Cooling (cont’d)/Clocks

Whenever dealing with liquid cooling, leakage is always a huge concern. If a hose were to spring a leak or come loose while the system was on, it could potentially damage or ruin the components inside your PC.

Fortunately it seems Sapphire and Thermaltake have done a good job ensuring that this won’t be an issue for the TOXIC X1950 XTX. The hoses on our board were all fit nice and tight, it would take a lot of force to loosen them. Based on this we don’t think they’d come loose accidentally. We did notice however that Sapphire used too much thermal paste to cool the GPU on our review sample.

Hoses are secured well

Plenty of coolant

Coolant levels can be measured by a fluid level on the back of the cooling unit. A water line is located here so you’ll clearly see if the Sapphire cooler is low on coolant. The reservoir can then be topped off by removing the screw cap on the back of the cooler.

In addition to the 6-pin PCI Express power connector which is used to supply additional power to the graphics card, an additional Molex connector is also attached to Sapphire’s TOXIC X1950 XTX card. This power connection is used for the fan on the external cooling unit. If you don’t attach this power connector, the fan won’t operate.

Bottom of the cooling unit

Another shot of the TOXIC card

We ran our TOXIC board without the fan powered up for a little bit just to see what would happen, and while we didn’t notice any tearing or unusual artifacts, we wouldn’t recommend doing this for extended use if you care about the life of your graphics card. Keep in mind that the warranty period for the TOXIC X1950 XTX board is the standard Sapphire two-year warranty.

Cooling the other components

The rest of the cooling for Sapphire’s TOXIC X1950 XTX board is fairly similar to your typical Radeon X1950 XTX card. For instance, the VRM circuitry located just behind the board’s memory modules is cooled by the same copper heatsink used on ATI’s reference Radeon X1950 XTX board, while the memory modules themselves are cooled by simple aluminum RAMsinks. Here we were a little disappointed with the TOXIC X1950 XTX, as ATI’s reference board design uses one massive copper RAMsink for the Radeon X1950 XTX.

This aluminum RAMsink is loose

ATI uses one large copper RAMsink on the X1950 XTX

The card’s liquid cooler is only responsible for cooling the GPU. That’s it.

Everywhere else Sapphire’s TOXIC board is basically identical to every over Radeon X1950 XTX on the market. Sapphire has made no design changes to ATI’s reference board design, or the PCB itself. The exact same board-level components that are used on Sapphire’s stock X1950 XTX board are also used on the TOXIC card.

One key difference between the TOXIC board and every other X1950 XTX card that’s been announced to date however lies in its clock speeds.

Sapphire X1900 XTX TOXIC

Dual DVIs

Another shot of the PCB itself

Higher clocks

Out-of-the-box Sapphire clocks their TOXIC X1950 XTX at the stock X1950 XTX speeds of 650MHz core/1000MHz memory. However, end users are also given the option of overclocking the board’s graphics core to 695MHz by loading Sapphire’s A.P.E. overclocking utility. A.P.E. stands for automated performance enhancer.

Basically it’s a software tool that will automatically overclock the GPU 45MHz when enabled. A.P.E. can be set to load at boot up in your system tray. From there, all the end user has to do is select “TOXIC 3D Clocks” for A.P.E. to automatically clock the GPU at 695MHz; memory speed remains unchanged at 1,000MHz.

APE running in system tray

Loading A.P.E. won’t void your card’s warranty, as far as Sapphire is concerned the TOXIC board is designed to run at 695MHz A.P.E. can’t be used to overclock the TOXIC board beyond the standard speeds of 695MHz/1000MHz however, so you’ll have to use a third-party app or ATI Catalyst Control Center if you want to overclock the card any further.

Software and accessories

Rather than bundling their latest graphics cards with an assortment of games and game demos (like most manufacturers do), Sapphire has recently instituted their Sapphire Select game bundle program. Included inside the packaging of the Blizzard Radeon X1900 XTX is a Sapphire Select DVD. On the Sapphire Select DVD you’ll find four games: Tony Hawk’s Undergound 2, Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30, and Richard Burns Rally. You can try all four games for up to one hour, at that point you’ll then pick two games to be unlocked for the full version. The other two games can then be purchased at a discount if you’d like.

In addition to the Sapphire Select DVD, Sapphire also includes a copy of CyberLink PowerDVD 6 2-channel edition, and PowerDirector 4DE. Hardware accessories included with the card are a 6-pin PCI-E power connector, two DVI adapters, S-Video and composite video cables, a component video cable, and VIVO cable.