Palit Revolution 700 (Radeon HD 4870 X2)

You won't fool the children of the Revolution

If there's one thing that the Palit Revolution 700 Deluxe (Radeon HD 4870 X2) is guilty of (besides the long name), it's having too much of one thing and not enough of another.

What it has in abundance is cooling ability. The triple slot, dual 80mm cooler is certainly very capable, cooling the card's twin GPUs between 8°C and 16°C cooler than those of a stock cooled card when under load. It's also audibly quieter than a stock 4870 X2 at both idle and load, and while never silent, is a marked improvement over the stock air cooler under every situation.

However, it is worth bearing in mind that the cooling solution doesn't solve all the card's thermal woes - the back plate still heats up to volcanic temperatures and the cooling configuration blows hot air from the card back into the case rather than out the rear of your system - not a problem if your PC is well ventilated, but a potential stumbling block for those with smaller or more confined chassis.

What the Revolution 700 really doesn't have enough of though is performance, thanks to its limited stock overclock. While still a HD 4870 X2, and thus still an absolute beast in comparison to all but the GTX 295 in the single card stakes, the meagre 50MHz (200MHz) factory set memory overclock isn't enough to justify the price premium over a stock card.

In the majority of tests, such as Crysis or Call of Duty: World at War there's no distinguishable performance advantage over a stock HD 4870 X2, and while there are some titles like S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Clear Sky where that memory overclock does translate directly into performance, they're in the minority, and even memory hungry titles like Far Cry 2 and Fallout 3 fail to show any kind of tangible benefit.

While our overclocking proved that there was plenty of performance left to be unlocked, with the ability to easily match Sapphire's much more expensive water cooled HD 4870 X2 Atomic, mileage between GPUs will vary and there's no guarantee you'll get a card as capable as our review sample.


There's also the downside of using such an absolutely massive card. Taking up three expansion slots, not to mention a whole lot of motherboard space means you'll need to think twice before picking the Revolution 700 up, lest you find it won't fit due to it obscuring SATA ports or fan headers. CrossFire setups will suffer from similar issues, with the triple slot cooler potentially obscuring your second PCI-E slot - not that we'd advise fitting a card too close to the R700 anyway, as it's cooling solution is reliant on good airflow for the twin 80mm cooling fans.

Perhaps the biggest problem though is Revolution 700's abysmal idle power consumption. While Palit has been using custom PCB and power delivery designs on its RV770 cards ever since launch day, in the past we've seen decreases in power consumption in comparison to stock cards, not increases, and especially not 130W increases, and at idle to boot! While average and peak loads are more in line with what we'd expect from a Radeon HD 4870 X2, the terribly high idle power consumption is a real problem here.

The final stumbling block for the Revolution 700 is its price. Despite offering little in game performance advantage over a stock 4870 X2, which can be picked up for around £340 following aggressive price cuts in anticipation of the launch of Nvidia's GeForce GTX 295, the Revolution 700 retails for in excess of £30 more.

While the improved cooling does go some way to justify this, the 4870 X2's stock cooler is nowhere near as insufficient as the Radeon HD 4850's. There is some nice overclocking headroom unlocked by the triple slot monster, but we have to question how much extra performance you really need when you're dealing with twin RV770 GPUs in the first place. With a budget card the performance gained from a factory overclock is often very much worth the extra investment, but here it just seems almost pointless, especially with the sacrifice of the third slot.

All in all, the Palit Revolution 700 is a real let down. It's barely faster than a stock Radeon HD 4870 X2, consumes a great deal more power at idle, and really isn't worth the price premium, despite the improved cooling and quieter running. To be brutally honest, it's a poor attempt at a factory overclocked custom cooled card, and given the choice, we'd rather use a stock HD 4870 X2, if only for the sake of our electricity bill and a couple of DVI ports.

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