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Sapphire Toxic X1900 XTX 512MB PCI-E Review |
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Written by Mavke
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Thursday, 20 July 2006 |
The Tech Report shares a review on the Sapphire Toxic X1900 XTX 512MB PCIe graphics card. Lately, graphics card manufacturers have become less willing or perhaps less capable of deviating from the reference designs provided by ATI and NVIDIA. This trend is especially apparent at the high end of the market, where often little more than a sticker and a couple of clock speed differentiates one manufacturer's card from another. There's not really anything wrong with reference designs; it's just disappointing to see card makers settling for the status quo rather than pushing the envelope with tweaked board designs or innovative cooling solutions.
 Sapphire Toxic X1900 XTX 512MB PCI-E Review
Fortunately, there are a few pockets of originality in a landscape of cookie cutter reference designs. One such beacon of hope is Sapphire's Toxic X1900 XTX, a hot rod rendition of ATI's Radeon X1900 XTX that boasts higher clock speeds and an integrated liquid cooler. That's right, this card comes with liquid cooling in the box, and there's no extra assembly required. This is quite new and Sapphire did make the effort to go just one setp further. Can the Toxic's liquid cooler help to set a new performance standard for the Radeon X1900 XTX? What about its impact on noise levels and overclocking?
Sapphire isn't the first graphics card manufacturer to tackle liquid cooling, but the Toxic's integrated approach is certainly unique. Graphics card makers have traditionally only included a GPU water block on their liquid-cooled products, leaving it up to the end user to assemble the plumbing, reservoir, and pump necessary to complete the liquid cooling system. That assembly, or even choosing the right mix of components, might be trivial for a seasoned water-cooling aficionado. For the average consumer, gamer, and even enthusiast, however, it's asking a lot.
Fortunately, the Toxic comes fully assembled. It does come in two parts, though. The card itself is separate from the liquid cooling unit, which has a plastic nub that allows it to sit in a spare PCI or PCI Express slot. A generous length of hose connects the cooling unit to the card, giving users plenty the flexibility to install the cooler in just about any slot on their motherboard. The Toxic does differ from the stock Radeon X1900 XTX when it comes to clock speeds. By default, the Radeon X1900 XTX is clocked at 650MHz core and 1550MHz memory. Sapphire nudges up both clocks, giving the Toxic 675MHz core and 1600MHz memory.
Because overclocking success can vary from sample to sample, it's important not to read too much into our overclocking results. We've included them to be thorough, and because we were curious to see whether the Toxic's liquid cooler guaranteed additional headroom for the graphics core. Neither Radeon X1900 XTX was stable with a core clock speed above 689MHz, and the Toxic's memory wouldn't go beyond 1602MHz without introducing visual artifacts. Liquid cooling or not, the Radeon X1900 XTX graphics chip doesn't seem all that happy at clock speeds above 690MHz.
From a performance standpoint, the Toxic X1900 XTX doesn't offer much above and beyond a stock Radeon X1900 XTX. A 25MHz boost in core and memory clock speed doesn't get you huge performance gains, and it doesn't look like the card's integrated liquid cooler creates otherwise unattainable overclocking headroom. However, the liquid cooler does have a profound impact on noise levels. At its low fan speed setting, the Toxic is as quiet as ATI's stock air cooler at idle and nearly 10 decibels quieter under load. The low fan speed setting yields significantly lower GPU temperatures than air cooling, as well.
We're also left wondering how much quieter the Toxic could be with a lower fan speed setting that maintained GPU temperatures closer to ATI's stock air cooler. That would surely be an attractive option for some folks, although ideally, we'd like to see the cooler rely on the temperature based fan speed control already built into the Radeon X1900 XTX. Perhaps Sapphire has some of these suggestions in mind, because the Toxic's availability has dropped off rather sharply in the past couple of weeks. It's no longer listed in our price search engine, and while it's still in stock at a few retailers for around $650, it's out of stock or no longer listed.
That may be for the best, because with NVIDIA's GeForce 7950 GX2 selling for much less than $650 online, it's hard to justify spending more on a slower card, liquid cooling or not. Still, we hope Sapphire sticks with the Toxic. The integrated liquid cooler is an effective design as-is, and with a little tweaking, Sapphire could make it even better. It's always nice to see a little variety in the graphics card market, too.
Related Articles
PowerColor Radeon X1900 GT 256MB PCI-E Review
Sapphire Toxic X1900 XTX 512MB PCI-E Review
Diamond Viper X1900 XT 512MB PCI-E Review
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