Originally released to compete with NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 260, the Radeon HD 4870 was a massive success for AMD and its partners and helped them to re-establish them as a dominant force in the high-end marketplace. Sapphire are the biggest AMD graphics card partner and a few months ago they released an overclocked version of the Radeon HD 4870 carrying a custom cooling solution. However, that version only shipped with 512MB of GDDR5 memory which wasn't ideal for the growing demands of high-end enthusiast users. Today we are looking at a new offering from Sapphire based on the original Radeon HD 4870 Toxic, but this edition now brings 1GB of memory to the table. - DriverHeaven

Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 Toxic Design Style Review

The Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 Toxic edition is packaged in an attractive black box which strays from the standard Sapphire packaging design to signify the exclusivity of the card. The reverse side lists information on the various features. In addition to the card you will find the user manual, a set of CD's, analog and HDMI adaptors, the CrossFire bridge and two molex to 6-pin power connectors. There's nothing spectacular in the bundle but it contains everything you would want with this card. Upon removing the card from the box you are greeted with a custom Vapor-X cooling solution which has a dominating presence on the card.

Turning the board over reveals the back of the PCB which has a metal brace attached to help keep the custom heatsink safely on the unit. Situated at one end of the card are the dual DVI outputs along with a centrally located video port. The second expansion bracket is vented, allowing the custom cooling solution to exhaust hot air out of the rear of the case, a good engineering decision. On the opposite end of the card we can see the two 6-pin power connectors required for operation. The real highlight of the Radeon HD 4870 Toxic edition is the Vapor-X cooling to handle the increased heat the overclocked RV770 core emits.

The Radeon HD 4870 Toxic version has the RV770 core running at 780MHz with an impressive 1GB of GDDR5 memory running at 4000MHz on a 256-bit memory bus. In comparison, the reference Radeon HD 4870 runs at 750MHz core and 3600MHz memory. Thanks to the overclocked frequencies and 1GB of memory, the card should offer excellent performance. Despite being pre-overclocked out of the box, the card still has further potential and with extra tweaking our sample manages a stable 800MHz core and 4360MHz memory speeds which are very respectable numbers to reach and give a decent gaming performance boost.

The Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 Toxic is certainly an exciting piece of kit. With a custom cooling solution, overclocked frequencies and 1GB of GDDR5 memory the card is everything you would want from a Radeon HD 4870. Sapphire has been thoroughly enjoying the last year with AMD and this board is a perfect showcase for the standards set throughout the year. The previous Radeon HD 4870 Toxic from Sapphire was limited by the 512MB of memory which meant at times the card could run out of texture memory but this 1GB version is set to satisfy high resolution gamers wanting a pre-overclocked solution.

The card carries a custom cooler to deal with the extra heat, and due to this it only hits load figures of around 70°C which is markedly better than the reference cooling solution. The great thing is that it achieves this without creating a racket and if you like gaming without a lot of fan noise, this card is a viable option. The card also comes with Sapphire's standard two year warranty. According to Sapphire the current price tag of the product is around $300. The Gainward card is similarly clocked to the Toxic edition and carries a custom cooling. Taking everything into account the Sapphire card earns our highest recommendation.