If you've owned ATI cards in the past there is a very good chance that card was made by Sapphire. Sapphire and ATI have worked together for a long time to bring performance cards to the market affordably and the Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 Toxic edition is no exception. While the price tag isn't exactly cheap, you're getting a card that reportedly can compete with the new NVIDIA GeForce 200 series of GPU's. While ATI has always been terrible at marketing their video cards they definitely have the upper hand in pricing. And which is the whole strategy that ATI is somehow focussing on. It would seem this video card is the perfect choice for the extreme gamer on a budget. - Techware Labs

Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 Toxic Edition Card Review

These ATI Radeon HD 4870 series GPU's deliver a cinematic gaming experience with unprecedented performance. And the powerful new TeraScale graphics will propel you deep into your game play with seamless frame rates and some high resolutions. Enhanced anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering do create striking graphics with unparalleled realism so you can max out the settings of the most demanding next generation games or revitalize your favorite titles. Play today while preparing for tomorrow with tessellation, support for DirectX 10.1 and scalable CrossFireX technology to combine the power of several cards.

The first thing we noticed about the Radeon HD 4870 Toxic's box after receiving it was how sharp the box looked. It's hard to tell in just some words, but the silhouette guy on there is made of reflective material and it looks really cool. The box is solid and thankfully nothing rattles around inside of it. On the back you can see all of the features listed. Other than the crammed back panel, the box has a very minimalist look and feel to it. Inside of that outer box is an inner box that is stuffed with a foam-like material to keep the video card from rattling around, even if for some reason it would be dropped.

As all of the many benchmarks we ran should show, the Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 Toxic edition is quite impressive. It looks sharp and the numbers it puts up look even better. We think without question this card is in the same ballpark as NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 200 series of cards, but with a kicker. This card retails for a few hundred dollars short of what a current GeForce GTX 280 goes for. Let's talk some economics now, this card is up on Newegg for $299, whereas the cheapest GeForce GTX 280 we could find was $429 and that's for the lowest models. That's a considerable difference given the top ones will run past $500.

That said, the GeForce GTX 280 will out perform this card in most benchmarks or video games in a head to head contest. However, this card is very close to the GeForce GTX 280 in performance and its not even close in the cost. If you're a gamer who can't afford to bust out $500 for a video card we would recommend this card to you. The performance blows the older generation of cards out of the water. This card and the GeForce GTX 200 series of cards are competing in a totally different ballpark. You won't be disappointed!