comment on it

[@khmerkandal121]

@@BudgetBuildsOfficial lol

[@bloodhuntersoulvortex9201]

@@BudgetBuildsOfficial hey, man i have the same issue with gtaV eversince i play the game i have tried everything, literraly and nothing seems to fix it.Please let me know if you figure it out im playing on a 1080ti and the gpu usage never goes over 65% and im stuck playing at 60 to 70 fps at max settings

[@LordDankTron]

The arrow goes just under your pfp so i cant click BUT i did decide to click the search bar all the way up ^ | and find you're channel that way. Subbed and turned on bell notifications!

[@prycenewberg3976]

I love the fact that it was a bug that permitted good performance in GTA 5...

[@mason6300]

I had one of these for a few years. It really was a beast back in the day. I remember playing games at 60fps in 1080p, it was like playing in 4k today.

[@sidebazooka6900]

The holy HEXAGON: RandomgaminginHD BudgetBuildsOfficial LowSpecGamer Green Ham Gaming F2FTech Philscomputerlab Making the life of PotatoC gamers easier ❤️ Also, once found one of these for close to nothing here in Brazil

[@akepup6791]

You forgot Green Ham Gaming

[@sidebazooka6900]

@@akepup6791 my bad, going to edit, also, it's been some time since I saw his last video, always had a blast watching

[@catherineholmes8423]

I just wish he uploaded a bit more

[@thenoseflap521]

Yes brother

[@shockwaveexp3465]

Don't forget about PhilsComputerLab :)

[@photomorti]

when gpu's were still affordable

[@rban123]

thanks, BITCOIN

[@whimsical6]

thanks, GREEDY MANUFACTURERS

[@vityazpp19]

thanks, COVID-19

[@malcolmholmes2596]

THANKS OBAMA

[@_creepy_5050]

They are affordable also today.. if you want GT 710 with 1GB GDDR3 memory.. :D

[@HCosta21]

No sick flames no performance

[@andrwwz6351]

Take off the cooler and you'll get flames alright

[@NaNekoRx10]

On that era? They used generic waifus lol

[@haxalicious]

Narathin the first batch of 2080 Ti’s had sick flames

[@kittisrijantanakul2994]

No RGB, no performance as well.

[@dabigbadwolf5081]

I remember the day I bought a HD 4870 and tried it on crysis, it was so beautiful.

[@ThetaReactor]

Even with the mediocre xfire support, this card was practically made for that game. Pretty much the best way to hit 60fps at high settings.

[@darknessfalls229]

Thank you for the shoutout, it's been a pleasure making the stream art. Great video as always, keep up the good work and relaxing streams. Though I hope I don't have to keep adding graves.

[@talon1706]

I had two single 4870's in crossfire at the time. They were awesome. I still have them in a box somewhere.

[@Scitch87]

0:50 I had severe anxiety watching the back of the card hanging above that puddle of water.....

[@jacobdaniels3246]

wouldn't really do anything until he turned it on without drying out the traces, just saying, I don't mean to ruin your fun

[@liamiangaming7931]

Yeah, computer parts aren't easily breakable by water.

[@KingHalbatorix]

More than once I have cleaned off a GPU with distilled water and had no issues. In fact if you were to get a very very clean PCB and some extremely pure water you could even get it wet while it operates and not have any issues. Water is not conductive when it is ultra purified, so as long as there's nothing on the card to get dissolved into the water it would act the same as a mineral oil submersion. Obviously that's not really possible in practice though. Still as long as the electronics remain completely unpowered there's no danger at all in getting them wet.

[@ezcoreg759]

@@KingHalbatorix even tho what you say is true, King nor is anyone recommending anyone should throw water on their PC while it is plugged in and turned on.

[@Silvers24]

@@ezcoreg759 People do that with toasters. I'd personally do it with a computer if I could. Just because. But sadly, I don't have the fire department at the whim and ready. So there goes those dreams. Edit: Then agian, Linus had one of his lackyes, erm I mean employee's do that while it was turned on.

[@iCarlyfan4534]

For some reason I thought this was an F2F video and was really confused when you started talking lmfao. Great Video as always

[@BudgetBuildsOfficial]

Il ltake thats a compliment

[@namcojr]

Best winter i ever had, when i bought this 4870x2. No more cold in the house.

[@NikHYTWP]

That little animation at 0:22 made me think it fell in the lake. Scared the crap out of me!

[@ericdeltoro8484]

The main problem with the 4870 X2 is the cooling solution. Two solid copper blocks with no vapor chambers or heatpipes. I mean, sure, the first copper block right behind the fan got cooled properly, the second block got heated by hot air, usually resulting with one of the gpu dies getting baked. I have two of these, a Sapphire model with the stock heatsink, and a second card with the aftermarket Arctic Cooling triple fan heatsink specific for that card. Funny enough, Arctic Cooling support actually tipped me off about the auction listing on ebay for the card when I asked them if they happened to have any of the heatsinks for this card in backstock somewhere. Once cooled properly, its a pretty beastly card that stayed relatively chill under full load and very overclockable, though I didn't try yet since I didn't want to ruin it. ^^; I might try overclock it at somepoint or if I somehow manage to find either a second arctic cooling heatsink or juryrig some kind of liquid cooling situation for the four gpu dies and a bunch of small copper heatsinks for the vrm and memory chips.

[@BudgetBuildsOfficial]

I didnt attempt overclocking but with a custom fan curve we didnt see it ever go above 79C. VRMs, and VRAM seemed to be cooled alright by the blower, but they are some toasty GPUs

[@ericdeltoro8484]

@@BudgetBuildsOfficial Sounds about right with what I saw on the stock sapphire one. Loud but cool enough given that its a dual gpu. The one with the arctic cooling heatsink on it was quiet given that its a triple fan cooler with a heatsink to rival that of some of the modern RTX heatsinks! xD I might break mine out and play with it again. I did just get my GTX 295 working so it'll be cool to see how they perform compared to each other. :) Also, I was the one who just posted pictures in the normal discord chat with the two 4870x2s~ ;)

[@jakegarrett8109]

Budget-Builds Official ouch, My Titan can’t even stay that cool at 100% fan speeds stock... I’m impressed they got 2 GPUs to run that cool with a blower, that is some proper engineering! I remember my old ATI Fire-GL V8650 ran like 70c idle, and when overclocked 25% gaming with fan like a jet, I remember thinking “it’ll be fine, just don’t look at the temps...” and played great for like 2 hours on a super hard multi-player mission in Warface and one of the teammates said “ok, we’ve got this in the bag, nobody die..” and then my system shut off... Oh... great times... did hit 60 fps at 1024x1280 in that game though, but it was a beast to cool! (card is fine)

[@PearComputingDevices]

I remember my first Mac pro upgrade a ATI 4870. It was nuts for what it was. I couldn't image two of them back in 2008/9 ish. Awesome review.

[@Zarrx]

I feel like 1GB of memory with 2GB onboard and an outdated driver was causing newer games to over allocate memory. Causing crashing. similiar to the 970 3.5bg issue.

[@sqly3129]

I still used 4870 like year ago and the drivers were a big problem (my notebook died and had to use something:D)

[@GearSeekers]

I was digging through some boxes and I have 2 of these still.

[@planetfifa]

Now I'm wondering how a 4 GPU Crossfire would work, if it'd work at all

[@jakegarrett8109]

planetfifa I have 4x Fury in my main system (100 fps in Crysis 3 at 4k Ultra, compared to 45 fps on my Titan Xp), that’s pretty much how most of my games go besides Fortnite (one of the few single GPU games I own, or at least of one the few that would otherwise benefit as most of mine either support it, or already run 300 fps at Ultra 4k with 16x AA and don’t really need crossfire).

[@gearz2570]

crossfire them

[@chillhour6155]

Quadfire

[@DavisMakesGames]

I actually have one of these cards running in a Mirror's Edge-themed Vista era build (also featuring a Phenom x4 9950 BE and 4x2gb OCZ Reaper DDR2). It's probably my favourite card design ever, but its insanely complex cooler design makes it pretty hard to work on and repaste.

[@hoppstech]

Terascale has done me dirty in the past, but this card seems to be pretty alright. Nice one Hamish, keep it up

[@boktorinator693]

Hamish?

[@masonthedunce3711]

ugh I hate feeling old.. "2008? That's not that old... Oh wait" really makes you feel ancient lol

[@BudgetBuildsOfficial]

Coal Powered Steam Engines, and Henry Ford Releasing the new Automobile. Now that was an era.

[@calebpoley9377]

I remember when the Egyptians made the pharoh. You kids these days have no respect for your elders

[@F2FTech]

Awesome video 👏👏 I’m glad you had a better time with this card than I did. Of course it could of been the games I was trying to get working, but glad to see it get more attention, as it’s certainly a beast.

[@RootedInReality]

I had this card back in the day...Loved it...Played anything in Ultra!

[@adamcech4465]

7:12 anyone else hear barking? or am i losing it?

[@Pumciusz]

*Don't listen to the voices*

[@rockytom5889]

@@Pumciusz Don't listen to this guy. Voices are your friend,but watch out for the imaginary people you see.

[@ezcoreg759]

You angered the god doge, may he have mercy on your soul Adam.

[@adamuk5037]

#include GaSLigHT.h // Nothing to see here //It's all in your mind...

[@GodfamZeta42069]

i am totally not living in your walls.

[@SodaGumX]

the shots of the pc hardware outside and sitting on the dirty ground/yard objects on the videos on this channel really drives me crazy

[@BudgetBuildsOfficial]

I don't think this is the channel for you then. But hope u enjoy the videos.

[@olafb6445]

I LOVE the Airline Tycoon music omg

[@leerobinsoninuk]

got one of these. was a gift for building a mame cab

[@alincioaba]

I owned the powercolor one. Brilliant card. Switched to it form a single slot sapphire 3870 512mb vaporx card which i bought only as a stand in. I remember initially buying a enermax 650w platinum modular PSU (that still runs brilliantly to this day) thinking that it will be enough for this x2 card. It wasn't. I ended up buying a 1200w akasa PSU (it still powers my i7 8700k GeForce 1080 rig) to keep up with this card. I had it paired with an core 2duo 8500 on an Intel x48 board, 4gb of corsair dominator ddr3 ram and Windows vista... Great days!

[@vicviper2005]

Back when actual good gpus that weren’t shit were affordable nowadays only the shit low end cards don’t cost a mortgage

[@volkswagenpologameing9840]

I was waiting for this video! And its real good!

[@tyrvidar]

Cool to see these old cards run these titles. I had fun with my 4870x2 years ago. Good stuff

[@asdasdasd9320]

This is a great GPU for me as the voices in my head drown out the GPU fan noise

[@SirRigbyBaconKaiser]

I use to have a HD4870 1 or 2 GB GPU back in the day, absolutely loved using it. Had nothing but fun times with it while I absloutely pined for one of these as well I just couldn't afford one.

[@gulskjegg-x]

Ah, I remember my HD 4870X2. It died right in the middle of Crysis. RIP

[@isabellavenzi2620]

wtf i have a radeon hd 6470M and i have no problems whit it (1280x1024 res, medium-high settings, over 50 fps)

[@costelli1]

Rest in piece , where can i put the flowers? Wheres the grave

[@gulskjegg-x]

@@costelli1 Problem was, I put on an aftermarket cooler, and I strongly suspect one of the capacitors didn't have proper contact with the heat sink. After about a year, poof...dead.

[@MisterPikol]

that shit looks like a quake 3 weapon. I still have my HD4870 512mb, a transistor fell off but that tank still works lol

[@haxalicious]

The R9 295X2 was AMD’s last dual GPU card and it mined really well and also can outperform even a 1070 or 1080.

[@shagstars]

For 2.5 Times the TDP tho. Like 500 watts is nothing for a 295

[@acetum_]

I like how you put the Animals vinyl in the thumbnail

[@GuybrushThriftweed]

Haha. I just bought a boxed one and one unboxed. Gave the unboxed one fresh paste and thermal paste and dumped it in a 775 (modded 771) build.

[@thefurrygamer1489]

Xeon mod?

[@GuybrushThriftweed]

@@thefurrygamer1489 Yes. I bought a modded Xeon E5450 on AliExpress and dropped it in a MSI board. No BIOS microcode needed

[@thefurrygamer1489]

@@GuybrushThriftweed How'd you pull that off? All mods I've seen of that required a modded bios.

[@Bandit-Darville]

Not too bad with headphones on. Yeah, good assessment.

[@jdangberg]

Had an HD4850, purchased used in 2010 for the amazingly low sum of only $50 US. crazy how fast those cards depreciated. anyway, I loved gaming on it for that price and finally transitioned to a 1660 super 3 years ago. great card.

[@GodfamZeta42069]

7:12 huehuehuehuehuehuehuehuheuheuheuhuehue nice kewl dog in the backround.

[@eightyd2554]

FineWine.™, Bellascale architecture

[@iPpBG]

This was the best GPU for a very long time

[@snake4322]

Still better than my GTX 750

[@yobama5288]

@@snake4322 Nope

[@mrwang420]

Honestly. This but instead of two gpus, you have a gpu and then a cpu just for graphical/logical stuff like filters and frame creation and pushing and what not that cant be easily processed by a gpu. That would be sick.

[@cdoublejj]

having had an HD4850 1gb edition and later second in crossfire, the crossfire ran very smooth. i was saddened to hear form my friend that crossfire was never that smooth again. now i stick to single gpu and run stuff like SSDs or 10G networking in the other free slots

[@The_GenXennial]

R9 295x2 - was a beast for its time. Finally replaced it with a GTX 1080 a few years ago and then a Ti the following.

[@AcornElectron]

Gotta hand it to AMD really, taking on Nvidia AND Intel for years!

[@DCuniversalable]

Yeah, i still have one on a shelf in workroom, 4870x2...beside of my previous 3870x2...good old days when CX and SLi was supported across games. :( But i think, despite the fact that AMD buyed ATi in 2006, these cards still have brand name ATi... :) (what i remember AMD cards start shows around 2010?) Thanks you KZbin for recomendation... :D to amazement this video isn't old as others recomendations.. :D

[@damonstr]

I actually had one of these back in the day. Powerful, but boy was it ever loud.

[@avinia9354]

Awesome review of one of my favourite graphics cards!! It'd be great if you could review a GTX 295, which is Nvidia's response to this HD4870X2, and compare their perfomance :D

[@Andreadeluxe]

played alot with this card, paired with an i7 920. good old days....

[@GrumpyWolfTech]

I miss the days you could buy a dual gpu card for a fraction of the price of a single card now. I had several of these over the years, the 7950gx2, this card, and one other I can't remember.

[@SlayTheSins]

I had the ATI XFX HD4890 that was a great time that time

[@Sundara229]

Something is wrong with those Battlefield 3 results. My HD 4770 and Phenom 2 x4 965 managed to do 1080p with medium-high settings at stable 60 fps.

[@JohnHoggard_aka_DaddyHoggy]

In 2009 my work bought me 5x ATI Radeon HD 5970s for my flight simulator - they were hot and power consuming monsters and, despite having 2GB, it was only 1GB per GPU so, very quickly, my flight simulator outgrew them - which was a shame - because they were over £500 each and were briefly "The World's Fastest Consumer Graphics Card". Many of the issues you're discussing here about the HD4870X2 would imply ATI did nothing in the year between the 4870X2 and my 5970s (and yes, drivers really did suck)

[@SantaClaw]

I had the 3870 x2, the 4870 x2 and finally the 6990 x2 cards... before I upgraded to a GTX980 non TI. All of these cards where watercooled via custom loop. I even had DUAL 6990 x2's and DUAL 4870 X2's for quad Crossfire.

[@PinkGirl2242]

To cut down on wastage per upgrade we need a modular gpu. Chose our own gpu chip and maximum memory chips too. That way the pcb would be future proof as you'll just need the modules and click into place then play.

[@Bigmike83007]

It would be nice, but we know that will never happen..

[@ReinaldoGonzalezreix2x]

I use to have a HIS 4870, until 2018, it worked very well for me

[@misfit4816]

this makes me miss my 8800 gt pair in SLI with my C2Q Q6600

[@blargblarghonk]

Ahh my uncle picked one of these for cheap back when it was relatively new and used it for years. It's in my collectibles bin.

[@tohur]

4000 GPUs when I swapped to AMD for awhile up til this year.. think it was the 4870 I had then went to 6870, then 280x then 580 and now back on team green with a 1660 ti before I swapped to AMD had a 8800 GT

[@tucker12435]

2009 I remember this card. I bought a 4870 then few months later I bought another 2 crossfire because I couldn't afford this.

[@punish]

Was the card barking at you at around 7:14?

[@Silverhelm97]

I had a xfx r9 295x2 a few years ago. When crossfire was working it has same performance as gtx 1080.

[@justanotheryoutubechannel]

“They we’re usually testing it at the even higher resolution of 600p” But you were running Skyrim at 1080p, that’s even higher? Was this just a mistake or did I mishear?

[@markskonecki2050]

I still have this graphics card sitting in a box somewhere I just didn't have the heart to get rid of it! LoL 😂

[@filippetrovic845]

So basically half a fan per gpu, and that a blower one.

[@FigmentVFX]

I used to have a 4870x2 back in the day. It was a beast but it was overkill, and not in a good way. It drew 480w under full load and mine would hit 100C until i put a custom cooler on it. It also sounded like a jet engine inside your case.

[@CanonFirefly]

I have fond memories playing on my x2. I even picked up a 4870 for trifire but it wasn't really worth the effort. Nothing really scaled 3 GPUs that well. Awesome card!

[@TheFrogInYourClosetWatchingYou]

7:50 what? I played GTA V perfectly fine on my ryzen 5 3500u... Granted I couldnt crank the settings up due to 2GB of vram but still it was a solid experience for mobile integrated graphics very playable. I could get 1080p low/medium settings and around at around 35fps. Now I have a 1660 super though and the experience is definitely better. Cranking settings up to max 1080p looks a lot nicer and I still get around 100fps... (75ish fps on online mode)

[@tHeWasTeDYouTh]

remember when 3dfx gave us SLI with the Voodoo 2 and then we got the Vodoo 5 5500 with two graphics chips on the same board. then ATI and Nvidia copied them and people started to say they invented dual card use

[@TrusteftTech]

I had this, though I don't remember right now which make. Yes it was fast, but I didn't keep it for as long as I could. It was not only getting very hot, but it was SO DAMN NOISY! It's like you had a huge vacuum cleaner in the room. I am not kidding. Eventually I replaced it with a HD6850 which IIRC was not faster, but it was definitely quieter and IIRC with less power consumption too. Though I admit I didn't pay much attention to power consumption back then. Now days even if I had the money I would never buy an almost 300W GPU. Thanks for the video.

[@JayTsPhoto]

Hey I was right on with that photo lol

[@sentbyjesus-7319]

This is the videos i want keep it up man

[@sentbyjesus-7319]

@Intra Ignis im talking about gpu reviews

[@astroidyeti2169]

So back in the day I was at Future Shop and I had a staff member there tell me what I could not afford what I was there for now I to me that is bad business so I asked him for his supervisor or manager on shift. Once the manager came over I explained that I don’t like being told I can’t afford what I was there for and that I think I will shop else where products. As he agreed that the employee was in the wrong and I dint yell to try and keep me as a customer he gave me 50% off I was there for this very graphics card so I ended I getting it on the cheap

[@JustinnRC]

Guys the best card I recommend is: GTX1050Ti It’s very cheap you can play new titles on high setting and it would be smooth You don’t need external power too it’s under 95£ so yeah I recommend it

[@aaron71]

I had two of these in Crossfire. Things ran SO hot!

[@mrcrackerist]

A bit late but would like to see this graphics cards performance under linux

[@simonandersson824]

Back in the day i had HD4870X2+4870 in crossfire , worked awesome in some games , i think FEAR scaled pretty much 100% , others not so much.

[@januszzdomusram6975]

When I saw this graphics card, it reminded me of gigabyte gv-3d1

[@Alexandru1996_]

this card from 2008 is much better then my integrated graphics fro intel lol :)

[@DustyTheDog]

There was another dual gpu card, the Radeon R9 295x2. It was two R9 290X chips on a single card that came with a built-in AIO cooler, which had a fan on the rad and a fan in the middle of the card. When it was released in 2014 it was the most powerful card on the market.

[@ambirbtruckdriver]

I had one! It introduced me to the world of artifacts and overheating problems.

[@Malinkadink]

I remember when this card came out around the release of age of conan and it was dominating that game in performnace while i was on a meager 9800GTX+

[@leons5981]

i used to own a Sapphire 4870 and it was a really solid graphics at that time i had a much fun with it. i also had a 4850 which i still own. and a also used to own a 4890 all powered by Sapphire apart from the 4850 which was a asus model. i enjoy watching the video!

[@PyroDSLR]

This was my dream card when i was young. Of course I could not buy this card as a teenager but the dream remained. Now that I have the possibility, I bought 2 x hd4870x2 and packed it together with a 1000 Watt power supply into a system. It is useless and it gets extremely hot. But I have my dream computer from my youth. Now it stands beside my Main Pc.

[@mateokiss7265]

I have this in my rig right now temporarily it is quite capable

[@chocobro7]

7:16 Doggo approves

[@GodfamZeta42069]

yeeee

[@nathanmead140]

I subscribed to the other channel and turned on notifications

[@suprmeatdude]

Had one of these. I had to remove the plastic shroud and add two additional fans to keep it from melting.

[@BudgetBuildsOfficial]

The plastic shroud guides the air flow

[@suprmeatdude]

I know but mine was reaching 100c in games until i modded the fans, still died a year after that.

[@sundeviltech]

So this is the next to the last ATi owned graphics card, last gen was the HD 5XXX series of ATi. AMD bought ATi than put out the HD 6XXX series. I had an HD 4850 1GB version at that time, better color pallet with Radeon than GeForce, at the time.

[@BudgetBuildsOfficial]

The last ATI card was the X1950XTX I believe.

[@Litepaw]

Speaking of dual gpus, i was so damn jealous when one of my friends bought the 9800gx2. I mean, a dual card in one?

[@SerenaDeerGirl]

Wait what about dual... DUAL cards?

[@EdgarFriendly-op3rn]

I ran 2 HD4850 cards with my Phenom 2 x3 720 for many years. It was a great budget gaming rig.

[@AvroBellow]

It was actually the second time they did it. The first time was the HD 3870x2.

[@ideasdejavier]

The music is from Airline Tycoon Evolution 💕

[@hubzcaps]

Best Friday....thank you for making this video

[@bmh67wa]

I was using one of these cards until a few years ago. It was a nice card for the time but I never got the same performance with Windows 10 as I did with Windows 7.

[@somervillearron]

i had two of these back in the day! two of them running in crossfire

[@leekehrer]

Bought two of these cards (xfx versions) off eBay a few years ago. Both were fried. You were lucky to pick up a working card.

[@CrashPilot1000]

I had a similar setup running back in the day (2x 4870 cards) and it was TRASH in Farcry when aiming down the hill into a crowded base, the microstutter made it impossible to aim AT ALL although the min and max FPS increased. I had to disable one card to make it playable again.

[@FullyBuffered]

I'm rather late to the party here :D In any case great to see this old monster in action again. Good to see that Terascale drivers and Crossfire can work effectively under Windows 10 with some nice performance in quite a few cases as you showed 👍