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Sapphire Toxic HD 4870 512MB Review November 24, 2008 Brandon Sandman Bell |
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Summary: At load ATI's stock 4870 cards can push 80 degrees during gaming, and over 60 at idle. But what if these temps are too high for you? If that's the case, you should take a long look at the Sapphire Toxic 4870. The card ships with vapor chamber and heatpipe cooling technology, delivering GPU temps that are drastically lower than ATI's stock cooler. The card is also OC'ed for increased performance. See how it stacks up against other cards in its class in this review!
 Sapphire Toxic HD 4870 512MB Review | Page:: ( 1 / 12 ) |
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We’re huge fans of ATI’s Radeon 4800 series GPUs. Both the Radeon 4850 and 4870 rewrote the rules when it comes to performance at their respective price segments, forcing NVIDIA to slash prices on their entire GeForce graphics lineup -- the GTX 260 and GTX 280 saw their prices reduced by hundreds of dollars thanks to the introduction of the 4870 and 4870 X2 GPUs.
The Radeon 4850 and 4870 were also the first mainstream GPUs to deliver viable frame rates when gaming with 8xAA.
The one key weakness of the Radeon 4800s are their stock coolers. The heatsink/fan units ATI developed for both the Radeon 4850 and Radeon 4870 are more focused on keeping noise at bay than actually keeping the GPU cool. GPU temps in the 60 degree Celsius range are typical for 4800 GPUs while idling at the Windows desktop, while load temps can hover in the 80-degree range during gaming.
In comparison NVIDIA’s GeForce 9800 GTX and GTX 260 GPUs typically peak in the mid-to-high 60s at load.
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Fortunately the 4800 GPU is designed to operate at these high temperatures. The GPU doesn’t throttle or overheat, even after extended gaming sessions where the GPU is exposed to high temps for a prolonged period of time. However many end users are uncomfortable with their GPU operating at such high temps, after all excessive heat can affect overall system stability and can eventually prematurely kill system components. Besides dust, the #1 cause of most fan failures is excessive exposure to heat.
To tackle this problem ATI’s board partners have developed newer Radeon 4850 and 4870 coolers that are more effective at combating heat while generating very little to no noise.
Sapphire’s Toxic HD 4870 was one of the first Radeon 4870 cards designed to address this problem. The card was also one of the first 4870 boards to hit the market with factory OC’ed clocks.
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Improving on the ATI cooling
At the heart of Sapphire’s Toxic HD 4870 512MB is its cooler. Rather than rely on a traditional heatsink/fan unit, Sapphire employs a custom cooling design that consists of their vapor chamber cooling technology (VCT) along with three copper heat pipes and one massive fan. First let’s discuss the vapor chamber cooling.
Sitting directly atop the RV770 GPU is the VCT, which is made from copper and acts much like a traditional heatpipe. The VCT is a sealed vacuum chamber composed of three “wicks”. There’s a vaporization wick, condensation wick, and a transportation wick. Heat from the GPU heats up the water within the vaporization wick, causing it to vaporize. This water vapor then moves through the vacuum until it hits the condensation wick. Here the water vapor condenses and forms back into a liquid (releasing the heat in the process); this liquid is then absorbed by the transportation wick (by capillary action), where it’s then transported back to the vaporization wick and the process is repeated.
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But Sapphire doesn’t stop there. Cooling the VCT is a massive dual-slot heatsink along with three long copper heatpipes. Heat from the VCT is absorbed by the heatpipes, while the aluminum heatsink works to disperse heat off the heat pipes (the heatsink also cools the board’s memory modules).
Keeping everything cool is a 90mm fan. By using such a large fan (many case fans are smaller than this), Sapphire doesn’t have to crank up the RPMs in order to move a lot of air. This helps to keep noise levels down. Air from the fan is then exhausted outside the PC case.
We saw drastically reduced GPU temps thanks to Sapphire’s unique cooling solution. The cooler’s fan also generates very little noise during use. Full cooling results can be found on the Overclocking page of this review.
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Supercharged clocks and the rest of the card
To improve performance, Sapphire also OCs their Toxic 4870 card. The graphics core clock is bumped up 30MHz over stock to 780MHz, while the board’s 512MB of GDDR5 is clocked at 1.0GHz even. In comparison the Radeon 4870’s memory runs at 900MHz in stock form.
The rest of the card is based on ATI’s reference design. Sapphire makes no modifications to the board layout. Sapphire does include a nice bundle with their card though. Inside the box you’ll find a copy of 3DMark Vantage as well as the game Ruby Rom, PowerDVD, CyberLink DVD Suite, driver CD, two power adapters, an HDMI adapter, DVI adapter, CrossFire connector, and component/composite video cables.
| System Setup | Page:: ( 2 / 12 ) |
Intel Core 2 Duo E8600
ASUS P5E3 Premium WiFi AP Edition
4GB OCZ DDR3 Platinum @ 1333MHz
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260
EVGA e-GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 (stock GTX 260 clocks)
XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition
ForceWare 180.47
Sapphire Toxic 4870 512MB
AMD Radeon HD 4870 512MB
AMD Radeon HD 4870 1GB
Catalyst 8.11
300GB Western Digital Caviar SE
Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit w/Service Pack 1
Benchmarks
Call of Duty: World at War
Left 4 Dead
Dead Space
Crysis 1.21
Fallout 3
Far Cry 2
Notes
Since CoD: World at War, Dead Space, and Fallout 3 lack built-in tools for benchmarking, we used FRAPS to test these games. Our test sequence for CoD comes from the end of the last level, just as you’re set to leave the prison camp your character is asked to slice a fuel drum lying in the back of a truck. The truck is then driven right into the camp, where the trail of fuel is ignited, setting off a chain of explosions. Our FRAPS run records this entire sequence, and then we proceed to run into the camp.
We like this sequence because it’s fairly repeatable while it’s also graphically demanding.
Our Dead Space sequence takes place in the first chapter, when you return to your ship, the U.S.G. Kellion. As you load the protocols, a malfunction occurs and the ship blows up in spectacular fashion. Our FRAPS sequence consists of walking through the hanger, killing the monster in front of your ship, and then of course the spectacular explosion sequence.
| Fallout 3 | Page:: ( 3 / 12 ) |
| Fallout 3 1920x1200x32 | ||
| Card | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 | 37 | 62 |
| GeForce GTX 260 | 35 | 66 |
| XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition | 43 | 67 |
| Radeon HD 4870 1GB | 33 | 61 |
| Radeon HD 4870 512MB | 33 | 62 |
| Sapphire Toxic HD 4870 512MB | 33 | 64 |
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| Call Of Duty World At War | Page:: ( 4 / 12 ) |
| Call of Duty: World At War 1920x1200x32 | ||
| Card | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 | 55 | 72 |
| GeForce GTX 260 | 52 | 66 |
| FX GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition | 58 | 81 |
| Radeon HD 4870 1GB | 49 | 64 |
| Radeon HD 4870 512MB | 48 | 64 |
| Sapphire Toxic HD 4870 512MB | 49 | 65 |
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| Crysis DX10 | Page:: ( 5 / 12 ) |
Crysis High – Direct3D
| Crysis Performance 1920x1200x32 | ||
| Card | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 | 22.5 | 38.9 |
| GeForce GTX 260 | 21.4 | 37 |
| XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition | 25.9 | 45 |
| Radeon HD 4870 1GB | 23.7 | 39.4 |
| Radeon HD 4870 512MB | 20.9 | 37.6 |
| Sapphire Toxic HD 4870 512MB | 21.7 | 38.9 |
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| Left 4 Dead | Page:: ( 6 / 12 ) |
| Dead Space | Page:: ( 7 / 12 ) |
| Dead Space 1920x1200x32 | ||
| Card | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 | 60 | 131 |
| GeForce GTX 260 | 58 | 123 |
| XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition | 68 | 149 |
| Radeon HD 4870 1GB | 53 | 118 |
| Radeon HD 4870 512MB | 53 | 98 |
| Sapphire Toxic HD 4870 512MB | 55 | 117 |
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| Far Cry 2 | Page:: ( 8 / 12 ) |
| Far Cry 2 1920x1200x32 | ||
| Card | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 | 36.1 | 67.6 |
| GeForce GTX 260 | 35.2 | 64.3 |
| XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition | 43.5 | 72.5 |
| Radeon HD 4870 1GB | 30.8 | 64.2 |
| Radeon HD 4870 512MB | 30.2 | 60.3 |
| Sapphire Toxic HD 4870 512MB | 31 | 61.4 |
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| 8xAA Performance | Page:: ( 9 / 12 ) |
| Temps and Overclocking | Page:: ( 10 / 12 ) |
| Ballistics Report | Page:: ( 11 / 12 ) |
Pros
OC’ed clock speeds: Like most Toxic cards, Sapphire overclocks their board from the factory for better-than-stock performance. The graphics core on the Toxic is clocked at 780MHz, 30MHz higher than the 4870’s stock core clock of 750MHz. The board’s memory is then OC’ed to 1GHz. In stock form the Radeon 4870’s memory runs at 900MHz.
In our benchmarks these faster speeds allowed the Toxic 4870 to run roughly 3-5% faster than your typical Radeon 4870 512MB.
Excellent cooling: Sapphire’s vapor chamber cooler performed significantly better than ATI’s stock heatsink/fan unit in our testing. At idle the Toxic board ran 15 degrees Celsius cooler than the ATI cooler, while load temps were 22 degrees cooler in favor of the Sapphire card. The Sapphire cooler also ran nearly 4 decibels quieter than ATI’s cooler.
Keep in mind that these figures come at both board’s stock clocks, so the GPU on the Sapphire card was actually running 30MHz higher than the ATI card, yet it still ran drastically cooler than the ATI 4870.
Without a doubt, this is definitely the most impressive cooler we’ve seen mounted to a Radeon 4870 from a pure technology perspective.
Nice bundle for an ATI card: While many GeForce GTX 260 cards are currently shipping with games like Far Cry 2, unfortunately ATI boards rarely ship with a compelling software bundle, opting instead to stick with the driver CD and perhaps an outdated game, that’s about it. By including a copy of 3DMark Vantage with their Toxic board Sapphire ups the ante (Sapphire also includes Ruby Rom, PowerDVD, and DVD creation software from Cyberlink); this is the best bundle of the Radeon 4870 cards offered on Newegg.
Cons
Radeon 4870 1GB: Radeon 4870 1GB cards can be found for as little as $275 on Newegg, that’s just $5 more than Sapphire’s own Toxic card on the site (although Sapphire offers a $20 mail-in rebate bringing the Toxic’s price down to $250). 1GB boards are going to become increasingly popular over the next 12 months as newer games come to market.
Considering this and the performance difference between the two cards, some gamers may opt for the 4870 1GB over the Toxic 512MB.
| Final Verdict | Page:: ( 12 / 12 ) |