The video card market is slowly moving forward and today we are taking a look at the Radeon HD 4890 from Sapphire. Though this is not just the standard version that we received, but the Toxic edition. That means that this card comes slightly higher clocked and should as such give a nice bump in performance. And again Sapphire is going their usual way, which is all about product differentiation and that is what they are bringing to the public. We are going to compare this versus some high-end and mid-range cards to see what kind of performance we can get from this setup. So of course Sapphire has other versions, though this one it the most affordable next to the standard one, though improved. - Red&Blackness

Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 Toxic Card Design Preview

The box is quite standard and features their black design, showing clearly this is the Toxic version which is powered by their Vapor-X cooling solution. On the top of the card they have put a big sticker that shows which product it is and also included their own logo on the fan. To keep the card cool and stable a big 80mm fan is mounted on it. The 80mm is actually quite silent compared to other video cards we have checked in the past. It keeps the fan speed down until the card gets hot enough that it needs to be cooled down. The heatsinks are hooked up to each other with heatpipes so the heat can be transfered away from the hot parts.

The whole cooler section is secured by four screws on the back of the card. The back plate is equipped with ventilation holes so the fan can push out the hot air from the card. To overclock we ran ATI's own software, at stock this card runs at 960MHz core and 4200MHz memory. We got locked up with the core quite fast and were only able to run it at 1050MHz before it created artifacts or just locked up Windows. Their memory on the other hand we were able to push a bit further, and 4480MHz was the final score where we were able to loop 3DMark Vantage without artifacts nor any lockups for that matter.

We saw this board selling for $250 at Newegg which is quite reasonable for this type of card. The new cooling makes it a bit more silent than other cards which is always good. Overall we have been very happy with the performance of it during our testing and it even overclocked well on all points except the core itself. The accessories bundle with 3DMark software is also good and you get way more than with other manufacturers. We think the numbers spoke for themselves and the card has proven that it gives you alot of bang for the buck. If you got the extra dollars you should go for this card otherwise there are others available.