ATI's Radeon HD 4800 series cards have been out for quite some time now, and for this reason the question is posed by users who want to just upgrade their computers, should we purchase a video card now or wait until ATI's new cards come out? It is almost impossible to give an answer, because it varies depending upon the buyer. Sometimes they'll wait a few months, and other times, well let's just say that it's like putting a kid in a candy store and telling them they've got to wait a week before they can make a purchase. So in order to assist you with this puzzle of whether or not a current GPU is enough for you, we will just be looking at another graphics accelerator card from Sapphire. - NeoSeeker

Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 Toxic Style Design Review

We just recently looked at their Radeon HD 4870 Toxic, and as it turns out the board had a little brother. That's right, today we will be setting my crosshairs on the Radeon HD 4850 Toxic edition. However, from the looks of it nothing all that special has been added to this video card. Instead of the fancy Vapor-X cooling solution we saw on the Radeon HD 4870 Toxic, you will receive a ball bearing cooler from Zalman. It uses only 512MB of GDDR3 memory clocked at 2200MHz and has a slightly overclocked core. Their Toxic version is nothing more than a normal Radeon HD 4850, but for many consumers that is enough power.

Now let's first take a look at the Radeon HD 4850's cooling solution, and yes of course we'll take a look at what it looks like when it is naked. The cooler itself looks like nothing more then a copper circle with a blue fan at the center. While the heatsink may not be as powerful as the Vapor-X model, we are hoping the Zalman VF90 will at least give some decent performance. And the heat energy should hopefully be carried through the heatpipe and then be absorbed by the copper fins. If some of the heat isn't dissipated by the fins, it will at least be away from the RV770 core and we also see little sinks used on the memory chips.

The Radeon HD 4850 Toxic is a very good low-end card. It is inexpensive and will give you playable frame rates in just about every resolution. But now, is there a cheaper board that performs the same? Yes, the Radeon HD 4770 isn't all that much less, only $20 or so, and at stock settings it performs worse. Overclocking the Radeon HD 4770 proved to increase frame rates levels to that of the Toxic version. In most games the Radeon HD 4850 outperformed the Radeon HD 4770, but only by a few frames. So, is the Radeon HD 4850 Toxic worth getting even though this other less costly card can perform about the same?

We would say that depending on the user, it is worth purchasing. Remember the Radeon HD 4770 only performed the same when overclocked. That means that someone looking for Radeon HD 4850 performance should just simply get the Radeon HD 4770 and overclock it. This would save them a few bucks for some other piece of hardware. And someone who is on a budget and wants the most performance they can get for there hard earned dollars should just give serious consideration to the Radeon HD 4850 Toxic edition. Overclocking the card would result in better frames and push the performance ahead of the Radeon HD 4770.