Hardware Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB Toxic

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2009/02/23/sapphire-ati-radeon-hd-4870-1gb-toxic/1

Sapphire has intoxicated the Radeon HD 4870 1GB with a bit of own-branded spice and a Vapor-X cooler. We put the company's Radeon HD 4870 1GB Toxic to the test and find out if the cooler can live up to its excellent predecessor. Read on to find out how it gets on.

 

Wonder if the 9.2's would make a difference.

 

Updating our test suites with new game releases, a Folding benchmark and new drivers is what I'm going to be working on over the next few weeks.

 

Looks like the GTX260 is still the way to go. Great minimum framerates, excellent averages, even beats the power hogging toxic half the time - and is often much less expensive, has cuda prowess, folding advantages, game configurable drivers by default, PhysX capability with easy on off for games, and tremendous sli scaliing.
Every time I look at the reviews, the GTX260 looks better.
Just the right amount of power where the non extreme no 30" 2560x monitor ggames needs to be - with plenty of headroom.
I'll never understand why people buy the ATI card. Of course, ATI lost another near billion for AMD who had to "chargedown" the loss, again - so maybe people don't buy it.

 

I love you Timmy, I just want you to know that.

 

Damn... 4870X2 is sucking now a days, it makes me think twice about getting it instead of Crossfire 4870's.

 

So what you're saying is that you didn't even read the article, right? The 4870 has higher average and minimum framerates in nearly every single case outside of Crysis (in which neither card is really playable anyhow) and CoD. I also fail to see how the 260-216 beats the 4870 "half the time". If you think that's the case, I suggest you go back and retake some basic math, you need some help on those fractions.

You mention CUDA and PhysX, but how many applications can you name that you USE that actually take advantage of either? The only one I can think of is Mirror's Edge. That's not exactly a killer app.

As for SLI scaling, it only does you limited good when you're behind in performance to begin with. There's also the fact that there are many instances in which crossfire scales better than SLI, as well. Overall, scaling itself is a wash.

Anyhow, please take you uninformed fanboyism elsewhere.

 

Excellent!

Will we see another graphics card round up or just re-reviews of the most recent cards (reviewed)?

Great stuff Tim (and all)!

 

Patiently waiting for the updated reviews with the 9.2 drivers.

 

It'll be a round up similar to the Core i7 one just before Christmas.

 

I come to this website almost daily because of the like minded well informed members. It's a relief from the misleading info and comments out there. I learn a lot and hopefully can contribute.
I agree with correcting people and putting them in check if need be......... but a little harsh don't you think. I did laugh thou!

SiliconDoc is wrong and full of cliche talk, but he looks like hes trying. He should keep coming to this site and read ALL the articles he can top to bottom.
This card is beautiful! I hate to say I'm influenced so much by the look.....
I'm a ATI (Older PCs) and Nivdia (New PC) owner and Steam/Valve player. My faith is in Nvidia to keep the competitiveness if not lead. I love this card though. Maybe one day I can have two updated computers, AMD/ATI and Intel/Nivdia and not worry about what side I should be on.

 

Please tell me this time you'll throw a 4850 and 4830 in there at least? im sure plenty of people with tight budgets thanks to the current climate would find it very useful with the price of cards growing again

 

It'll probably mean dropping some of the higher-end CrossFire/SLI configs, but who really cares about those any way?

 

Powercolor do a custom cooled overclocked 1GB 4870 on Novatech for £170.19! http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?POW-48701
Now I'm sure that puts it ahead of the GTX260 in terms or price performance ratio!

 

I wouldn't mind seeing the Powercolor compared against other 4870 cooling solutions, it looks good with heatpips as well but apparently its no better then reference.

 

Can you please (in upcoming tests) throw in a 'older' card, like a GT8800 or something. I want to know how these cards are up against the newer cards because sometimes i got the feeling that its just a few % increase in performance compared to the old.

 

higher end crossfire and SLI is nice but with the power of the cards today the only reason you need to crossfire or SLI is because your running an uber high res screen like a 30" or because your wanting to max out horribly optimized games like Crysis or GTA IV etc since most games handle just fine with a single 4870 1gb etc at the most common screen sizes (22-24")

were in the position now thankfully where even a cheap card can really hold its own in performance terms which is bloody awesome

but if you really wanted to mess with crossfire/SLI it'd be a pretty cool article idea to test out some of the lower end cards (sub say $150ish USD) in SLI and crossfire and compare the performance/price ratio they have compared to the more expensive high end cards to work out whats better value, i think it'd be a pretty unique idea to run with and one a lot of people would find interesting

 

There might be some sense in actually finding out which graphics cards people are buying, and base your benchmarks around them. If SLI/Crossfire accounts for 0.01% of the market, it's agruably not worth including in the benchmarks. Have a word with Dennis, they might have access to sales data for graphics cards...

 

Just drop the CF 4870 setup as to be honest the HD4870X2 is representative of that level of performance anyway.

I wouldn't mind the inclusion of CF HD4850 though as I am unsure how the HD4850X2 directly compares as its more of a dark horse among the cards.

 

I've recently been wondering, which HD4870 1GB model would be the better buy, the Gainward HD4870 GS 1GB or this Sapphire HD4870 Toxic 1GB. The Gainward apparently draws a bit less power, but which of the two is the quietest (very important in my book)?