AMD released their 4800 series of graphics cards this past summer with unanimous praise in both price, performance, and features. Nvidia's cards were so overpriced they nearly had to slash cards prices in half to compete with AMD. That said though there was one major problem of the first 4800 cards on the market: heat. Today we'll be taking a look at a card that looks to take care of this and also comes pre-overclocked, the Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 Toxic.

Sapphire has become known for it's TOXIC Edition cards which use their Vapor-X cooler with vapour chamber technology for better cooling but this 4870 TOXIC also features three large heatpipes and a thermally controlled fan which run quiet in all of our testing. We tested this with Crysis GPU benchmark set to run on a loop at 1920x1200 at Very High Settings and using ATI's Catalyst COntrol Center we measured a temperature of 63 degrees Celsius after ten minutes in the loop. This is cooler than some 4800 cards run at idle so this is a big win for Sapphire. At idle in the desktop we measured the card at 51 degrees Celsius. Excellent all around.

 
The card is also overclocked out of the box as mentioned at 780MHz for the core and 1GHz for the 512MB of GDDR5 memory. We were able to max out ATI's Overdrive feature for a core of 820MHz and memory clock speed. This gave a nice speed boost though not a huge margin you'll see the card does perform better than a stock 4870 all around.

Looking at the bundle Sapphire provides there are quite a few goodies here. Ruby ROM RubyROM includes demos of Call of Juarez, John Woo's Stranglehold, Dungeon Runners, screensaver Earth Sim, GameShadow, and various wallpapers and screensavers. Also included is CyberLink PowerDVD 7 Cyberlink DVD Suite, drivers and Sapphire and ATI case sticker, and also 3DMark's latest benchmark, Vantage.

The hardware bundle consist of HDTV out dongle, DVI-to-HDMI adapter, DVI-to-VGA adapter, molex to PCI-Express power adapters, and Crossfire dongle for your graphics card.

The card its self is fairly sharp with a black sticker with Sapphire's logo as well as ATI and the TOXIC branding as well as Vapor-X with a large fan in the middle. The three heatpipes poke out on top and is aesthetically pleasing card all around with the blue PCB.

We've covered the technology of the 4800 but let's give a quick recap. For one this is a second generation of the 55nm manufacturing process AMD introduced last year which uses less power, it features a new UVD2 H.264 decoding for Blu-Ray for less CPU overhead and picture-in-picture decoding, 800 stream processors are featured up from 320 stream processors of the 3800 series, it requires two six-pin PCI-Express power adapters though as mentioned. DirectX 10.1 is fully supported which no Nvidia cards feature yet though not so many games support it at this time. Overall it is great piece of technology from AMD which has allowed them to take back over from Nvidia.

TeraScale Graphics Engine
The powerful new TeraScale graphics engine features deliver high resolutions and fast frame rates.

Enhanced Anti-Aliasing & Anisotropic Filtering
High performance anisotropic filtering and 24x custom filter anti-aliasing (CFAA) smooth jagged edges and create true-to-life graphics, for everything from grass to facial features.
DirectX 10.1
Play today while preparing for tomorrow with state-of-the-art DirectX 10.1 graphics capabilities.
ATI CrossFireX™ Technology
ATI CrossFireX™ technology with up to quad GPU support offers superior scalability so your system is ready to level up when you are.
PCI Express 2.0
Support for PCI Express 2.0 will prepare you for bandwidth-hungry games and 3D applications.
Power to Spare
This GPU has the brute processing power needed for physics, artificial intelligence, stream computing and ray tracing calculations.
Go Beyond HD Video

Add an ATI Radeon HD 4870 Series GPU to your PC and watch the latest Blu-ray and HD movies play with incredible fidelity –upscale to nearly twice the display resolution of HD content.* Take full advantage of Blu-ray functionality with dual-stream, picture in picture (PIP) capabilities. Sophisticated new features within ATI Avivo™ HD technology provide a truly responsive experience. Support for the latest audio visual interconnects ensures you can take advantage of the latest display technology.

Unified Video Decoder 2
Unified Video Decoder 2 frees up your CPU for other tasks so you get The Ultimate Visual Experience™ for even the most processing-intensive content, including VC-1, H.264 and now MPEG-2. Also, take full advantage of Blu-ray functionality with dual-stream, picture in picture (PIP) capabilities.
Upscale Beyond 1080p
Watch the hottest Blu-ray movies or other HD content at full 1080p display resolution and beyond.
On-chip HDCP
On-chip HDCP (High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection) makes life easier by allowing you to playback HDCP protected content.**
HDMI
Enjoy the latest audio technologies using HDMI with 7.1 digital surround sound support. Also, xvYCC support allows the user to enjoy a wider range of color when connected to a capable HDTV.
*Note: HD capable monitor required

** Note: Playing HDCP content requires additional HDCP ready components, including but not limited to an HDCP ready monitor, Blu-ray or HD DVD disc drive, multimedia application and computer operating system.

Break-through Efficiency

Like its predecessors, the ATI Radeon HD 4870 Series GPUs offer optimal performance and break-through efficiency with platform-independent intelligent power management. ATI PowerPlay™ delivers the power needed to blaze through even the most intense games while intuitively conserving energy at idle or when demand is low.

ATI PowerPlay™ Technology
ATI PowerPlay™ Technology delivers high performance when needed and conserves power when the demand on the graphics processor is low.
Energy Efficient Manufacturing Process
Second generation 55nm chip uses the industry's most energy efficient manufacturing process.
System Requirements

–PCI Express® based PC is required with one X16 lane graphics slot available on the motherboard

–450 Watt or greater power supply with 75 Watt 6-pin PCI Express® power connector recommended (550 Watt and two 6-pin connectors for ATI CrossFireX™ technology in dual mode)

–Certified power supplies are recommended. Refer to http://ati.amd.com/certifiedPSUfor a list of Certified products

–1GB of system memory

–Installation software requires CD-ROM drive

–DVD playback requires DVD drive

–Blu-ray™ / HD DVD playback requires Blu-ray / HD DVD drive

–For a complete ATI CrossFireX™ system, a second ATI Radeon™ HD 4870 graphics card, an ATI CrossFireX Ready motherboard and one ATI CrossFireX Bridge Interconnect cable per board (included) are required.

We'll start off with Crysis where Toxic just edges out the normal 4870 and again this game tends to favor Nvidia unlike others.

Call of Duty 4 we see a little larger bounce with the higher numbers and the 4870 Toxic performs quite well.

Half-Life 2: Episode 2 shows the card gaining an edge amongst all the cards except a GeForce GTX 280 and the unstoppable Radeon 4870 X2.

Unreal 3 shows again the card peaking it's head out farther from a stock 4870.

All the cards seem to struggle again in World in Conflict edging nearer to each other.

Here's the power usage at idle and load with our power hungry Phenom 9950 BE test system. At idle was 5 minutes into the Windows Desktop, load was taking during the Crysis GPU test at 1920x1200 with highest settings set.

Conclusion:
The Sapphire TOXIC 4870 seems to nail directly the major grievance of all the 4800 cards: heat. This is no longer an issue with this card and it does so without adding any extra fan noise as well. Put this together with the performance of the 4870 and a good bundle and you have a definite winner. Plus you get a nice overclock and much more headroom for overclockability. If heat has been a major reason you've avoided the 4800 or you won't one that runs cool out of the box, look no further. I can say from personal experience stock 4800 cards, especially 4850's run too hot out of the box so this is good news from Sapphire and for ATI!

Pricing:
We can't find the card at e-tailers yet online but the normal Sapphire Radeon 4870 can be had for $279 online. Hopefully the TOXIC can stay somewhere around this range perhaps with a rebate.

Score: 95%