Sapphire HD4870 Toxic

Horrific mutagens, radioactive minerals, magic smoke and more contained within this graphics card.

When we first took a look at a Sapphire HD4870 back in Issue 92, we were suitably impressed with the performance. Now we look back at this heavily tweaked version of the same card, and find out if the extra money is justified.

With an RV770 core plugged into the board, and 512MB of GDDR5 oozing along a 256-bit memory bus, this card seems – at first – quite normal. It’s only when you look underneath the hood that you’ll notice that this beastie has been fed a terrible concoction of drugs and performance enhancements to get it moving at 780MHZ on the core (30MHz over stock) and 1000MHz on the memory (100MHz over stock). This is a relatively disappointing overclock, though, especially considering the large price tag that is growing grotesquely out of the card’s shoulder.

Funnily enough, that isn’t the only thing growing out of this card. Encased in an opaque black plastic shell (complete with sticker, of course), the cooler underneath is called the Vapor-X; this is essentially a large flattened out heatpipe that is attached directly to aluminium fins. There are also three large copper heatpipes skewering the top of the card, which might interfere with case fans in a particularly cramped environment. The PCB is the usual Sapphire blue, while the bracket is the usual vented dual-slot affair.

Cooling performance was quite impressive, idling at 48 degrees and 58.5dBA – going up to only 55 degrees at load! Sadly, this was at the expense of noise, which shot up to 69.4dBA. Thankfully the fan is controlled via the 4-pin PWM cable, so you can easily play around with these settings using the Catalyst Control Center if you find it’s too loud.

Gaming performance was pretty good, with solid framerates giving a smooth experience. Benchmarks were devoured by the card’s voracious appetite, and were left mauled (but thoroughly evaluated). While performance is quite good, and we’re certainly not complaining about that, it’s not really all that much over a reference design to bother with.

The bundle with this card consists of the usual power cables, DVI adaptors, driver CD and a manual. There’s also basic video editing software and DVD playback software included, and a copy of 3DMark Vantage Advanced. This bundle is bellowing out for a game or two to flesh it out, because there really isn’t all that much here to get excited about. Give us what we really need – value.

The only difference between this card and the one in Issue 92 is the presence of the cooler, and a slight overclock. For an extra $200, this doesn’t really scream “buy me now”; rather, it will just sit on the shelves screaming until the price is low enough to actually justify paying that much for the card – especially considering that if you can justify it, a 4870X2 isn’t going to cost you too much more.

We can recommend this card to anyone looking for something that will suck inordinate amounts of money away from them, or someone looking for a good cooling solution with a warranty that doesn’t involve water cooling. Everyone else – grab a reference design and an aftermarket heatsink, and you’ll be right as rain.