Turbo-charged for Greater Performance

As soon as we received our first overclocked Radeon HD 4870, the recently reviewed PowerColor PCS+ HD 4870 1GB Radeon, we knew that it was always going to be a matter of time before more overclocked variants started popping up. Fresh in our labs then is the Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic Dual Edition (quite a mouthful, we know). Boasting a cooler that can only be described as monstrous, the Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic Dual Edition claims, like such cards usually do, to offer improved performance and cooler, quieter operation.

The Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic Dual Edition comes in a large dark red box, featuring Palit's mascot, Frobo the frog. It's almost impossible to miss.

Now Palit is not trying to sound flashy with the card's long name. It does mean something, so allow us to explain. "Sonic" indicates that this particular card belongs to Palit's rather popular series of overclocked cards, while "Dual Edition", on the other hand, refers to the card's dual bios, which allows it to either boot in "Sonic" or "Turbo" mode (more on this Dual Bios later).

So before we get into details about this card, let us first take a look at how the card stacks up against other comparable cards.