We had the pleasure of checking a couple of Radeon HD 4870's at launch. We were very impressed with the performance and price. Today, we are going to look at the Radeon HD 4870 Toxic edition graphics card from Sapphire. The board comes overclocked right out of the box and features Sapphire's own Vapor-X cooler. It will be interesting to see how Sapphire improved a video card that was already very good. Though the single point of concern about the Radeon HD 4870 reference design is actually that it becomes quite hot and therefore a better cooling solution is certainly a good investment. On that aspect Sapphire has come with their own cooling solution to turn the tide. - Club Overclocker

Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 Toxic Card Edition Review

With the all black box and silver surfer looking dude on the front, it looks like this card means business. The Radeon HD 4870 is securely packaged. There isn't a lot of wasted space and all of the accessories are separated in their own compartment. You can see that the Toxic version is still a two slot design. Most people are used to that on high-end cards. However, the Vapor-X cooler completely destroys the reference heatsink design. The back of the card features dual link DVI ports and a video output. We don't know what it is, but we like the contrast between the gloss black heatsink cover and the copper heatpipes.

Even though the card is energy efficient, you still need two, 6-pin PCI Express power cables for each card. AMD recommends at least a 600W power supply, if you plan on running two cards. The Radeon HD 4870 features 512MB of GDDR5 memory. There aren't too many folks in town making GDDR5 right now, but Qimonda has partnered with AMD to provide the chips for launch of the Radeon HD 4870 card. The memory bus is still 256-bit and we know that the bandwidth doesn't suffer since it's paired with GDDR5 memory. Plus, it keeps the cost down. High performance, low cost is always a good combination.

The Radeon HD 4870 Toxic's cooler looks similar to the reference design but has some obvious differences. The Radeon HD 4870 Toxic features aso called vapor chamber technology. The vapor chamber is composed of three distinct layers, the transportation wick, the vaporization wick and the condensation wick. And a wick is a material that can draw in a liquid by capillary action. The names of the other layers are pretty self explanatory. Pure water is heated while in the transportation wick, and as it turns to gas, it moves into the condensation wick. Away from the heat source, the water condenses back into a liquid.

We were extremely impressed with the reference Radeon HD 4870, but the Toxic version is one nice graphics card. The main issues we had with the reference Radeon HD 4870 was the heat issue and the overclocking. They both have been addressed in the Toxic version. The Toxic was easily superior in overclocking and cooling. The only complaint we have about this card is the price. On average, the Toxic version is about $50 higher than the standard reference card. However, you can find Radeon HD 4870's for as little as $269. And $50 is not a lot to pay for an overclocked card with a fantastic cooler.

Especially when you consider how much a good aftermarket cooler costs. But when Sapphire's own Radeon HD 4870 is selling for $269, we feel that the $80 price difference is a bit much and we have to give it a knock for that. Also, you need to remember that the $349 price is the manufacturers suggested price and the street price will probably be lower once it becomes readily available. Overall it's hard to go wrong with this card.