Sapphire HD 4850 Toxic 512 MB Review

Name: Sapphire HD 4850 Toxic 512 MB
Brand: Sapphire

W1zzard

on Aug 5th, 2008,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: Sapphire

(14 Comments) »

Introduction

A while back AMD has launched their Radeon HD 4850 and 4870 Series. Both cards were quickly accepted by enthusiasts and gamers as one of the best new product releases this year. Now AMD has given permission to the AIBs to create their own customized and overclocked products, first of the HD 4850 and later of the HD 4870.

Sapphire as the biggest AMD AIB has released several HD 4850 Toxic variants. We have the overclocked 512 MB version with a Zalman cooler on our test bench today.

	Radeon HD 3850	Radeon HD 3870	GeForce 9600 GT	GeForce 8800 GT	GeForce 9800 GT	Radeon HD 4850	Sapphire HD 4850 Toxic	GeForce 9800 GTX	GeForce 9800 GTX+	GeForce 8800 GTX	GeForce GTX 260	Radeon HD 4870	GeForce GTX 280
Shader units	320	320	64	112	112	800	800	128	128	128	192	800	240
ROPs	16	16	16	16	16	16	16	16	16	24	28	16	32
GPU	RV670	RV670	G94	G92	G92	RV770	RV770	G92	G92	G80	GT200	RV770	GT200
Transistors	666M	666M	505M	754M	754M	956M	956M	754M	754M	681M	1400M	956M	1400M
Memory Size	256 MB	512 MB	512 MB	512 MB	512 MB	512 MB	512 MB	512 MB	512 MB	768 MB	896 MB	512 MB	1024 MB
Memory Bus Width	256 bit	256 bit	256 bit	256 bit	256 bit	256 bit	256 bit	256 bit	256 bit	384 bit	448 bit	256 bit	512 bit
Core Clock	670 MHz	777 MHz	650 MHz	600 MHz	600 MHz	625 MHz	675 MHz	675 MHz	738 MHz	575 MHz	576 MHz	750 MHz	602 MHz
Memory Clock	828 MHz	1126 MHz	900 MHz	900 MHz	900 MHz	993 MHz	1100 MHz	1100 MHz	1100 MHz	900 MHz	999 MHz	900 MHz	1107 MHz
Price	$99	$125	$110	$140	$160	$170	$210	$185	$200	$295	$270	$275	$430

Packaging & Contents

The high-gloss package looks very unspectacular. On a crowded shelf it's very easy to miss. All the important specs and product highlights are listed on the back of the package, only missing are the actual overclocked frequencies.

You will receive:

Graphics card
Manual + Driver CD + 3DMark full version + PowerDVD
DVI Adapter + HDMI Adapter + S-Video Adapter
PCI-Express power adapter
TV out cable
CrossFire Bridge

The Card

Sapphire has chosen to use a blue PCB instead of the red ATI PCB. The cooler on the graphics card is the Zalman VF900. In addition to the GPU cooler small blue ramsinks have been placed on the GDDR3 memory. I find the fan cable routing a bit messy, especially the small adapter cable doesn't look very professional, 5 cm longer and properly routed would definitely look better.

The card has two DVI ports, basically the most common output configuration these days. In case you need an analog VGA port you can use the included DVI adapter. When using an HDMI adapter (also included), you will also have access to HDMI+HDCP+Audio, which allows easy setup of a media PC. All recent ATI Radeon cards have a Realtek HD Audio device integrated inside the GPU silicon. This means that you don't have to connect any additional cabling to the graphics card for HDMI Audio. A new feature of the HD 4xxx Series is support for 7.1 HDMI audio, the older HD 3xxx cards supported only 5.1.

Here are the front and the back of the card, high-res versions are also available (front, back). If you choose to use these images for voltmods etc, please include a link back to this site or let us post your article.