We've literally loved everything about the Radeon HD 4850 since its release. The only thing that worried me was the high temperatures coming out from behind the card. While the stock single slot cooler is an excellent choice, it simply isn't going to do as good a job as dual slot coolers with bigger fans. While we've never run into a single issue with a Radeon HD 4850 running stock cooling, it doesn't mean that we wouldn't prefer to be running the cards cooler. And really, with the amount of onboard devices on a motherboard these days and their quality, the need to use every expansion slot in your motherboard is becoming lower and lower, though adding more graphics power is growing daily. - TweakTown

Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 Toxic Bi-CrossFire Review

Sapphire has not only chosen to include aftermarket cooling on the card, but also to take it a step further by overclocking the bad boy. While the boxes share the same square design as the standard Radeon HD 4850, we have a much darker image going on here. Across the top of the box we have the Sapphire logo. In the middle we have the model and below that, the Toxic logo. In the background we have a bold headed figure hidden away. Across the bottom of the box we have some ATI logos along with a HDMI one. We also see some of the key features like 512MB of GDDR3 memory, overclocked and Zalman cooling.

Turning the box over, we have the Sapphire logos across the top and the model along with some of the main features across the bottom. Above that we have just a few of the hundreds of awards Sapphire have won. We also have a bit of a blurb on the card to the right and some more details on the features that are included. With the package out of the way it's time to move onto the card. Of course, the first thing that stands out is the large copper cooler sitting on top of the core. Towards the back of the card we can also see another heatsink to cool some of the other warmer components that are present on the graphics card.

It's also nice to see that Sapphire have taken the effort to include ramsinks on the memory. While we're not sure how necessary they are, the inclusion of them makes the card look a bit more professional in the cooling department and it's certainly not going to affect the card in a negative way. Looking around the card, we don't see anything else that really stands out. Towards the back of the card we have a single PCI Express power connector while across the top of the card we have our CrossFire connector. Fortunately this is one connector that we will be making use of today combining two Radeon HD 4850 cards.

The decision to go down the Zalman cooling path was a good idea, it's helped drop the temperatures to a level we're a lot more comfortable with and makes us feel more confident about having the card overclocked. And as we previously mentioned, while the stock cooler on the Radeon HD 4850 never caused us any issues, we would have preferred the temps to be lower than what they were. This becomes an even bigger deal when you throw overclocking into the mix or the fact that you may have a small case with limited airflow. Sapphire have really done a lot right with this card, bringing the performance a level higher.

Apart from the cooling solution, the overclock gives us a nice out of the box performance increase compared to the stock model and we're fully loaded up with a number of applications including a full version copy of 3DMark Vantage. While CrossFire continues to be hit and miss in a lot of games, at least with two cards we don't see a drop in performance like we do when we add three or four cards into the mix. If you find yourself wanting a Radeon HD 4850 that packs a bit more punch and cools significantly better than the stock solution, don't be afraid of spending the extra few dollars to go down the Toxic route.