Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 TOXIC 512MB GDDR5 Video Card Spotted

[OnBoard]

Just called Sapphire's US Division - AthlonMicro - and spoke with a sales dude there for a bit. The X-Vapor Cooler is just a modded Zalman VF1000, so the cooling should be quite good compared to the stock cooler.

You sure he wasn't pulling your leg (or he was, but didn't know it himself ). It doesn't look anything like VF1000, for starters it's upside down:
http://www.obsidiangaming.com/images/pcbuild2007/ZalmanVF1000_8800GT.jpg
http://www.techpowerup.com/img/07-12-13/MSI_NX8800GT_Zilent_Series_02.jpg

 

[rfvasquez]

You sure he wasn't pulling your leg (or he was, but didn't know it himself ). It doesn't look anything like VF1000, for starters it's upside down:
http://www.obsidiangaming.com/images/pcbuild2007/ZalmanVF1000_8800GT.jpg
http://www.techpowerup.com/img/07-12-13/MSI_NX8800GT_Zilent_Series_02.jpg

Yes - I'm sure - it's a "Modded" Zalman, the pipes are a bit different, and the unit is turned around, but if you look at the center fan placement, the cooler fins, and overall shape, you can pretty much see the incredible resemblance. Why would the dude bullshit me? The VF1000 is the closest looking to it - I guess Sapphire had them make a modded cooler based on the VF1000 - flat, center fan, heat pipes - looks like 3 instead of 4 - perhaps the extended loop on the right sight is to compensate for only 3 pipes.

Looks cool - gonna order two when they are available.

 

[Wshlist]

Nope, you recall the special version of 3870 that had a vapor chamber cooler. Vapor champer is a flat heatpipe, so that works great under the heatpipes to make a good contact to the core and distribute the heat in to them.

Xigmatek's BATTLE-AXE VD964 could use one of those, as this happens:
http://pics.computerbase.de/2/0/4/9/0/14.jpg

There was a flat square bulge underneath my 4850 cooler.

 

[OnBoard]

There was a flat square bulge underneath my 4850 cooler.

Yours looks like this?

Regular

And 3870 Atomic

That first pics cooler bottom does look very much like the Atomics vapor chamber bottom, so yes, I was wrong However it was 4C worse on idle and only 4.5C cooler (91C) on load, so not the best.