That’s a great first GPU story! The 4870 definitely needed a real PSU — those prebuilt power supplies just couldn’t handle it.

Haha dual 4870 in Crossfire must’ve been a furnace! Insane heat output for sure.

Haha perfect reaction to 96°C! This card runs hotter than Mugatu’s temper.

Haha 4x Crossfire sounds like an absolute disaster — so much heat for worse performance! But that’s the kind of experiment you do just to say you did it. Running Crysis on 4x HD 4850 with a Phenom is peak LAN party energy!

The 9800 XT was a great card! And same story for a lot of people — ATI had some really strong offerings before the AMD acquisition. The HD 4850 era was probably their peak value for money!

That’s actually a really smart approach — a separate dedicated how-to video for the maintenance process and then reference it in future videos. Saves time in the main video and makes it more reusable. I’ll definitely consider this for future videos, thanks!

Exactly! That’s why I overclocked the CPU to 3.8GHz to alleviate the bottleneck. But you’re right, Crysis runs way smoother on a Quad-Core. The GPU still takes a massive beating though!

Haha the Celeron trap — more cores but way slower! The 4850 didn’t come with Half-Life 2, that was the 9800 Pro era with ATI. But it was definitely a legendary card in its time!

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Haha that’s actually a great idea — might have to try that in a future video!

Haha yes the fan noise on these old cards was something else! The Zalman cooler on this one is actually surprisingly quiet compared to the stock coolers."

Thanks for the feedback! When I made these first videos I wanted to show the full process step by step — in case someone wants to do it themselves and needs a reference. But I agree it gets tiring after a point. After the HD 5000 series the videos will be faster with fewer scenes. On the music I’m still searching — YouTube’s copyright system is very restrictive. Really appreciate you taking the time to watch and comment!

Thanks for being the first view and for the detailed feedback! These are my first videos so I’m still finding my style. I’ve already noticed the pacing issue myself — by the time I reach the HD 5000 series the videos will be faster and tighter. I’m also trying to improve the quality with every new video. On the music, YouTube’s copyright system is very strict so options are limited, but I’ll keep experimenting. Really appreciate the honest feedback!

Haha yeah the temps were wild! The i5-4785T is way more power efficient. The whole point here was to see if this ancient dedicated GPU could still hold up — and somehow it did despite trying to melt itself!

Haha the old rig is intentional — it’s a retro build for testing old GPUs. That’s kind of the whole point of the channel!

That’s a fair point about the premise — but as a nerd myself, I’d still click out of curiosity. Not just ‘does it work’ but HOW does it work at 106°C? And what FPS does a Core 2 Duo at 3.8GHz actually push in 2026? That combo is what got me curious enough to test it. Also, thanks for taking the time to give detailed feedback — genuinely helpful for improving future videos

Fair point, I appreciate the honest feedback. Still figuring out what works best. What kind of thumbnail would you prefer for this type of content?

Haha fair enough, it’s AI generated. The real card looked way less dramatic but way more dusty

Haha a keychain from the die would actually be awesome! And yeah, when that display corruption showed up I genuinely thought it was dead — was shocked that a clean and repaste fixed it. The oven bake trick is impressive, glad you got your data back!

Oh wow, that’s actually a cool piece to keep! The ATI logo on the die looks amazing up close.