Sapphire HD 4870 1GB - Toxic Edition Review

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Sapphire Technology comes back with an upgraded version of their HD4870 Toxic Edition, this time with 1 GB of GDDR5 memory. When I first saw this card the most obvious eye catcher was the non-reference cooling technique applied. The looks alone are truly both a beauty and a beast. In the center of the glossy black casing you have a quiet 90mm fan and extruding from the inside heatsink we have 3 solid copper heatpipes. But thats not all keeping this hottie chilled, Sapphire has incorporated its own VCT (Vapour Chamber Technology) for a keeping this pre-overclocked GPU and memory card from overheating. In fact it does such a great job out of the box that you can overclock the Toxic Edition even further!

Watch PCWizKid's Part 1 of 2 Video Review of the HD4870 1GB Toxic Editon


NOTE: To clarify in the video where it is mentioned about the vapour chamber being in the aluminum heatsink, it is actually all in the copper module in the middle, then the aluminum heatsinks and heatpipes take the heat away from the vapour chamber surface and the memories.

Part 2 of the review below shows how the video card was overclocked and benchmark results.


Key Features and Benefits
  • Advanced Vapour-X Cooling system uses Sapphire's Vapor Chamber Technology
  • Thermally controlled 90mm Fan
  • Overclocked from the factory - Core Clock: 780 MHz, Memory Clock: 1000 MHz, 4.0Gbps
  • Uses the 2nd generation 55nm RV770XT chip
  • GDDR5 memory/ 256-bit memory interface
  • DirectX® 10.1 and OpenGL 2.1 support
  • Shader Model 4.1 support
  • 24x custom filter anti-aliasing (CFAA) and high performance anisotropic filtering
  • ATI CrossFireX™ multi-GPU support for highly scalable performance
  • Use up to four discrete cards with an AMD 790FX based motherboard
  • PCI Express® 2.0 support
  • Dynamic geometry acceleration
  • Game physics processing capability
  • ATI Avivo™HD video support and Unified Video Decoder 2 for Blu-ray™ and HD VideoBuilt-in HDMI with 7.1 surround sound supportOn-chip HDCP
  • ATI PowerPlay™ technology
System Requirements
  • PCI Express® based PC is required with one X16 lane graphics slot available on the motherboard
  • 500 Watt or greater power supply with 75 Watt 6-pin PCI Express® power connector recommended (600 Watt and two 6-pin connectors for ATI CrossFireX™ technology in dual mode)
  • Certified power supplies are recommended. Refer to http://ati.amd.com/certifiedPSUfor a list of Certified products
  • 1GB of system memory
  • Installation software requires CD-ROM drive
  • DVD playback requires DVD drive
  • Blu-ray™ / HD DVD playback requires Blu-ray / HD DVD drive
Conclusion
True PC gamers and enthusiasts will appreciate the Sapphire HD4870 Toxic Edition's outstanding cooling improvements over the regular stock version. The already overclocked graphics card can be pushed to further limits thanks to its innovative "Vapour chamber Technology". Fan noise is low unless you are running it at full load which will increase the RPM and noise levels which is expected. Also the dissapation of heat is exhausted both outside and inside the computer case which is better than just hot air blown into the case only. The bundle in the retail package is complete and a great value added bonus to what you are getting though I would have liked to see a recent game included.