Those should actually pair well. The HD4000's were towards the end of the dual-core gaming era if I remember correctly.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

Those should actually pair well. The HD4000's were towards the end of the dual-core gaming era if I remember correctly.

HD 4800 is from 2008, k8 x2 2.4GHz would be more like 2005 (even if they were sold until much later, they were low end chips in 2008, the 4870 was high end)
when the 4870 was new pairing it with a k8 x2 would not be considered normal, it would be considered a significant CPU bottleneck.
I actually had a k8 x2 2.6GHz as my main gaming PC around 2007-2008 and it was a problem even with a 8600GT in many games at lower res (like 1024x768 which was what the 8600GT could handle decently anyway)

in any case, 4870 will run the games were the k8 x2 shines very well, at higher res/anti aliasing and so on, so it's not a waste.

4870 is the first GDDR5 card, so that's kind of nice (apart from the fact they had the memory clock at full speed even in 2d and eats a lot of power)

Well I guess it means i can handle anything from 2006 backwards at 1080p or 1600x1200 without an issue 🤣, and I had a nice 7800GTX in there but I guess why not 🤣

I have a HD4850 in my core 2 duo WinXP PC, it's great for WinXP gaming, it can run all games from the WinXP era maxed out at high resolution and framerate, and since it's only 512mb it doesnt take out too much of the usable ram, still leaving me with about 3.25gb of usable ram (x86 XP) 😀 HD4870 has 512mb and 1gb versions, if yours is 512mb, do make an XP rig with it 😀

candle_86 wrote:

So I was given a free HD4870, what should one do with it, my fastest retro is an x2 3800 @ 2.4 so this seems way overkill 🤣

You can always see how it handles recent games. I'm actually using a HD4850 X2 in my main rig ATM, the fan on my R290 started to sound funny. I lent out my other R290 and HD7970 to my brothers. The HD4850 X2 handles Rocket League with reduced settings. 😀