Introduction

As I've mentioned before, the ATI Radeon HD 4000 series video cards have really shaken up the VGA market. The architecture of the R700 GPU, the awesome performance it has, and the price points of the new Radeon cards have driven down the prices of all other video cards. The HD 4850, hitting the market at under $200, outperforms the 9800GTX, that entered the market a few months before at $350, and blows away the HD 3850 X2, that was released at the same 350. So we have a new video card for less than $200 that outperforms nearly every single video card from the last generation, save the two most exotic, the 3870 X2 and the 9800GX2.

Needless to say, I was impressed with the HD 4850, but to be honest, I was impressed with the older HD 3850. I personally think that it was overpriced when it entered the market at $225, causing it to be greatly overshadowed by its big brother, the HD 3870, which entered the market at a reasonable $300.

I have been fortunate to be able to review two different HD 4850s, but until now, the HD 4870 has eluded me. Today, I will be looking at Sapphire's factory overclocked version, the HD 4870 Toxic. Sporting a massive cooler utilizing Sapphire's Vapor Chamber Technology (VCT), and a decent overclock, Sapphire carries on its Toxic tradition. Let's see if the HD 4870 lives up to its reputation.

Specifications

Video Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 Toxic 288-10E85-T01SA
Interface: PCI Express 2.0
Chipset: ATI HD 4870
Manufacturing Process: 55nm
Core Clock: 780mHz
Streaming Processors: 800
Memory: 512MB GDDR5 256-bit
Memory Clock: 1000mHz (2000mHz)
Antialiasing: 24 x CFAA
- DX10.1
- Shader Model 4.1 support
- Dynamic geometry acceleration
- ATI CrossFireX Technology
- I/O Output: Dual DL-DVI-I+HDTV
- ATI AvivoHD video and display technology
- Unified Video Decoder 2 (UVD) for Blu-ray replay at 1080p
- HD VideoBuilt-in HDMI with 7.1 surround sound supports On-chip HDCP

Packaging

The box is in Sapphire's black/white Toxic theme, with specs and features both front and back.

Inside, as always, Sapphire packs the HD 4870 Toxic in thick foam and bubblewrap.