Palit Revolution 700 Deluxe 2GB GDDR5 Review

By now we all know that the race for the ultra high end performance crown has another competitor with the Nvidia GTX 295 but ATI’s HD 4870 X2 is still an excellent competitor in nearly every application. With this and ATI’s recent price reductions to their ultra high-end card in mind, we are reviewing yet another HD 4870 X2 here today: the Palit Revolution 700 Deluxe. This isn’t your normal run-of-the-mill HD 4870 X2; it is a badass, triple slot monster that has a massive cooler coupled with near-stock clocks.

ATI’s dual GPU card has had a bit of a tough time as of late with the GTX 295 encroaching upon its territory and in many cases beating it quite handily. As mentioned earlier, this has necessitated a price cut but no one expected the cut to be as dramatic as it has been. Where the HD 4870 X2 used to be retailing for $500 USD, it is now sitting pretty around the $399 price bracket. The same can be said for the card’s price here in Canada; that same shiny black card has nosedived from $600 and up to a somewhat more reasonable $500. That leaves the GTX 295 in the precarious position of retailing for significantly more than the card it was supposed to be competing against. All in all, this is an extremely smart move on ATI’s part and it shows that they built enough of a buffer zone into their pricing to allow for any reactionary price changes should Nvidia decide to release a highly competitive product. Remember, Nvidia did the same thing when they were leading the pack so it is interesting to see this regime change coming from the other direction this time.

Let’s get back to the card we have on hand here. From the PCB to the cooling, the Revolution R700 Deluxe has been completely designed from the ground up by Palit to offer customers the best HD 4870 X2 available on the market today. Interestingly enough, even though the Revolution can be considered Palit’s flagship ATI product, they have decided to keep near-reference clocks for some reason. On the other hand, this is one product that is extremely hard to find these days even though when it was released you could special order it from a few select retailers. Add to that the fact that Palit’s warranty isn’t exactly the best in the business at a mere two years and some of you may already be looking elsewhere. However, you have to remember that the enthusiast consumer the Revolution 700 is aimed at will probably be changing their graphics card far before the warranty expires anyways.

Will consumers be willing to live with the somewhat short warranty and higher price of this card if it means better performance, cooling and most of all a smaller acoustical profile? Well, we will just have to see how Palit’s new card performs before we jump to any hasty conclusions.

source : www.hardwarecanucks.com